Friday, January 3, 2014

Aeon Flux



Oh Charlize Theron, I just can't decide if I like you or not. Yes, you're very attractive, I'm not disputing that. I'm just confused by the movie choices you make and the acting choices you make as well.

Aeon Flux is a sci fi action movie based on a animated television show with the same name. Its based in a dystopian future where a virus kills off 99% of the world's population. This guy Trevor Goodchild makes a cure, and then makes a city where the rest of the humanity lives.

And like every dystopian future, the government is corrupt as hell and only one person can save the people of this world, our hero Aeon Flux. Well it is a little more complicated then that when she is assigned to kill off Goodchild but can't because memories of a life she doesn't remember comes flooding back to her. So she starts questioning who she is and who the real enemy is, changing everything she has ever known.

Now that summary is giving this movie a lot more credit than it actually deserved cause this movie was confusing as hell.

I'll start with the characters. Charlize Theron is super boring in this movie. I'm starting to realize the blank dull expressionless voice she uses is what she uses in every movie she's ever been in.

It worked in Snow White and the Huntsman but now its just getting boring. I couldn't get through 5 minutes of this movie without falling asleep. That's not an exaggeration. The first five minutes of this movie was soooooo boring and stupid. As was a lot of the movie.

Aeon's story is that she is an assassin for a resistance group looking to overthrow the regime that has been in power for 400 years. But when she is about to kill the guy who's been in charge for 400 years, he recognizes her and calls her by a different name. Obviously they know each other from a past life.

But Theron wasn't the only one giving absolutely no expression in this movie.

It's like the director said, I want less emotion and just a recitation of the lines as if you were looking at the script right in front of you for the first time.

Now to be fair, the script doesn't help. I try not to totally blame the actors because in the end it comes down to the director's fault for not getting a good script or if they are really bad, finding good actors. But it was everyone! Everyone in this movie was so dull and boring I didn't care. At all. Marton Csokas played Trevor Goodchild. I don't know why but I really hate the name Trevor. I guess they try to portray him as this evil guy at the beginning of the movie, but they don't really do a good job at it. Which causes trouble for the whole plot of the movie.

At the beginning of the movie, they paint the this government as any dystopian future government is. Evil, corrupt, etc. In order to show this, they just show a guy crying, and a woman disappearing. There is no explanation of why this resistance group is so determined to kill of Goodchild, he's just the head of a stereotypical dystopian future government. Yes, you do figure out that there are some shady dealings going on but in the end, I didn't really see anything wrong with this government given the circumstances.

And then there's the action in the movie.

It's boring. Plain and simple. Really boring. For a movie that is mainly focused on the action, sacrificing the story for pointless action scenes, the action scenes were really boring.

And with dull undeveloped characters, and an opposing force I didn't see as that evil, I didn't care if the characters died or not. I knew they were going to live, but I didn't care.

Now, from what I have already described, you may think this movie is complete and utter dogshit....

And you would be right.

But there are a few things that made me say... "Alright, that was pretty cool"

The first one was Charlize Theron. Not her acting. She looked hot in this movie. Skin tight leather is always good in my book. And the unfortunate thing is, this is also a complaint I had with the movie. Cause this movie was made to entice teenage boys who love senseless action to see a woman do it in tight leather.

Also this outfit

I mean who wears stuff like that. No woman I know. I don't want to go on a whole feminist rant because those annoy me as much as any other guy. But it just kinda sucks that Charlize Theron had to be in revealing outfits for this movie to get any publicity. 

That being said, she was very attractive in this movie. 

The other thing I thought was actually pretty interesting was the big twist in the movie. So in the beginning of the movie, Charlize Theron's sister dies. And this drives her to go and kill Goodchild. Well it turns out that her sister actually is alive. 

Now this in itself doesn't sound like a huge groundbreaking twist. But when Theron shows up at the place her sister was said to be, she finds a baby and knows its her. How she knows, I don't know. But its revealed that the disease that killed off the human race left surviving humans sterile. So Goodchild decides to clone people who die and give them another life.

Cloning!

I haven't seen a really good representation of cloning for a long time! I think it was more of a hot topic in the early 2000s but now you just don't see it anymore!

I'm sorry if I ruined the movie, but this was actually a very interesting development in the story for me. 

Does it redeem the movie? Oh not at all. The movie is still complete garbage. But the cloning twist was actually a good twist and it works really well with the crap story that had already been established. 

Overall, Aeon Flux is just boring. The action is boring, the characters are boring. The story, with an exception of the twist of cloning is boring. 

I don't know what this movie was trying to accomplish. Advocating for cloning, against it. Maybe it was a run of the mill, fuck the system movie, its just kind of bland. Its very forgettable and really not worth a watch. 

So have you seen Aeon Flux? What did you think? Are there any redeeming qualities to it? 

I'll leave you with this. Charlize Theron on Ellen. She actually shows some emotions and get kind of sassy in this clip. Enjoy!


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