The tv Aeon famously favored black-widow bondage gear, her body capable of impossible contortions (though not nearly so un-boned and bendy as the remarkable Sybil) and fantastic aggression. Or rather, it is much as you expect, because this film follows a perfunctory plot while focusing its energies on stunning visual set pieces (and they are great, only there are too few of them and they don’t necessarily help you understand Aeon any better). But, as they like to say in such science fictiony situations, all is not as it seems. The seemingly dictatorial leader of this government is Trevor Goodchild (Marton Csokas, much more conventionally handsome than the fiendishly compelling cartoon incarnation), aided by his obviously scheming brother Oren (Jonny Lee Miller). Their activities are monitored and individuals are regularly “disappeared” off the streets or from their homes, leaving behind grieving families and lots of questions about their corporate-totalitarian government. People wear the sorts of clothes that designers now use to designate “the future,” and shop for stuff. It’s 2415, and a super-virus has decimated the population, leaving only a small band of survivors who live in a walled environment called Bregna. When she’s not dissolving in and out of mindscapes, Aeon lives in a sparse apartment. This mission is assassination: Aeon is a killer for the underground. She finds her contact, they kiss with tongue, and she’s slipped a pill that grants her access to her handler (Frances McDormand). Aeon appears in stepping neatly in heeled boots and a thigh-slit black dress, her “futuristic” head gear providing stylish context for the means to her mission. The film begins as if it will be more wondrously strange than it ends up. While Theron appeared on multiple talk shows and making-of sequences on MTV (showing off the stunts and the green screen work, not to mention some odd wardrobe choices), the charismatic director, Karyn Kusama (who made Girlfight with Michelle Rodriguez), was nowhere to be seen or heard. However this decision evolved, its sad effects are visible not only on screen but also MTV’s awkward promotional business. But it’s also a function of what seems a completely contrary imperative to get the film rated PG-13. In part, this is a function of physical limits: no way could the live action Aeon (Charlize Theron) manage the hairstyle of the animated Aeon, much less the scary wasp waist and freaky-deaky sexual exploits. Why translate the animation to fleshly form if you’re going to reject and undo what made it so compelling to begin with, namely, its gorgeous perversity and unsettling provocation? Here’s a puzzler: Aeon Flux, MTV’s intriguingly out-there, aggressively abstract cartoon series from the mid-’90s has been reimagined for the movies as a conservative tract promoting family “values” and heterosexual romance.
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