Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a look at the Charlize Theron starring AEON FLUX presentation from this year's San Diego Comic-Con. There was a panel and a clip presentation. On the panel were Peter Chung (original creator of the animated Aeon Flux), producers David Gale and Gale Anne Hurd, director Karyn Kusama and stars Martin Csokas and Charlize Theron.
TIDBITS:
-Chung was asked about how much the film version differed from his original. He said that he reinvented who Aeon was and what her agenda was from the Liquid Television days, so he fully expected them to change her up again for the movie and didn't have a problem with it.
-They said the immorality of the character of Aeon is still there. Chung, "Well, Aeon is a killer, so that automatically puts her on the edge." But it won't be as hardcore as in the original cartoon.
-When asked about the costuming differences, Theron replied, to the dismay of 80% of the crowd, that the outfits would be much less revealing. "Certain things must be hidden." Crowd, "Awwwww..." Theron says her character is not shy sexually, but just not as butt-ass naked all the time as the original animation. The butt-ass naked part was my elaboration, but she did say she was still very sexual.
-Actor Martin Csokas tried to avoid what was done with his original character (Trevor Goodchild) and it'll have very little to do with what is in the original cartoon.
-The whole panel was asked why Martin Csokas was cast as Trevor when Johnny Lee Miller (who plays Oren Goodchild) was a much better choice for the character... This got a lot of "Oooooo"s from the audience considering Csokas was on the panel. There was something said about the way he plays the character... Nothing really satisfactory.
-Theron played the film for real, not fantasy. She superimposed the Aeon universe into our own society instead of going totally alien with it. Says that we could really end up where the Aeon Flux universe is.
-Theron trained for months with a Cirque de Soliel gymnist for the action of the film.
FOOTAGE:
We saw a bunch of clips... weird behind the scenes doco type stuff mixed with a rough trailer and a clip reel... The standouts from all the above were the assault on Goodchild's stronghold and the sexy shot of Theron wearing black panties and loose shirt.
With the assault it is Theron and Sophie Okonedo who I remember most as being the hottie tribal virgin that Jim Carey deflowers in ACE VENTURE: WHEN NATURE CALLS who do this series of running leaps across a green, bush covered acre or so of land, headed toward a big stone structure... kinda castle-y, but rounded, not spiky. Sophie's feet were hands, which really creeped me out.
You see her jump onto a section of grass and in slow motion you can see the grass move straight up just as her foot/hand comes down on it. She grunts with pain and you see her foot/hand pull up and the grass is sharp, having punctured her foot/hand in a dozen places. "Avoid the grass!"
Aeon is in mid-jump, about to land on a big patch of grass. She stops at the last second, the upper half of her body inches from the sharp grass blades. There's a pull back to reveal her legs in a split on the stone borders of the plot of grass. She struggles to pull herself up, the thousands of tiny blades sensing her there and almost stretching out for her.
There's also a scene where she's in a concrete cell and whistles, calling a few dozen little ball bearings that come rolling through the vent shaft and down halls together. The get to the door of her cell, stack on top of each other, then jump up, sticking to a door-shaped portion of the wall and blows it open.
And there's also a sequence where Aeon is wearing this hot little number... it's a veil that Vs out just above her nose, leaving her mouth and cheeks completely exposed, but covering her eyes. She bumps into a man. She grabs him, kisses him heavily and we cut in close to see their tongues passing a silver looking ball. She takes the ball into her mouth... um... maybe I should rephrase that...
Theron takes the silver object from his mouth to hers and swallows it. We get an X-Ray cam thing of the pill going down into her stomach. It releases something, causing whiteness to spread through her bloodstream and up into her brain. She receives the message, some sort of neural message that can be seen only when the information is released into her blood stream.
Lots of guns shooting and some clunky action...
I wasn't too impressed with what I saw. It had a very JUDGE DREDD-y quality to it, I'm afraid to say. Unless the effects are hardly begun at all, then it's going to look pretty shitty and there was nothing I saw in the way it was shot or how the action looked that makes me think that the director's style could overcome cruddy CG work.
Theron is hot, indeed and has some good singular moments, but I'm afraid this is one of the only presentations at the Con this year that left a bad taste in my mouth. I don't feel good vibes coming off this movie. I hope I'm wrong.
That's about it for this one. Got plenty more comin', so check back.
-Quint
