Today we are talking about Æon Flux. Notice I’m gonna be super nerdy and use the weird Æ instead of Ae. Lets jump right in.
I should be the the market for this movie. Yes, it came out in 2005, but its a post-apocalyptic utopia/dystopian sci-fi thriller that isn’t based on a YA property (looking at you, Hunger Games). It appears to be based on a 90s cartoon on MTV (who knew?) that i have never seen and have no interest in watching. It stars a 30 year old Charlize Theron (yes, I looked that up) in some weird futuristic-y looking clothing. She is your general early 2000’s sci-fi superhero action Mary Sue whose entire character boils down to “distrusting of the government”. God, if I didn’t know better, I’d think Hollywood was made up of Libertarians.
I am not even really going to get into the plot much… Basically Theron plays Æon Flux. She hates the government of her futuristic utopia for… reasons. I guess they killed her sister, but she was already fighting the government at that point so I question the logical rationale. She is a member of the resistance force called the “Monikans” (I probably have that spelled wrong, but i really dont care to look it up) who communicate secretly by taking a pill and going to a separate psychic plane to talk to one another.
When Æon gets a secret mission from her crazy-looking Monikan general to go and kill the societal monarch, she goes in to the capital area by doing some generally impossible parkour and having assistance from some other rebel with hands for feet (I think the makers of this movie were on mushrooms or something). Since she is literally unstoppable, she essentially flippy-kicks and spinny-guns her way to the head honcho. When she gets there, he says some random name that doesn’t require a funky keyboard to type. Æon stops in her tracks and gets thrown in jail.
Since she literally has no problems doing anything, she whistles some metal balls to come and blow out the wall of the jail cell (like i said, these guys had to be on mushrooms or acid or something), then goes to find the leader dude and figure out what’s up. A few more flippy-kicks later, she finds the guy again. Honestly, at this point I completely spaced out. Even with all the action and whatnot, this movie is really boring. Let me just summarize the ending…
Basically, humans stopped having kids as a side effect to some cure for some horrible disease, so the monarch just started cloning everyone. Now, everyone is just a clone of a clone of a clone of a clone (and so on and so forth), including the leaders and all the people. Its a huge conspiracy that everyone has tried to keep quiet. All the people think they’ve been having real kids, realistically they have just been implanted with clone DNA. The monarch is actually a scientist trying to cure the issue so people can have real kids again.
But, the monarchs brother doesnt want that because it means they cant control everything anymore. So, the brother decides to kill the leader, but Æon figures out that the people she and the leader were before they got all cloned up were actually lovers. So, she calls in the Monikans to save the leader and kill the brother. Before he dies, the brother reveals that women have been getting pregnant again, but he has been killing them to keep the control. After that dude is dead, Æon blows up the cloning facility, and everyone gets a chance to start society over again. GET BUSY, CLONES, you got a LOT of repopulation to catch up on!
The early 2000’s was made up of a bunch of Matrix clones, where leathery clad heroes did impossible acrobatic stunts and a bunch of crazy gunplay to save the world from an dystopian society that most humans were unaware was horrible. Don’t believe me? Look at Underworld, Equilibrium, Ultraviolet, this movie… All of them could be mistaken for the Matrix by someone who doesn’t know better. The original matrix was the only one that was really any good; and i say that as someone who actually greatly appreciates Equilibrium.
Charlize Theron in this one is not great. I mean… she is attractive, and if that is what you are looking for in a movie, this one is for you, perv. But she chews the scenery here, and I don’t believe for a minute that she actually can do any of these stunts. She has done significantly better later in her career with action, but this earlier work is pretty bad.
It isnt worth talking about anyone else in this movie, because I don’t know anyone else. This movie is pretty horrible. If you HAVE to watch it, I recommend having it on in the background while you do something that takes at least 60% of your attention. Maybe this movie would be better if you watch less of it, but watching it in its entirety is not worth your time.
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