Travis Vocino Experiments in Art, Science & Technology.

2 Responses to “Aeon Flux: Disappointing”rss

1. Joel F., on December 4th, 2005, said:

   Knowing nothing about Aeon Flux, I passed on seeing the film. But I’m not surprised that travis did not think too highly of it, nor did most if not all the major critics.

   What i do find interesting is the continuation of the “Curse of the Oscar.” Charlize Theron, whom I think is an excellent actor, has seen fit to “broaden her post-Oscar acting horizons” (and obviously her bank account) by opting to attempt a big-budget tentpole picture, no doubt with an eye toward sequels and all the ancillary dollars from merchandising and the like.

   Much in the same vein as Halle Berry did, whose first effort out of the gate, post-Oscar (for Monster’s Ball) was the Bond film “Die Another Day” (perhaps with the hopes that her character would be able to be spun off into her own franchise, which never happened) She followed that up with the absoultely awful “Catwoman” again with the eye toward a franchise picture for the future.

   There are numerous other examples of the “Oscar Curse” (which I don’t know off the top of my head and don’t have time to research now) but it seems that the power that an Oscar gives recipients to choose their subsequent roles has a tendency to go to their heads and make them rather think that just their mere involvement in a picture brings guaranteed success. Clearly not so!

   With regard to live action pictures from comicbook or cartoon-based source material, I have always felt and continue to do so, that the title characters should be cast with unknowns (or semi-unknowns) and let that character be built from scratch. Like the late Christopher Reeve in the original Superman series and the actor (whose name escapes me at this moment) who’s been cast as the new Superman in next summer’s upcoming “Superman Returns” Witness the Batman series…Michael Keaton in 1 & 2, Val Kilmer in 3 and George Clooney in 4. All actors with very high previous profiles and they never really “fit” into the suit. But look how good Christian Bale was in this past summer’s “Batman Begins” He can really grow with and into the character. And like the Superman movies, he has some top-notch stars in supporting roles. (Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman) In the Superman movies, Gene Hackman, Marlon Brando, Richard Pryor lent the star power to the project. So again, for roles where the character is a known quantity, let the actor who brings it to life not have his own identity to overshadow the role.

2. Ian, on December 6th, 2005, said:

   Personally, I don’t really have much of a desire to see it in the theatre. (Not, uh, that I downloaded it just to make sure or anything…) I’m definitely a big Aeon Flux fan, but I honestly knew from the start that this movie was just not going to be worth seeing. Especially given the fact that the director had only done one movie previously, and that movie didn’t seem terribly appealing either.

   Add to that Charlize Theron, who doesn’t really have any of the qualities of the original Aeon Flux character, such as it was. She’s been in a lot of good movies, but what can you really say about her characters other than “Man, she’s hot.”? Not much, I’d bet.

   To use Joel’s comparison to Batman Begins, there were a lot of things going for that movie. I’d been clamouring to see Christian Bale as Batman ever since American Psycho, and that was only fueled more since Equilibrium. So to see him cast, even though he wasn’t an “unknown” actor, was very gratifying, and he took to the role as naturally as I expected him to. On top of that, you had a more proven director, Christopher Nolan, at the helm. Granted, his first two movies weren’t really all that great, but he really hit his stride as a director with Memento. And more to the point, Nolan had a darker view of the world that lent itself well to the Batman mythos, and it was pretty obvious that he “got” what Batman was about. (Although I have to say; the editor they got, Lee Smith, needs to be shot; his editing was absolutely abysmal, and was probably the worst thing about that movie.)

   Karyn Kusama, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to have really found her voice yet, although she’s starting to pigeon-hole herself into being a “girls can fight, too” kind of feminist director. Anyone who used to watch Aeon Flux on Liquid Television can tell you that is not what it’s about. Clearly, Kusama just doesn’t “get” what Aeon Flux was about. While an Aeon Flux movie would be an admittedly difficult movie to do, there are still definitely better choices one could have made for a director. It needed someone with a bit more of a schizophrenic talent, like David Cronenberg or Darren Aronofsky, just to name a couple. But if you put it in the hands of a rookie director who evidently has something to prove about how women can be voilent, too.

   Take, for example, a quote of hers from an interview regarding her first movie:

   “In this world of gendered expectations, it’s very scary to see violent women. Somehow we assume it’s the province of men, and in many ways it is. But there’s another kind of underlying violence in that assumption, which is that women don’t have that rage and capability for violence in themselves. To just deny it, as opposed to trying to acknowledge it and examine it, is where this character [Diana] comes from. She’s so much her father’s daughter instead of her mother’s daughter, and has so much of his violence and way of handling problems – through dismissing them or belittling them — she’s taken into herself, because it’s the only way she knows. I see [the film] as a humanist portrait of this character. What she wants is to be allowed to be her essential self, and her essential self is a fighter, literally and figuratively.”

   Someone like that is not the kind of person I’d have given the director’s chair to for an Aeon Flux movie.

   Anyways, enough of me babbling. It’s back to work with me…