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Aeon Flux, Talk Amongst Yourselves 310

Posted by CmdrTaco from the does-she-really-spell-her-name-like-that dept.
Kasracer writes "The movie Aeon Flux has been getting a mixture of reviews since its debut and most tend to be on the negative side. A review posted on BinaryIdiot goes a bit more in-depth than most reviews and gives the movie a fair shot. From the review: "First of all, I have to say that I'm disappointed, but not altogether surprised by the reviews I've seen thus far. Those who review films for a living are notoriously unreliable, and in many cases, they miss the whole point altogether. Rest assured, even though I'm as skeptical as they come, and can find a flaw in absolutely anything, I won't pick on this movie simply because the plot may be too hard for some people to understand." "
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Aeon Flux, Talk Amongst Yourselves More

Aeon Flux, Talk Amongst Yourselves

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  • This was a review? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by geeber ( 520231 )
    FTFA:

    you were able to get into the mindset the movie prepares for you, you'll find these characters as believable and as real as they were meant to be. If you found yourself bored and not at all involved within the first 10 minutes, blame it on your lack of imagination.

    and even better:

    It's easy to be biased toward Charlize, and if I were capable of being biased toward anyone, it would be her, but I managed to control myself. The way I saw it was that the movie was fantastic and Charlize was phenomenal, but

    • Re:This was a review? This is news? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by StateOfTheUnion ( 762194 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @09:55AM (#14233034) Homepage
      This so called "review" is exactly why I've fallen away from posting on /.

      This isn't a review. Its an opinion . . . and it seems to have been posted by someone that thinks the movie is "great" but really cannot or chooses not to explain what made the movie great (a single actress alone does not make a good movie). He attacks other reviewers for not understanding the plot and attacks those that aren't captivated by the film for having no imagination . . . but he offers very little of his own opinion. He attacks others . . . but fails offer a convincing opinion of his own . . . except that it was an "awesome" film. I finshed reading the article and I was unconvinced . . . there is very little substance to the review . . . except that other reviewers are wrong . . . and this one is right . . . like the logic of a six year old.

      Is it just me or has slashdot been posting a lot more lame articles like this? I'm not sure but I get the opinion that the editors have changed tack and are going for a more inflammatory style. The rhetorical questions that they post at the end of their first posts are often poorly thought out and sometimes just plain illogical or indicative that they failed to read the article or pay attention when they read the article.

      I can only assume that inflammatory opinions posted as reviews or illogical rhetorical questions serve as flamebait to drive up the number of posts on /. As circumstantial evidence of competitive pressures I submit ancedotally that /.'s competitors such as Digg and other sites have been getting more press lately.

      I don't know whether the editors will read this comment or take it into account . . . . but I have to say that I have been highly underwhelmed with the recent content of slashdot. This inflammatory attack on other movie reviewers that is thinly disguised as a movie review is more evidence that Slashdot is using a strategy of posting material that might otherwise be considered flamebait to drive up the number of posts.

      • Re:This was a review? This is news? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by geeber ( 520231 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @10:18AM (#14233123)
        Oh, I don't know. I think that Slashdot has always been much like it is today. You can see it as a good thing, or a bad thing, but at least they are consistent. Poor spelling, off base comments at the ends of postings, lame articles that make the front page, and the dubious practice of calling themselves editors when they don't have been here at least as long as I have, back in '96 or '97.

        That said, I keep coming back for more. Go figure.

        • Re: This was a review? This is news? (Score:4, Funny)

          by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @10:59AM (#14233272)
          > Oh, I don't know. I think that Slashdot has always been much like it is today. You can see it as a good thing, or a bad thing, but at least they are consistent. Poor spelling, off base comments at the ends of postings, lame articles that make the front page, and the dubious practice of calling themselves editors when they don't have been here at least as long as I have, back in '96 or '97.

          See? Nothing changes.

        • Re:This was a review? This is news? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by jeffehobbs ( 419930 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @11:44AM (#14233469) Homepage

          That said, I keep coming back for more. Go figure.

          I bet the last portion of the topic headline ("Talk Amongst Yourselves") is actually the reason why you keep coming back to Slashdot; it's certainly why I keep coming back. Increasingly, the articles that slashdot will link to (including this one) are completely irrelevant and what is truly interesting and informative reading are the comments that the article elicits. Slashdot should have more posts that are completely opinionless "talk amongst yourselves" kind of posts; the community and the moderation system will assuredly provide content far more interesting than one link to one guy's smoldering blog. Slashdot should act as the "Tim Russert" character, bringing up the topics for discussion and then getting out of the way.

          ~jeff
          my smoldering blog [ldopa.net]

          • What's sad... (Score:2, Interesting)

            by Chmcginn ( 201645 )
            is that people would still mark things off-topic, even when there wasn't any real topic to get off of. No topic of which to get off. You know what I mean.

          • Re:This was a review? This is news? (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Jasin Natael ( 14968 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @12:14PM (#14233620)

            Amen. That's the way it is already. Posts about a specific RFC or patch digress quickly into a political / technological debate about the merits of the underlying technology, the fix, or the fallacy of penetrate-and-patch. Any story containing "Web 2.0" or "AJAX" turns into a philosophical melee about the direction of Internet content, Applications, and inevitably ends with posters deriding the buzzword simply because they can't put it on their resume. Stories about aviation and space exploration digress into discussions of interplanetary flight, colonization, terraforming, the long-since dead X25, and the over-political nature of state-sponsored flight. Biology and evolution stories turn into religious flamewars faster than you can say "bang".

            I've been here for a long time (I'm apparently missing a digit in my UID), and it's never been any different. I don't expect it will. You can't stop the community from discussing the topics that are interesting to it. But, the articles are usually good enough to bring out an informative, relevant discussion on the topic. Enough posters put up links to relevant materials online that sometimes it's better to read their links instead of the actual FA. At least the editors don't post every dot-zero-one update of the Linux Kernel anymore. Or maybe I set my preferences to filter those out. I can't remember.

            Jasin Natael

      • Re:This was a review? This is news? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Dirtside ( 91468 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @12:48PM (#14233785) Journal
        This isn't a review. Its an opinion
        And most reviews are, what, unassailable fact? All reviews are opinions. It's not a very well-written review, but that doesn't mean it's not a review.
      • This isn't a review. Its an opinion

        All reviews are opinions.
      • This isn't a review. Its an opinion . . .

        And other reviews are fact?!? I've not seen Aeon Flux, and probably won't, so I've got no agenda here. But all reviews are opinion. And all of them just point out things they liked and didn't like, which only occasionally line up with the things I liked or didn't like, and they fumble arond to justify their opinion. Professional reviewers often degrade to just throwing insults, sometimes personal ones, at the actors, writer or directors. The really good profesio
    • Bottom-line: A fantastic thriller with a rare combination of action and imagination; two entities that we rarely see together on the same screen. Even more, it fucking rules.
      This guy knows how to finish a "serious" review with a NPOV. It looks very ethical and pro.
    • "If you found yourself bored and not at all involved within the first 10 minutes, blame it on your lack of imagination."

      Bored? I was laughing to hard too be bored. That movie was a collision between a Grade B music video and a runway show. The 'fight' scenes were closely shot and rapidly edited to hide the fact the main characters naturally moved in bullet time. Eveyone dressed coutire, every line meant to be poinient or intense to the MTV/Hallmark crowd. This movie is the strongest argument against DRM ye

    • If you found yourself bored and not at all involved within the first 10 minutes, blame it on your lack of imagination.

      How is this different from the fanboys who cried out "If you didn't like the Matrix it's because you didn't get the Matrix"? Not that you are one of the fanboys who did that but I recall a time in slashdot history if you said anything bad about the Matrix you got modded as a troll and for those who didn't have mod points to beat you down with you were called a fucktard as they flung dagger

  • Review summary (Score:5, Insightful)

    by palad1 ( 571416 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @09:16AM (#14232892)
    1/ Other reviewers are dim-witted and don't look into the real depths of the universe/plot (8 lines) 2/ OMG Charlize is teh Roxor. (40 lines). He may have a point though. (don't you sometimes wish you could mod down an entire story instead of a single comment?)

  • I, for one, am shocked! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Telecommando ( 513768 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @09:17AM (#14232896)
    Aeon Flux had a plot?

    That's news to me.

    • My very first thought about this movie.... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by StressGuy ( 472374 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @09:38AM (#14232972)
      was, "Well, noone will be able to accuse him of deviating from the original story line." Back in the Liquid TV days, this seemed more about an artist having a little creative fun with a character without being hindered by any consistent storyline. Oh sure, toward the end he played around with an actual story, but I always got the impression that this was just a character study.

      On the other hand, I'm sorry I never got to see Reign. The concept was interesting and I'd really liked to have seen what he would have done with a fully developed study.

      As this movie goes, it just screams "renter"

      • Or a vodcast. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by crovira ( 10242 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @01:33PM (#14234058) Homepage
        A lot of movies get made and you wonder "WTF? How did this piece of drek ever scare up the capital?"

        And for every turkey that covers the screen with its gibblets, there are some movies out there aren't getting screen play or even finding investment money.

        Theatre owners and broadcasters are to blame for the entire "supply-side" mess that we're finding ourselves in.

        You pour in $100,000,000 of money and it has only got 2 or 3 weeks to run when it's got to make that money back, or you can hope that it makes dough being broadcast and then comes the video rentals.

        And the process of making actual movies doesn't cost $100,000,000 but the process of fighting for the screen time does. You're NOT getting your movie money's worth. Ever!

        I think that the audience will be the winners what the 'internet effect' comes to movies (like its already begun to come to radio with podcasting, giving the ClearChannels and Infinity Broadcasting oligopolies of the world a hollow victory [There's no one else left standing, but the pool of listeners is shrinking, FAST!]) as its starting to with TV shows coming to the iPod.

        Instead of just being viewed as passive vessels for content and cows waiting to be milked of cash, we, the audience, will be active participants in what we actually watch and listen to.

        We could/should/would be funding projects, pooling resources and uniting to make sure that 'demand-side' economics get us the most bang for the buck instead of letting the supply-siders waste our money like drunken sailors on their first night ashore in six months.

        Movies right now lose money because they are limited in the time they run and the extreme costs of promotion. The 'supply-siders' are in control. They make their money by creating and capitalizing on the foment that having too producers fighting for an audience with access to too few 'supply-siders' media outlets.

        They make even more money and exercise more power by restricting what consumers can actually get at the end of the process. Can't stand Brittany Spears? Tough! And you can't avoid her either. And the medium costs the same as it always has despite its vertiginous drop in real value.

        Enter the internet where:
        * on the production side, you can hunt for capital sources, produce and promote your content and distribute it for practical amounts of money, and where,
        * also on the production side, you can hunt for a project you feel would be worth your investment, and where,
        * on the consumption side, you can hunt for content of interest to you, for reviews of interest to you, and download this content for filling your senses at a time and place of your choosing.

        Content, audio and movies, produced on the 'demand-side' CAN'T lose money.

        They're time-shifted, media-shifted and inherently of interest to someone, either the funders who can be garanteed to be in the audience or the producers themselves.

        The resources made available to the producers and content originators will reflect the involvement of the resources of the audience.

        The content will remain available for download and continue to provide a revenue stream (even if its only a steady trickle) to the content producer, as opposed to the largely useless 'back catalog' of content that's being obscured by new content churned atop of it.
    • Maybe the same as the site? All I get is a black screen...

  • That's not even a review... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 11, 2005 @09:17AM (#14232897)
    That's not a review. It's two or three comments about the movie and a big parahraph about how he's basically got a boner for Charlize Theron. Booooooo.

    I saw the movie last night. It was O.K. from a purely entertainment standpoint. I.e. popcorn flick. But I think if you don't know anything about the MTV anime you'll be lost for half the movie (as I was). It was one of those movies that appears to have a ton of backstory but that they had to cut out a lot to make the movie fit in two hours. Jerky editing in some spots too. Bottom line, I think it would've made a decent tv series but not a great movie.

    • Heh heh...you said "parahraph"! (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Smaller, stouter cousin of the gihraph, of course.
  • I won't pick on this movie simply because the plot may be too hard for some people to understand." Who cares for the plot? I only saw this movie because of Charlize Theron, and I understood all about her

  • I was pleasantly surprised. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by X-rated Ouroboros ( 526150 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @09:19AM (#14232904) Homepage

    I just went to see Charlize Theron in a series of successively tighter and skimpier leather outfits. While none of her costumes approached the level of Aeon Flux of the Liquid Television era, I wasn't terribly disappointed on that front.

    I didn't expect the movie to be very interesting or very good... but it did exceed my, admittedly low, expectations. I don't know that I'd recommend it, but I wouldn't try to talk someone out of seeing it if they were consiering it.

    • I think she is too fat to be Aeon Flux, I mean she's not at her Monster days [google.com]... but still, it's more like they casted an overweight monster who lost a little bit of weight for the role than someone who might actually fit the role. And yes, I think Milla Jovovich [imdb.com], Lori Petty [imdb.com], Gigi Edgley [imdb.com], Dina Meyer [imdb.com], or Kate Beckinsale [imdb.com] would have been better choices, but just about any skinny unknown would have fit the physical role better.

      • Re:The Monster as Aeon Flux (Score:5, Insightful)

        by EnronHaliburton2004 ( 815366 ) * on Sunday December 11, 2005 @01:49PM (#14234143) Homepage Journal
        If you think that Charlize Theron is "Fat", you are one warped motherfucker. Perhaps you should spend less time looking at cartoon images of women and spending time with real, actual women.

        I'm not a fan really, but Charlize Theron is thin by any stretch of the imagination.

        • True, but (Score:4, Interesting)

          by pavon ( 30274 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @06:36PM (#14235348)
          I concur that Charlize is not fat. However the one sentence that I do agree with in the GP's stupid rant is that she was not skinny enough to play aeon flux. Aeon Flux wasn't just skinny, muscular and skimpily dressed, she was ridiculously so. The strangeness and grotesqueness of that cartoon is half of what made it interesting. The whole artistic direction of this film doesn't appear to share anything in common with the cartoon. Of course, you would be hard pressed to find a real person with the same measurements as Aeon, however, they definitely could have done something more stylistically inline with the cartoon, compared to the standard slick futuristic feel which they went with.

          Anyway, I'm planning on waiting to see the film when it comes out in the dollar theater or rental, but everything I've seen leads me to think that it will be a good action movie, with very little in common with the cartoon.
      • Has about a 12 inch waist. No adult female can look anything like that. Please feel free to go back to wanking over drawings of pre-adolescent girls with implants.
    • Hear, hear.

      I went mainly because my girlfriend wanted to see it. "What? Charlize Theron with dark hair running around blowing shit up? We MUST see this movie!" (Could I love her more? Heh.) I'd seen a few bits and pieces back in the old LTV run, just enough to know that what plot there might be would be fairly thin.

      Color me pleasantly surprised. It's not a GREAT movie by any stretch of the imagination, but it held my interest, usually managed a respectable level of internal consistency, and very few of the

  • The problem with the movie (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tkrotchko ( 124118 ) * on Sunday December 11, 2005 @09:19AM (#14232905) Homepage
    First of all, the movie is a fairly typical Hollywood special effects/sci-fi film. So its entertaining. But it suffers from the same problem as I, Robot, which is to say, it has nothing to do with the what it's named after.

    The problem when you watch the original Aeon Flux animated series is that other than people having the same names, it has little in common. Aeon Flux is fairly, er, kinky in the animated series. This is almost a defining part of the role. In the series, the Trevor Goodchild is really a bad guy. In the movie, he's a nice guy who is just misunderstood. In the series, the plots were odd, bordering on bizarre. In the movie, its "good guy trying to save the world".

    I'm saying all this as somebody who isn't a particular fan of the series. But the movie just misses the point. I would think they would have been better off making more of the animated series; it would cost less, and probably entertain people more.
    • I get the feeling however that, should the film have attempted to get the point of the original series, it would never have been released.

      Sadly, because of the expense of making a film in this style, the studio's are only going to allow something to be made which they can sell. Even some of the bigger studios who're known to take risks (Miramax, for example) probably wouldn't have touched a true-to-the-series Aeon Flux film with a barge pole.

      The only ways I can imagine a 'true' Aeon Flux being made is: so
      • Man... how many commas, subclauses and sentence fragments did I want to use in that post? Somewhere a grammar checker is crying on the shoulder of my English professor. Lucky grammar checker... she was cute.

        Anyway, sorry for the appalling sentence structure :)

      • Re:The problem with the movie (Score:5, Informative)

        by Dun Malg ( 230075 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @11:34AM (#14233421) Homepage
        Sadly, because of the expense of making a film in this style, the studio's are only going to allow something to be made which they can sell. Even some of the bigger studios who're known to take risks (Miramax, for example) probably wouldn't have touched a true-to-the-series Aeon Flux film with a barge pole.

        As a co-writer of several scripts (many optioned, none produced), I have noticed there a singular problem with getting approval of "risky" works. The problem is that "hollywood" is actually highly risk-averse. It's such a nasty, backstabbing business that nobody ever wants to stick their neck out. To this end, there is constant pressure for approved scripts to be comparable to something that has worked before. The classic script pitch jokes along the lines of "it's like The Omen meets Cocoon, in outer space" are an exaggeration of the pathological need to have every "new" idea be a permutation or hybrid of something that has been successful before. More points are awarded if another studio is in the process of making a similar movie. This is why you see the same damn movies come out over and over. Remember when all those "funny" cop-buddy movies came out where one of the cops is a dog? (shudder)
        The last thing the money men want to hear is "we don't know how this will play, no one's ever made a movie like this". The last thing the pitchmen want is to say that. To that end, every time you go in to show them what you've got, they'll be almost singleminded in their goal of getting you to make your work comparable to something they think the money men will go for. The integrity of your concept is wholly immaterial. They will indeed actually make the most absurd suggestions for how you might change the script to make it more salable. Things like "can you put a scrappy kid in?" or "could you change the setting from fantasy to modern reality, get rid of the magic stuff, and make the main character a handsome young guy instead of a tough old man?"-- these are not exaggerations, this is the kind of stuff they actually say! And even if you don't want those changes, if you sell them the script they'll give it to someone else who will make those changes. On rare occasions it'll end up in the hands of someone who truly understands the underlying idea and we'll end up with something interesting, but for the most part the pressure to turn scripts into pablum leaves us with theaters full of stuff like "Cheaper By The Dozen 2".

        • The problem is that "hollywood" is actually highly risk-averse. It's such a nasty, backstabbing business that nobody ever wants to stick their neck out.

          This is an interesting take on the problem. I have a fair bit of experience with Hollywood, though all from the technical side.

          The problem, as I've heard it presented, is basically that the studios are public companies. Especially in this litigious society, that forces the studios to be risk averse. It's easy to defend a long series of moderately profitable
    • Sometimes when people make movies from books or TV, they take a good concept and go in a different, more movie-friendly direction with it.

      For example, if there was a cartoon on MTV where the characters and basic plot were really good, but each episode was consistently strange, stupid, and always left you thinking "why the hell did I just watch this crap", then they might want to go somewhere different with the story.

      You know what I'm saying?
    • Heck, I had a problem with the later version of Aeon Flux where she (and everyone else) talked. The original Liquid Television episodes were a sort of Groundhog Day of her trying to accomplish some mission, failing in various squicky ways, then starting over again.
    • I saw it last night, and I liked it. Actually, I really liked it.

      It's entirely possible that one of the reasons for this was that I'd never seen the original series. What it came down to for me was that it was a Hollywood action flick with a bit less straightforwardness than ordinary. Yes, the plot was a bit confusing at first, because they didn't give you all the answers right at the beginning, but by the end, they gave you everything, and there was the thrill of discovery along the way. I found that t
    • The problem when you watch the original Aeon Flux animated series is that other than people having the same names, it has little in common.

      I disagree.

      There are definitely some significant differences, but consistency wasn't exactly a hallmark of the original animated version. Aeon Flux died on a regular basis, Trevor Goodchild turned out to be (for one episode at least) a hollow shell controlled by a Custodian - which was itself controlled by a strange little bean-shaped thing, etc.

      I watched some of the epi

  • Strength of Character Acting (Score:5, Interesting)

    by polv0 ( 596583 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @09:20AM (#14232907)
    While I enjoyed this film, I think that the major reason it receives poor reviews from popular culture critics is the poor character acting. Scenes designed to build emotional rapport between the main characters came of stiltingly, leaving me wondering if the director was so engrossed in the costumes and special effects that they forgot the actors. Charlize Theron is such a brilliant actress (Monster) that I couldn't understand how amatuerishly some of the dialog was delivered. The scene between Aeon and her sister in the market comes particularly to mind.

    That being said, I thought the plot of the movie was fantastic, and some of the acting lived up to it. But there's no way a film this far out is going to be accepted by the mass consumers unless they can very closely relate to the characters, as evidenced by the success of Serenity.
    • One thing that everyone seems to forget is that all the characters, as far as I understood it, were having severe problems due to remembering their past iterations. In my mind, this explains the flat delivery that just about everyone gave.
      • And it also illustrates the ridiculousness of the core plot elements. (SPOILER ALERT) A clone is an individual distinct from its donor. It's not a 'second life'. The movie treats clones as both depending the requirements of the plot. Time is spent explaining how the two leaders 'taught' their clones their memories but gives no reason why the general population who are unaware of being clones would experience the same past-life memories (or the Oedipal complexities of teaching his 'son' romantic love for his
    • But there's no way a film this far out is going to be accepted by the mass consumers unless they can very closely relate to the characters, as evidenced by the success of Serenity.

      Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Serenity a commercial flop?
    • Right. One of the traps of creating sci-fi is that the assumptions that people will all be these quiet stoic types is too often believed. Look at the wooden acting from Natalie Portman (and others) in the new Star Wars movies. Those born in the republic are so cultured they're like Victorians who are too embarrased to properly display emotion, which kinda kills the whole acting thing. Good writing, be it sci-fi or not, has to do with flawed everyday humans not some near-future stoics. Look at Bladerunne

  • Synopsis: if you don't get it you're dumb (Score:5, Funny)

    by httpamphibio.us ( 579491 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @09:20AM (#14232908)
    Did Taco actually RTFA? This isn't a review at all, it's just some TNA starved sci-fi geek saying "no, it isn't" a whole bunch.

    The movie has a bad plot. No, it doesn't!
    The movie has bad characters. No, it doesn't!
    The movie has poor special effects. No, it doesn't!

    How very very useful... the only thing that's correct about the review is the fact that it's on a site with "idiot" in the domain name. It's a good thing this made the front page so the guy can get some extra banner ad clicks.

  • The Review Sucked (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rolfwind ( 528248 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @09:23AM (#14232913)
    It actually informed what the movie was about for about a sentence or two - that it was 400 years in the future and 5 million people were left after some disease wiped the rest out.

    So there's the set-up, but anything about the plot/storyline?

    Not anything coherent (a hint of romance between two unnamed characters), but mostly just fanboyish drooling over Charlize Theron.

    This "review" was just pathetic.

  • recommended reading (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Well, not having R'd TFA (who does?), but having watched the movie a few hours ago, I must say it reminds me a lot of Arthur C. Clarke's "The City and the Stars". So much in fact that I would call that book a required preliminary for watching the movie. It doesn't make the plot much deeper in itself, and it certainly doesn't help you suspend your disbelief if you need any help for that, but it may bring you to ask yourself more questions about immortality, eternal memories, constrained societies and whatnot

    • I must say it reminds me a lot of Arthur C. Clarke's "The City and the Stars"....it may bring you to ask yourself more questions about immortality, eternal memories, constrained societies and whatnot. Plus, Clarke's book is required reading for any self-respecting sci-fi reader anyway :)

      That sounds like an...odd...comparison to me. But yes, everyone should read that Clarke story.

      If you can find it, read the original novella, Against the Fall of Night. I found that The City and the Stars didn't really

  • Waxing Autoerotic (Score:4, Informative)

    by toiletsalmon ( 309546 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @09:24AM (#14232920) Journal
    Gee. Looks like SOMEBODY is a fanboy. From the article:

    "Charlize gave a terrific performance and she looked just as lethal and capable as the previews promised. She makes for a terrific action hero, leaving the Terminator looking even more obsolete than he was in his last film, and making Lara Croft look like a whiny wannabe. It's easy to be biased toward Charlize, and if I were capable of being biased toward anyone, it would be her, but I managed to control myself. The way I saw it was that the movie was fantastic and Charlize was phenomenal, but if anyone else had done it (as well as or better) and had that same "it" factor that Charlize has flowing out of every pore on her gorgeous face, I would have felt exactly the same about the film as I do right now. And that is true. Reality: Charlize was in it, and she was amazing, and I can't think of anyone who has the talent and the physical grace, strength, and stamina to pull it off as well as she did."

    I almost felt dirty reading this guys review. Should you trust a movie review from a guy you woldn't shake hands with??

    Bah! I'll probably just wait for the DVD...
    • That reads just like e.g.
      Ninjas can kill anyone they want! Ninjas cut off heads ALL the time and don't even think twice about it. These guys are so crazy and awesome that they flip out ALL the time. I heard that there was this ninja who was eating at a diner. And when some dude dropped a spoon the ninja killed the whole town.

  • Low Budget (Score:3, Informative)

    by Snap E Tom ( 128447 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @09:26AM (#14232925)
    At the first fight scene, I was wondering why the director kept using closeup shots. You couldn't see the setting that well. Without a background, I thought it took away from the whole majesty of a good martial-arts fight (See Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Matrix). Then I saw the the military uniforms. God awful. Wow, they were cheap looking. These guys looked like they came out of an 80's Sci-Fi Movie. I realized that this is probably a pretty low-budget flick. A simple search on Google confirmed it.

    Basically, Charlize is ok. The actors were pretty good. It was helluva lot better than SW Ep I-III acting. I the story was out there, but it's sci-fi, so I'll let it slide. The cheap look, though, really took away from the one area that I was expecting it to excel.
    • I think he used close-ups during the fight scenes probably because none of the leads had extensive training in martial arts. A lot of close-ups with quick edits pretty much confirms that.
      • It was a "she" that directed the movie. She directed Girlfight. But it makes sense that she would use similar shots as in Girlfight if the leads weren't up to snuff, and I think having Charlize Theron doing her own stunts was a bad idea, which probably led them to use those tighter shots.I think have Charlize Theron was a bad idea, as she vetoed the original outfit, I think a no name, martial arts person would've been better for this kind of movie.

        Someone else can add something about a woman directing a
    • ...It was helluva lot better than SW Ep I-III acting.
      Wow, your standards are low!

    • Re:Low Budget (Score:2, Funny)

      by Quelain ( 256623 )
      I don't watch a lot of TV, I prefer wasting my time playing Anarchy Online, which is a sci-fi MMORPG.

      The funny thing is that I had seen the in-game video billboards showing advertising for 'Aeon Flux', which I assumed was a bit of a joke by the Funcom developers about crappy sci-fi movies still existing in the year 29000.

      I was quite surprised when I found out it was for real.

  • Childish review (Score:3, Interesting)

    by FlynnMP3 ( 33498 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @09:28AM (#14232929)
    The reviewer ends up daring the movie watcher to enjoy the movie. I thought the movie was great. Mostly because it has a very strong and believable science fiction plot. The trailer I saw on TV had me thinking second thoughts about it. It cast this IMO negative light on it about it being another action thriller. True the movie did have it's action sequences and a couple were integral to moving the plot forward, but the rest of the 'action' was thrown in to presumably make the movie appeal to the larger movie going crowd. But it certainly wasn't needed. It is true that if you missed a critical 10 minutes of the movie spread out into small segments, a watcher could be left very confused about what the heck is going on. I plan on seeing it again. The movie has that quality of being one of those that can survive multiple watchings. I never did watch the MTV series. I had heard about it and always wanted to, but never made the time. No matter, the movie was very entertaining to me and well worth the 8.50 I spent on it.

    -FlynnMP3
  • ... it'll be in the #1.99 DVD rack at Movie Traders in a year. Then I can still frame it all I want and plaster my walls with CT....Who needs a plot for that?

  • Talking about biased movie reviews... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Fearan ( 600696 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @09:32AM (#14232944)
    I don't know but I get the feeling this reviewer has some biases towards Charlize in skin tight outfits. And maybe instead of insulting the audience that "doesn't understand" this movie, he should analyze the issues they bring up instead of saying they're wrong?

    I'll give the guy some points though, the movie was better than made out to be in a lot of reviews. But I still don't understand how this random review gets on the front page of /..

  • Plot: whose fault (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Himring ( 646324 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @09:33AM (#14232951) Homepage Journal
    A movie critic said something once that stuck: if I don't get the plot it's not my fault....

    • What if you get a movie's plot, and the guy next to you doesn't? Are you then too smart, or is the movie shit?

      I don't know that a movie has to reach everyone to be a good movie, just like not everyone will understand certain music or art. Does everything have to be dummed down to the lowest common denominator?
  • The live-action Aeon Flux movie was entertaining, although it had little in common with the original animated series other than some shared names and a fascination with super-spy/assasin heroines. For hollywood, I'd say it was a pretty imaginative effort.

    Go see it for the eye-candy, and then go home and watch the newly-released complete DVD set of the original animated series for the true Aeon Flux experience.
  • If you are old enough to remember this series, when MTV actually played music videos, then this is the only Aeon Flux series you want...

    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000B8I9XQ/qid=11 34311210 [amazon.com]

    Accept no live-action, wanna-be, bottom of barrel, low-rating imposter.

  • movie simply because the plot may be too hard for some people to understand.

    I have not seen the movie, but in curiousity have read several review. Universally, the plot, the actions, and the characters do not seem as free. But even if the plot and acting and all that is excellent,the live action movie would have a difficult time being Aeon Flux. Aeon was as much about the animnation as the writing and character. Without the complexity introduced by Peter Chung, I fail to see what hope any of this has.

  • Slashdot "experts" strike again. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mumblestheclown ( 569987 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @09:42AM (#14232986)
    "Those who review films for a living are notoriously unreliable, and in many cases, they miss the whole point altogether."

    This is the main slashdot arrogance. Basically, "everybody who disagrees with my view is an idiot, shortsighted, underinformed. I, as a coder, am much more capable of being objective and have a wider ken than credentialed or recognized professionals in:"

    • Law (especially pertaining copyright, etc.)
    • Politics
    • Economics (especially the economics of copyright, etc.)
    • Business (especially when it involves telling copyright holders how to run theirs..)
    • and now... movie reviews!
    Double plus extra my comment if the subjet matter involves one of the following:
    • intellectual property / copyright
    • geek lore ("Aeon Flux", "Star Wars", "Lord of the Rings", "Simpsons").

    • Re:Slashdot "experts" strike again. (Score:5, Funny)

      by foniksonik ( 573572 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @10:01AM (#14233067) Homepage Journal
      Does this also apply to analyzing people you've never met and don't know a thing about? If so , then you're spot on.

    • People are entitled to opinion if only "profesionals" would be allowed to talk than you'd find that you cannot open you mouth to say almost anything. People will say: Hey aren't you a coder? Maybe you should not talk about politics, you have no clue about movies, etc.

      But I do agree that this is arrogance (and it's even worse when it comes for somebody who doesn't get the point himself).
    • Every single poster to slashdot is a copyright holder. Doesn't it seem to follow that we'd all have opinions on the matter?

      Many of us create "Intellectual Property" for a living as well, so it's not like everybody here is talking out of their asses on the subject; especially since most people here aren't wealthy enough to lobby to have revenue legislated for them, and all we can do is sit on the sidelines and bitch when other orgainizations manage to pull off such things.

      If self reflection reveals that you

  • Actually went to the movie (Score:3, Interesting)

    by esconsult1 ( 203878 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @09:55AM (#14233043) Homepage Journal

    I went to the movie without any pre-conceptions and without knowing anything about AeonFlux. I've not read the comics, or anything.

    I was wary going in because of bad reviews, but the movie was surprisingly, evenly good. There was a good story, and the acting was fair. Here's the main difference between AeonFlux and the Matrix, in my opionion:

    Both movies start off with jaw dropping premises. AeonFlux actually carries the premise through to the end in a satisfactory conclusion.

  • I gave up (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @10:02AM (#14233072)
    when they gave her a backstory (the ever popular family killed/revenge story). wtf, she's suppose to be all mysterious and crap. All I can figure is Peter Chung had to bend over backwards to get this made, just like when The Tick made evil his bitch.
    • Uh... Peter Chung was not involved. He reviewed the movie just before it came out and had your exact comment. He didn't like the backstory.

      I guess back when the MTV series was playing late at night, Peter Chung was glad to get paid anything. MTV owned the rights and made the movie. It still sucks that they left him out of it. MTV +10 roll for chaotic evil.

  • movie was not aeon flux.. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Lord Bitman ( 95493 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @10:03AM (#14233077)
    I dont understand why they named it "Aeon Flux" when all it shared were poorly-placed references to the series. This might have been a half-okay-maybe movie (*I doubt it) if they just called it The Clonus Disaster or something. All that was gained by calling it Aeon Flux was my thinking "Why would you try to tack on some silly lame-ass reason for Aeon and Trevor's relationship?"
    • Hollywood likes doing that, redoing a TV series without actually doing the work of redoing a series. So you have movies like Bewitched and the Brady Bunch movie. The reason is simple, it is easier to market something with a built in brand name, and face it the original shows that were on weren't even that great in the first place.
      • but that's the point. It's easier to market something with a built in brand name, but (maybe I'm wrong about this) isn't Aeon Flux a bit obscure to try applying this principle to? If Aeon flux were some wildly popular thingy with a huge fanbase, this would make sense. But a late-night MTV show that only had ten and five-quarters episodes to its name?
        • I'm not saying it's a great idea. But I can see why a lazy producer would want to go this route. There are successes where a small cult following resulted in a full fledged movie. One of the more notable successes is Office Space, it was based on the Mike Judge short. Office Space the Movie only had a little to do with Office Space the short and yet it did well in both theaters and dvd. Producer thinks, okay, a cartoon short can be made into a live action movie and make money, if Mike Judge can do it I can

  • MTV series (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tedgyz ( 515156 ) * on Sunday December 11, 2005 @10:18AM (#14233126) Homepage
    As someone who saw the original MTV series, I actually liked the film. I realized that it was not going to be identical and once accepting that, it was enjoyable. I give it a 7/10.

    Looking back at the series, there was definitely more bizarre behavior, sexual ambiguity, and such. They briefly hit on these points, but if you never saw the series you might not even notice. I'm kinda glad they didn't try to replicate the tall, anorexic species. It's much more enjoyable watching Charlize instead of some 7' tall freak. :-)

    BTW, I didn't RTFA. The title said talk amongst yourselves. Based on the comments, it looks like I saved myself some time.
  • I made the mistake of actually watching the movie, and i would like to point out that there are good reasons for the negative reviews. For starters, a plot that lacks the ability to make sense from mone moment to another is not "complicated." It just sucks. If you read the reviews that showed this movie in a positive light, you'll ind that the majority are adolescents that justify all of the rest of the movie's shortcomings with the simple phrase "but she's hot, so it's ok." The public should recieve a form
  • http://filthycritic.com/filthy/ [filthycritic.com]

    No seriously, read it: I cannot begin to summarize how bad he considers the movie.

    Off to see Harry Potter at 70mm...
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I saw the movie, saw the original animated series as a teen and remember it fondly, but it looks like they reworked the screenplay from Logan's Run and fit the characters and basic premise from Aeon Flux into it.

    I say this because it's what hollywood does... they take screenplays that worked and use them as the basis for anything that might have a cultural hook to it, to appeal to a younger audience.

    I also say it because the interpreted premise of Chung's world (which I don't recall being quite so detailed
  • The movie was great. I was a little disappointed in the start, nothing more than nuevo-kung fu action. But, as soon as the story actually get's going it's riveting from there on in. The movie is not a re-interpretation of the series or a continuation, to me it was more of an explanation and a conclusion. If you looked at the Aeon Flux animated series as trash, you will not like this movie. If you looked at the Aeon Flux animated series as pure action, you will not like the movie that much (costumes are
  • "I'm a fanboy, and I think everyone else should like it too."

  • I watched it yesterday - may contain spoilers (Score:3, Insightful)

    by GuyFawkes ( 729054 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @11:29AM (#14233393) Homepage Journal
    Good points -

    The tech stuff was nice, like the "living" gardens that were bio-engineered permieter security systems.

    The lead actress was worth looking at.

    The over all look and feel was nice and clean, it looked fresh and sharp.

    Bad points -

    The plot could be summed up as pandemic hits the world, a few are immunised just in time to save humanity and congregate in a single "utopian" city (movie starts here) the cure has a side effect, infertility, so they started cloning each other, 7th generation clone leader/dictator searches for a cure only to discover nature has spontaneously fixed the problem somehow, clone leaders clone sibling tries to supress this to maintain the status quo, cue lots of fighting scenes.

    The action was cartooney, eg not credible, blade runner did it right, one "soldier", no matter how well trained, cannot take on and defeat hordes of other soldiers with at least equal access to military tech

    The acting was two dimensional, but then that's all this film ever called for.

    The ending was of course utterly predictable.

    Was it worth watching? -

    Seeing as I downloaded it for free from usenet it was worth the expense and the 90 minutes of my time to watch it, I've seen a __LOT__ worse films.... eg compared to the dukes of hazzard this was a masterpiece, but compared to blade runner it was trite, it was on a par with a trekkie type movie mebbe

    If I'd paid ten UK pounds for a cinema ticket I'd have been well pissed.

    HTH

  • Liquid Television...does anyone here miss it? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SirDaShadow ( 603846 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @11:43AM (#14233462)
    I was wondering if anyone here remembers LTV back in the day...it was a really nice segment that was unique and refreshing...does anyone here miss it at all in the middle of the mud that is reality tv?

  • Aeon and Narnia (Score:3, Insightful)

    by technoCon ( 18339 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @11:56AM (#14233532) Homepage Journal
    I went to Aeon Flux with a bunch of guys from Work Friday afternoon, and then to a late-night showing of Narnia with some friends from Church. I enjoyed both.

    And each makes a cultural / mythic statement, touching a part of human nature. Aeon Flux did a good job of showing the MTV cultural milleiu from which it sprang. Fairly nihilistic / materialistic showing the alienation of living in a comfortable prosperous society. When Aeon says there's something wrong inside everyone, that wrongness resonates with me. (The Pope said something about America's "culture of death" and I wondered how much he had this in mind.) Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed Aeon Flux a lot. I'd seen it on MTV but hadn't been able to catch enough episodes to grok the story arc. Seeing it all at once, it made sense. I thought it said something significant about human nature.

    Narnia also said something about human nature. I like to think myself something better than I am. In truth, I'm more like Edmond the traitor in the Narnia story. Almost everyone in Narnia was flawed in some way. And that's the point of that story. How does one cope with one's own flaws? How does one cope with a loved one who betrays us?

    Both movies' plots turned upon a traitor among siblings. Each story adopted a different strategy for dealing with traitors. Aeon Flux and Trevor Goodchild were heroes of one sort. The Pevensies were heroes of another sort.
  • Check out the movie's ratings on www.rottentomatoes.com

    Aeon Flux is currently running about 10%, which even amongst other craptastic cgi-fests, is suprisingly poor. That rating puts it about even with movies like Catwoman, and Elektra, which should tell you all you need to know.

  • My review of the movie (Score:3, Informative)

    by stinky wizzleteats ( 552063 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @01:25PM (#14234013) Homepage Journal
    Much better than I expected. The acting was good (Trevor is a hard character to get right, and Marton Csokas pulls it off brilliantly), the action was everything you'd expect, and the set design and shooting locations were breathtaking.

    The story was well conceived, written, and executed - perhaps too much so. The original concept didn't trouble itself too much with plot, but the movie comes across with an interesting scifi story in its own right. It would have been very easy for a director to invest too much into the movie story at the expense of keeping to the simplicity of the original concept. While the two don't seamlessly combine in the movie, it reflects very well onto the director and producer that the movie story didn't completely overwhelm the movie and leave us all in WTF land ala Highlander 2. I was expecting 2 stars, and I give it a 3. Nice job, guys.

    I think the "technical inconsistencies" pointed out by some readers are clearly bullshit - you have a problem with clones remembering their past lives in a world with strap-on transdimensional travel suits and complex multimedia messages being suspended in aqueous solution? Gimme a break. It wouldn't surprise me if all memory of your past lives was stored in a parasitic frog embedded in the abdomen of your next generation. How can you fail at suspension of disbelief in what has always been a consummately unbelievable world both in the cartoon and the movie?

  • Aeon Flux. Good Sci-fi, Bad Aeon Flux (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Gyorg_Lavode ( 520114 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @03:39PM (#14234645)
    The Aeon Flux in the theater is a good science fiction movie. The plot is unique and interesting. The problem with the movie is simply that it is not Aeon Flux. Aeon Flux is independent, cold, and calculating. She has a professional admiration for trevor but their relationship is in no way emotional. Second, Trevor is a bad guy.

    In the movie aeon is emotionally fragile. Aeon needs a team to cover her. Aeon is having a very caring relationship with trevor who is really a good guy.

    Aeon flux the movie is good as far as Sci-fi movies go. It's just not Aeon Flux.

  • The plot wasn't "difficult" to understand (Score:3, Informative)

    by Durandal64 ( 658649 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @04:04PM (#14234748)
    It was just a stupid movie. Seriously, a virus that wipes out 99% of the population on Earth? How the fuck did that thing spread? Did it travel on the backs of photons? And a society which has mastered genetics to such an extent to be able to clone humans and yet it can't handle something as simple as invitro fertilization? They have to enact a complicated scheme to secretly implant women with cloned embryos unknowingly? Give me a break. Oh yeah, and I forgot. Love conquers all.

    Beyond the stupidity of the plot, the action was just boring and uninteresting. It's Aeon breaking people's necks for 2 hours. We never get any explanation at all for where she's acquired these amazing acrobatic skills and killing techniques. We get no information at all about her background in this resistance, who the freaky resistance leader lady actually is, etc ... Beyond the boring action and complete lack of any context at all for the central character, there's the stupid techno-wanking. Seriously, Aeon breaks into a "surveillance center" that looks like some sort of suspended waterfall. And to destroy it, she pulls a fucking drain plug, and all the water swirls down. Who the fuck comes up with technology like this? Anime sci-fi geeks. And the chairman's security perimeter consisted entirely of tree pods that shoot ... well, something, and grass that turns into knives. The latter could have been defeated with a pair of steel-toed work boots.

    Beyond that, Charlize Theron looked positively awful. I don't know what it is with anime geeks and making women's hair look like an oil spill (see Trinity in The Matrix for another example), but it looked terrible. Theron's a blond and was just the wrong choice for the role entirely. The outfits weren't exactly flattering either. I don't know why geeks have this unified vision of the fashion of the future being composed entirely of jump suits, but it's fucking stupid. It may work when you can draw women who have a waist line as thin as my LCD, but real women actually have midsections. And what the hell was with Aeon wearing an all white jump suit when she was trying to break in to the surveillance center at night?

    This movie was not worth $7.50 and driving through shit weather to get to. It's not even a good rental. It's just stupid.

  • Umm, I think I'll trust Rotten Tomatoes more (Score:3, Informative)

    by Jugalator ( 259273 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @05:00PM (#14234971) Journal
    This "movie" [rottentomatoes.com] at RottenTomatoes. Yay, a 10% rating.

    It's pretty obvious to me the "reviewer" above was making an advertisement for his site on Slashdot (compare the author URL with the "review" URL, it sure is becoming common these days), and gets a boner from Charlize Theron.

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