"Aeon Flux" (2005)

If people like Quentin Tarantino are right in any aspect of their argument against streaming/on demand film libraries like Netflix, it is in the way those services remove any excuse to not watch the dreck of horrible movies. For instance, I have always wondered what went so wrong in the transition of “Aeon Flux” from experimental animation to live-action film, but avoided finding out because I didn’t want to spend the cash. Since I am paying Netflix anyway, I got around to wasting those two hours of my life.

Aeon Flux was not great as an MTV animation series. It was only interesting because it was utterly creative and unlike anything that had been done before. However, when it was announced that Hollywood was going to force the concept into a mainstream, blockbuster project, it was exciting to think how that translation would work. For one thing, the original project was very high concept. It was chocked full of stuff like Gnosticism, non-linear storytelling, and didn’t really make sense most of the time. And then there was the challenge of making it without receiving an X rating, what with all the bondage imagery and violence.

The result really was terrible. It was too much to ask a mainstream movie to take as many risks as the show did. Things simply had to try to make sense. But even there they failed. The reimagined the concept as some muddled story about a post-apocalyptic society that had achieved immortality through cloning.

But the worst part had to be the “message” that this film had decided to preach. Aeon’s big mission in the end was to bring death back to this future world. It seems the scariest thing for these filmmakers would be a world without death where people have the chance to improve things constantly live better lives.

In the words of our heroine:

“We're meant to die - that's what makes anything about us matter.”

Admittedly, eternity is terrifying for people who can’t see past the sinful side of human nature. This current reality is nowhere near hell, but it is hell for those without hope.