Æon Flux

While out promoting Atomic Blonde in 2017, Charlize Theron mentioned Æon Flux and her ultimate disappointment with the movie. She remarked that while she never had complete faith in the project, she wanted to trust in director Karyn Kusama but acknowledged that they “fucked it all up” because they couldn’t execute the concept. A startling and honest acknowledgement for a film that deserved the punch, even if it did come twelve years late.

Creator Peter Chung decried his unhappiness with the script routinely, and while creator gripes with adaptations of their material can occasionally play like sour grapes this was a case where it was warranted. He even went so far as to proclaim that “Ms. Flux does not actually appear in the movie.” The lynchpin of his criticism, that someone involved didn’t trust the audience to go with the source material enough and watered it down into something bland and unrecognizable, is essentially the crux of my argument as well.

Æon Flux stinks of studio interference as there’s plenty of ideas and set designs that sparkle with a better, more imaginative work struggling against notes and mandates. For all the biomechanical fauna and weird world beat interior design, the camera drinks in Theron’s cat suited rebel with a lasciviousness that makes you wonder if a woman was really behind the camera. And the less said about the choice to give Sophie Okonedo’s character hands for feet the better as it tips into some imagery that is racially loaded and deeply uncomfortable. You can see the film Kusama was trying to make and the one that the studio engineered and neither of one is particularly good.