Aeon Flux Blu-ray offers solid video and great audio in this fan-pleasing Blu-ray release
400 years in the future, after a virus decimates the world population, only one city on Earth remains. Ruled by the Goodchild dynasty, it is a perfect society of peace and prosperity – except that its citizens keep mysteriously disappearing. Charlize Theron stars as Aeon Flux, a secret agent/assassin/warrior whose mission is to bring down the regime. But as she goes deeper into her mission, Aeon uncovers some shocking secrets that jeopardize the mission – and her life.
Aeon Flux follows a long line of movies based on a video game. It joins Lara Crofts Tomb Raider, Ultraviolet, Aliens, Charlie's Angels, and less famous but far better, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon as movies that feature a woman, or women in a kick ass role. Aeon Flux also shares another thing in common with some of the other movies, in that they offered so much promise, and failed to deliver on that promise. Where did Aeon Flux go wrong? Let's start with just a few things. The producers choose style over logic, common sense and substance. First, Aeon as a character is under developed and not allowed to breathe. She seems rather one dimensional, less human, and more like a killing machine. What few emotions are felt, are cut short, or do not come across well at all. The supporting characters are mere set pieces next to Aeon, and are even less developed than Aeon's character. In the original animated series, Aeon was self centered, egotistical, detached, deadly, wild and uncontrollable, totally unpredictable, and extremely unemotional. In other words, there was a high level of contradicting depth to who she was. Here in this film, she is never allowed to reach this level of character development, so we never get a chance to see any depth to her. Other issues include wearing a stylish white outfit at night, while trying to disrupt and destroy the communication system of the Fairchild regime. She might as well be wearing a neon sign saying "here I am". Another thing I found puzzling is that there was no dome over Bregna, so how could they totally stop a virus from contaiminating the population? I could go on and on, but there is no use in beating a corpse to death.
Because of these flaws and more (which lead to box office disaster I am sure), this movie barely had enough to hold my attention, and mildly entertain me for its entire ninety two minute run. What this movie did have going for it is great visuals, a heart pounding soundtrack, and some really good action scenes. Unfortunately without good plot and character development, this may not be enough for some to really get into this movie.
It is the year 2011, and a virus is sweeping the earth and kills ninety nine percent of the Earth's population. Four hundred years later, earth's remaining survivors live in a walled community called Bregna. Bregna is considered by some as a utopian society, but there are some very dystopian elements to Bregna as well. Bregan is governed by the Fairchild Government and its leader Trevor Fairchild, along with his brother Oren. Aeon Flux is an assassin, is a Monican which is a group which is a sworn enemy of the Fairchild Government.
Despite the appearance of a perfect society, Bregna has some major issues going on. People are turning up missing, and as a result of constant cloning to maintain the population, folks are having strange dreams. The Monicans have vowed to destroy Trevor Fairchild and thereby bring down his government. Aeon is given an assignment to assassinate Trevor Fairchild. Just before she begins to carry out her plans, her sister is killed, as she was mistaken as a Monican. She also discovers things are not like they appear. Trevor Fairchild may not be the evil person she once perceives him to be. She finally gets her chance to kill him, and finds that she can't, and she thinks she knows him, but is not sure. She also discovers her real enemy, and it is not Trevor, but his brother Oren. As a side effect of finding a cure for the virus, the population is rendered sterile. However Oren finds out that the women are getting pregnant, and begins murdering them to hide this fact, a fact that would bring down the Fairchild Government.
Paramount's Aeon Flux is presented in a 2:35:1, MPEG-2/1080p encode that is very good, but has some flaws. Aeon Flux has excellent cinematography, and this Bluray release does a very good job of showing it. Since this is a digital to digital transfer, there is no source film print that could introduce dirt and speckles. What you do get is a remarkably clean encode with deep solid inky blacks, contrast and sharpness that is spot on, colors vivid, ultra real, free of noise, and presents visual images with such depth, it appears to go on forever into the background. I have the HD DVD version of this film in my possession and decided to compare the two. In this comparison the HD DVD's VC-1 encode fairs a little better than the Bluray's MPEG-2 encoding. I noticed some posterization, video noise in dark scenes, and a little coarser of a presentation when compared to the artifact free and smoother presentation of the HD DVD encode. While the Bluray's presentation is a little less refined than the HD DVD presentation, it is still very, very good viewing, artifacts and all.
To say that Aeon Flux's 5.1 Dolby Digital soundtrack, encoded at 640kbps is aggressive is quite frankly an understatement. The sound field is well used, from the center, to the edges of this mix, extending nicely into the rear hemisphere. However, the mix is not evenly spread, and suffers from what I call "bunching" around the action sequences. During the quiet scenes, there is no supporting ambience to give the scene a bit of aural realism. However as soon as the action begins, the soundtrack takes off like a Ferrari, filling the air with powerful percussion, gunfire, body blows, legs kicks, and grunts from body blows. Explosions blow through the room with such impact, it can be a little startling. There is also some very interesting panning (though not very natural) that is going to test the coherence of your front and rear speakers. There are several instances of panning that travels from left front, through the center and right channels, travels through the room to the left surround, then to the right surround. It's a pretty dramatic effect, but one that always reminded me I was listening to a soundtrack. Bass is astounding, deep, tight, powerful, and spread to every channel including the surrounds. The LFE is well used, and will test the mettle of your subwoofer when played back at high levels. Grame Revell´s film score gets totally lost among the bombast of the sound effects, but what can be heard is well recorded. Accompanying the excellent Dolby Digital track is an English 5.1 Dts track, and a French and Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks encoded at 448kbps.
This Bluray release contains the same extra's as the DVD and HD DVD have. You have two audio commentaries, one by Charlize Theron and the Executive Producer Gail Ann Hurd, the other by screenwriters Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi. There is a wealth of information spread between the two commentaries, but I found myself a little bored by both; with a preference for Hay and Manfredi's commentary. I found having both was an overkill of epic proportions. Also on disc are five features that should really just be one long one. "Creating a World", "The Locations", "The Stunts", "The Costume Design Workshop", and "The Craft of the Set Photographer". Most of these seemed to revolve around the visuals and action of the the movie with the exception of Creating A World, which really seemed more focused towards the concept of the film. To some these may seem overly technical, but I found them quite interesting.
Lastly, you get the film's theatrical trailer presented in full 1080p video.
While there were certain aspects of Aeon Flux I thoroughly enjoyed, mainly the visuals and action. I was completely disappointed with the movie overall. I wish the Producers and Director would have developed Aeon more towards the animated Aeon character, and did more for substance and less for style. This would have most definately given the movie much more body, more edge, more character development overall, and would have made it more entertaining as well. Aeon Flux was a good premise for the big screen, but it falls far short in every way except in visuals and action, which does not make a movie good. One great thing I enjoyed is seeing hot Theron in body fitting spandex, as this woman has more curves than both Lombardi Street in San Francisco, and Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles.
Our friends at TV Shows on DVD have the scoop that Amazon has the exclusive for a Blu-ray edition of 'Aeon Flux: The Complete Animated Collection', with a release date of November 23. Note this is the original, enigmatic and pruriently decadent MTV animated sci-fi/action ...
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