Once again, I had planned to give Miley Cyrus and The Last Song my Liveblog treatment and once again another movie caught my eye. She's had a rough week anyway what with her father saying he was ashamed of her wicked ways and that she wasn't really his daughter or something. Was that what he said? Probably not. Anyway, here is today's offering. In 2005, in the early part of this decade, Charlize Theron won a well deserved Oscar for her role in Monster. A brief moment of panic set in when she realized that the statue took up all the room on her mantle and she vowed to never win another one. Thus, in 2005, she made today's movie. I present to you...Aeon Flux.
0:02:00 -- Found out two things. The first is that a virus is going to wipe out 99% of the Earth's population in 2011. I hope they don't mean this 2011 cause then who would finish this article? Second, turns out instead of Aeon Flux I'm supposed to type Æon Flux. I'm not going to.
This is Charlize Theron as the title character. She dressed this way so as not to call attention to herself.0:10:00 -- It's now 2454 and the entire human population has been reduced to a single city ruled by a man named Trevor Goodchild. Aeon Flux is a member of a rebel group trying to bring down Goodchild and, honestly, I have no idea why. This place is incredible. Standard of living here is off the charts. Normally, oppressive dictatorships actually oppress someone and yes, the government deals swiftly and mercilessly with dissidents but what the hell are those people complaining about? I'd move there in a minute. I found all this out from an opening narration. Opening narrations are the last refuge of incompetent makers of science fiction screenplays. This violates the rule of storytelling that says "Show, Don't Tell." That aside, Aeon Flux has orders from her leader to disrupt the city's surveillance equipment. It turns out that surveillance equipment is a giant pool of water. Aeon destroys it by pulling a plug and letting the water drain out. Seriously.
I'm sure there was a necessary and non-gratuitous reason to show her like this. Whatever that is, I'm doing it for the same reason.0:26:00 -- Aeon's sister is killed because they think she's a Monican (the rebels). At least now Aeon actually has a really good reason to be pissed off at the government instead just being annoyed that her duck confit wasn't properly seasoned or whatever the hell people in this future paradise complain about. She gladly accepts the assignment to invade the government's main headquarters and kill Chairman Trevor Goodchild. She and a woman with hands where her feet should be (don't ask) storm an idyllic garden where the fruit shoots darts and blades of grass are sharp as knives to get into the compound. For some reason, all this activity sets off no alarms but that's not the dumbest thing that's happened in this movie so I'll let it slide. Goodchild is in a meeting of the ruling council. I don't know why they bother to have these meetings since Goodchild just ignores their opinions and does what he wants but I suppose it's a good way to kill some time. Aeon manages to get Goodchild alone while he's practicing some sort of speech but he calls her Catherine. I suppose there's a big mystery behind this but calling her Catherine was enough of a distraction to allow him to capture her.
This thing keeps flying around. I'm sure I'd be fascinated by it if I knew what the hell it was. In this future, technology really doesn't have to serve any specific purpose.0:52:00 -- It turns out it was Trevor Goodchild's brother Orin (played by that Trainspotting guy, you know, that one guy from Trainspotting, no, not Ewan McGregor, the other one) is the one who engineered what was supposed to be Trevor's assassination before Aeon wussed out. Aeon goes after Trevor again but ends up having flashes of memory that look like the present day. These flashes must have been highly erotic for her because she ends up having sex with the guy she thinks killed her sister. It turns out that Trevor may not be so bad and that her sister may have been killed because she was part of some sort of experiment to prevent a new plague from rising. While this is being explained to Aeon, she is told, "You know how we're all sick? And how we're all having memories of things we never experienced?" Gee, thanks. That might have been nice to know before now. If I was sick and having odd visions, it would be my main topic of conversation non-stop. Anyway, Orin seizes the opportunity to have Trevor labeled a criminal for letting Aeon go and the Monicans now consider Aeon a traitor for trying to screw Trevor to death instead of by some faster method. Aeon then infiltrates that blimp thing in the picture above where she finds the late, great Pete Postlethwaite playing a holographic guardian, a role I'm sure he forgot about and denied on his deathbed he had ever done. Oh, and movie? Screw you for completely undermining the joke I made in that picture about the blimp. You think those are easy to come up with?
As relief from Charlize Theron and her boundless sex appeal, here's Pete Postlethwaite dressed as Cryptkeeper from the future.1:10:00 -- That blimp is the nerve center of a massive cloning operation. It turns out that way, way back in that primitive time we call 2011, Trevor Goodchild managed to cure that plague that was killing everyone but it left the human race sterile so he cloned everyone. Only he and his brother have their memories. Trevor experimented on Aeon's sister and some other women and they managed to become pregnant without having a clone implanted so Orin had her killed because being a clone absolutely rocks. Finally, Aeon was Trevor's wife in a past incarnation. Wow, a lot happened in the last 20 minutes. The two lovers must now avoid both the government and the rebels while they try to retrieve Trevor's notes on Aeon's sister's pregnancy. Why the iPad, something that could have easily and conveniently stored his notes so he could always carry them around, was forgotten in the past 400 years is not explained.
1:32:00 -- One of the reasons I chose this movie is because it was only 90 minutes long. Orin burned Trevor's notes but we find out it doesn't matter. Women are getting pregnant on their own and Orin's been killing them all. He admitted all this when he had Trevor and Aeon trapped and, instead of killing them on the spot, decided to reveal every detail of his master plan for world domination. This gave the Monicans enough time to surround Orin and his forces and Aeon enough time to convince Hands-for-feet woman to help her instead of carrying out her orders to kill her. A massive gun battle then ensues but, luckily, Orin's men learned to shoot at Imperial Stormtrooper School and manage to miss most of the time. Even when Aeon and Trevor get shot, they just stand back up so I don't see the point of even trying to shoot them. There were times when they had Aeon on the ropes but they forgot that even the most innocuous looking object in this time can be a formidable piece of technology, things like the wart of her back that acted as a communicator and allowed her to coordinate with her friends. Trevor's back in charge and Aeon celebrates by crashing that cloning blimp into the wall that opens up to a lush forest, proving once again my point that, despite its flaws, why wouldn't anyone want to live here? Stop your bitching, future people.
The director somehow knew the position Charlize Theron is in when I dream about her.
No comments:
Post a Comment