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December 9, 2005
Flux Rant
So, last night J and I went to see Aeon Flux. I am a big fan of the old TV series. I mean, I have it on my license plate. Not being an utter fool, I knew that the fragmentary, disjointed brilliance that was the show would be well-nigh untranslatable into film. We went anyway. I suppose that my reasoning was along the lines of "know thy enemy".
The trailer suggested that instead of the murky motives of the previous incarnation, there would be some kind of so-sad backstory from whence Aeon turned to a life of righteous crimes against the state, working for a well-established hierarchical group. The only time she did/would ever do that was a brief stint helping remove Custodians. And even then, her real motives (as well as that of the group itself) were unclear. I mean, in the film, our supposedly mysterious heroine gives plot exposition?! How ham-fisted can you get? None of the delicate nuance of policital and psychosexual intrigue that the show had in spades was present at all. I thought there might be some alright anti-fascist stuff here, but Trevor Goodchild was merely transformed into an utterly beneficent enlightened despot instead of the megalomaniacal sex-object that we all knew and loved. Sure he had some redeeming qualities before, but restoring fertility to women everywhere wasn't really one of them.
That's right. Aeon Flux has turned into a vehicle for promoting basic heteronormative familial structures, technophobia, and having lots and lots of natural (natural?!) babies, just like god intended. At one point, and this might spoil the surprise for some of you, she says, "You mean we're copies!?!" That's right. Copies. Idiot. Didn't the fucking director even watch the episode on human duplicants that the movie steals and distorts? I am getting angry just writing this. I knew I shouldn't have expected anything, least of all any relevance to the show.
Why not just make a different movie if you are going to recycle names and plots unthinkingly? Several times, I tried to think that it would be redeemable if they had just not claimed that it was Flux. But alas, it was just too horrendous for even that. Even ignoring the sorry states of politics and gender relations, racism was rampant throught. J said to me, "Did she just beat up another black chick?" That's right. All subservient or there to be destroyed. Almost unbelievable.
That said, the only thing that can be redeemed about this sorry film was the costuming. Though not as provocative as one might have hoped, it (as well as some of the sets) certainly invoked the aesthetic of the show and brought to life the materiality of the world.
Also, its [Bren-ya] not [Breg-nah]. Guess the latter sounds more like [pregnant].
Posted by loyd0008 at December 9, 2005 5:16 PM