Æon Flux is an American avant-garde science fiction animated television franchise that originally aired on MTV from November 30, 1991, until October 10, 1995, with film, comic book, and video game adaptations following thereafter. It premiered on MTV's Liquid Television experimental animation show, as a six-part serial of short films, followed in 1992 by five individual short episodes. In 1995, a season of ten half-hour episodes aired as a stand-alone series. Æon Flux was created by American animator Peter Chung. Each Episode plots have elements of social science fiction, biopunk, allegory, dystopian fiction, spy fiction, psychological drama, postmodern visual, psychedelic imagery and Gnostic symbolism.
The live-action movie Æon Flux, loosely based upon the series and starring Charlize Theron (The actress from Disney's Mighty Joe Young), was released in theaters on December 2, 2005, preceded in November of that year by a tie-in video game of the same name based mostly on the movie but containing some elements of the original TV series.
The Franchise's Plot[]
Æon Flux is set in a surreal German Expressionist style futuristic universe in the year 7698 AD. The setting comprises a bizarre post-apocalyptic dystopian world surrounded by endless barren wasteland, mutant creatures, clones, and robots within the last two separated border wall cities of Monica and Bregna similar to the Berlin Wall, located somewhere in former Eastern Europe after an environmental catastrophe that wiped out 99 percent of the global population. The title character is a tall, sexy, dominatrix scantily-clad secret agent from the city of Monica, skilled in espionage, assassination and acrobatics. Her mission is to infiltrate and destroy the strongholds of the city of Bregna, which is led by her sworn enemy, and sometimes lover, Trevor Goodchild, the technocratic dictator of Bregna. The two cities engage in a futile never ending war for ideological supremacy; while Monica represents a dynamic nihilistic anarchist society where rules do not exist, Bregna embodies a centralized scientific planned Orwellian police state. The names of their respective characters reflect this: Flux as the self-directed agent from Monica and Goodchild as the self-appointed leader of Bregna.
The term Æon comes from the Gnostic notion of Æons as emanations of the God, who come in male/female pairs (here Flux and Goodchild). This juxtaposition also maps accordingly to the characterizations of Eris and Greyface in the Discordian mythos. Further mythic parallels can be drawn in likening Goodchild to Apollo and Flux to Artemis.
TV Pilot[]
Main article: Æon Flux (TV Pilot)
Each of the six episodes in the first season was originally broadcast as a 2-minute segment of Liquid Television. On home media releases they are compiled into a single "pilot" episode. The pilot episode starts with the now-famous scene where Aeon catches a fly with her eyelashes. We then cut to an apparent battle between Monican agents and Breen forces, with Aeon liberally mowing down dozens of soldiers on her quest to apparently assassinate a Breen Official, though most of them are already sick and dying from a strange disease carried by an azure beetle. As hundreds of soldiers die in the sewers, Trevor Goodchild finds and takes in one of the beetles, hiding it in his finger and carrying it with his lover to the top of the building where Aeon’s target is sleeping. While going there, Aeon sees Trevor and the woman fondling each other, and shows signs of longing for such treatment. As Aeon travels on her own path, Trevor uses the infectious toxin in the beetle to formulate an antidote, which he first uses on himself and his lover. Aeon has travelled up onto the roof, unwittingly picking up a tack from a loose cable fastening on the sole of her boot. As she prepares to kill her victim, she steps on the tack, stabs her foot and falls from the building to her death. The Monican authorities destroy her body and burn her apartment, while Trevor is hailed as a hero for developing a cure for the virus. In the final part of the episode, a young boy is seen buying a magazine with Aeon exhibiting a foot fetish, while Aeon goes into a strange heaven where a spirit does to her what she exhibited in the magazine. The pilot's trivia shows that it was Originally titled "Ӕon Flux" is the first and last episode of the first season of Ӕon Flux. Originally airing on MTV's animation showcase program "Liquid Television" as 6 individual shorts, with a consecutive story, with each short spanning 2 minutes, the shorts were compiled into one 12 minute pilot episode upon the home media release, serving as the sole episode of Season 1.
TV Series[]
- Main article: Æon Flux (TV series)
After dealing with it's six of 2-minute tv pilots, The tv show was chosen by the MTV Team members on November 30, 1991 and Each episode of the second season was broadcast as a 5-minute segment of Liquid Television. Some authors consider the title a reference to the Gnostic notion of an Æon, seeing the influence in the use of a demiurge in one episode,[1] and that the relationship between the main characters parallels the Valentinian notion of a syzygy.[2] Peter Chung, the creator, says the main character's name "started out just being the name of the cartoon and then eventually it stuck, so that's her name." The character Æon Flux was not meant to be part of the series, but MTV pushed to keep her in it, despite Æon dying at the end of the first batch of shorts. Chung intended the cartoon to be a reaction to heroic Hollywood action films, not as a spoof, but rather as a way to make the audience wonder about the wider context of these action heroes and evoke thought.[3] Æon Flux is therefore notable as one of the very few American adult animated series to be a drama rather than a comedy, as well as one of the only such series to air for more than one season.
One peculiarity of the early shorts is the violent death of Æon Flux, which occurs in each installment. According to the commentary by Peter Chung in the 2005 DVD release, she dies in every short episode after the initial six-part pilot because he never intended to make more episodes and felt the best solution was to have her keep dying; by contrast, she only "dies" once in the half-hour series. Often her death is caused by fate, while other times she dies due to her own incompetence. One of the half-hour episodes, "A Last Time for Everything", ends with the original Æon being killed and replaced by an identical clone. (In the episode "Chronophasia", Æon is apparently killed repeatedly by a monstrous baby, but the reality of these events is ambiguous. In "Ether Drift Theory", Æon is suspended indefinitely in an inanimate state, but remains technically alive.)
Film[]
- Main article: Æon Flux (film)
An Æon Flux Hollywood adaptation, which was released in the United States on December 2, 2005, starring Charlize Theron, provoked controversy among Æon Flux fans over initial reports that the film adaptation seemed to bear little resemblance to the original full-length animated series or the Liquid Television shorts, as no one involved with the original television series had a role in the making of the film. While it does take a number of major liberties with the character and concept of the series (such as making the character of Una into Æon's sister and giving Trevor a previously-unmentioned brother who plays a major role), the film also incorporates characters, themes, gadgets, and even specific scenes as featured in the television version, most notably a reenactment of the television show's most iconic image: Æon trapping a fly in her eyelashes. This minor detail was not nearly enough to avoid having the movie become a critical and box office flop.
The creator of Æon Flux, Peter Chung, gave an interview to the "Monican Spies" community on LiveJournal in 2006. He was asked many questions about Æon Flux and her universe, including how he really felt about the movie. Chung called the movie "a travesty", relating that its public screening made him feel "helpless, humiliated, and sad". He described his primary objection to the film as being its portrayal of the Æon and Trevor characters and their re-imagined history and relationship. Chung went on to state, "Ms. Flux does not actually appear in the movie."[4]
Comics[]
:Main articles: Æon Flux: The Comic series and Æon Flux: The Herodotus File
A "graphic novel" called Æon Flux: The Herodotus File, which actually consisted of an assortment of false documents from the world of Æon Flux and a short story-board-style sequence described as "security camera footage" rather than a comic strip story, was published in 1995.[5] In it, authors Mark Mars and Eric Singer provided vague explanations of some of the show's setting and backstory, including how Trevor and Æon met. One hint suggested in the series, and confirmed by Mars and Singer in the graphic novel, is the character's foot fetish modeling; it is suggested that she augments her income posing barefoot for magazines devoted to the fetish. The graphic novel fell out of print in the years that followed the show's conclusion, but it was temporarily re-issued in 2005, with new cover art, to tie in with the movie.[6]
As another tie-in to the movie, Dark Horse Comics published a four-issue comic book mini-series, collected as a trade paperback[7] and written and drawn by Mike Kennedy and Timothy Green III, who based their work upon the film versions of the Æon Flux characters. Although the characters and situations were based on the newer movie versions, the penciling technique deliberately emulated Peter Chung's unique style from the TV series.
Pepsi commercial[]
Though not directly connected to the series, a live-action/animated Diet Pepsi commercial titled "Something Wrong?" was directed by Peter Chung and starred Malcolm McDowell as a Trevor Goodchild-like character and Cindy Crawford as an Æon Flux-like character. It was made for Super Bowl XXX in 1996, but was pulled and later aired for broadcast exclusive to MTV. "Something Wrong?" is available online at YouTube.[8]
Video games[]
- Main article: Æon Flux (video game)
A PlayStation game by Cryo Interactive based upon the series was advertised in the mid-1990s, but never released, pictures of which can be found on various sites. It was later adapted into the title Pax Corpus after being stripped of all copyrighted association with Æon Flux.[9]
To coincide with the release of the 2005 film, Majesco Entertainment and developer Terminal Reality released a video game adaptation on Xbox and PlayStation 2. While primarily based on the film, elements from both the movie and the television series are included, as the game sets out to be something of a canonical link between the two, although the Æon character in the game is modeled only after Theron and is also voiced by her.
Live-action television reboot[]
In June 2018, it was reported that a live-action television reboot is in works at MTV with Jeff Davis and Gale Anne Hurd as executive producers.[10] In September 2021, it was reported that a live-action television reboot is in works at Paramount+, under a new overall deal that Davis has signed with MTV Entertainment Studios. Davis will serve as showrunner and direct the pilot.[11]
References[]
- ↑ Aeon Flux: All You've Ever Needed From Sci-Fi, by Alison Veneto, SMRT TV, April 24, 2006, "...Æon Flux has a serious Gnostic bent. The ancient mystery religion is where they got the concepts of aeons and the demiurge, amongst other things."
- ↑ Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; no text was provided for refs namedSFPreview - ↑ Ed Stastny (November 1992). "Interview with Peter Chung".
- ↑ Voorhees, Patty (January 4, 2006). "The Peter Chung Interview!!!!". LiveJournal.
- ↑ (December 1, 1995) Æon Flux: The Herodotus File. MTV Publishing.
- ↑ (November 29, 2005) Æon Flux: The Herodotus File. Pocket Books.
- ↑ (May 3, 2006) Æon Flux. Dark Horse Comics.
- ↑ "Something Wrong?" at YouTube
- ↑ "Video Game Graveyard".
- ↑ Petski, Denise (June 12, 2018). "'Aeon Flux' Live-Action Reboot In Development At MTV". Deadline Hollywood.
- ↑ Massoto, Erick (September 24, 2021). "'Aeon Flux' Live-Action TV Show Reboot in the Works at Paramount+". Collider.
External Links[]
