Wondering if you should go see Aeon Flux this weekend? Well, the smart money seems to be on “no.” As Thud points out, it wasn’t screened for critics, which is usually not a good sign. And the reviews that are slowly starting to come in are anything but kind.
A.O. Scott of the New York Times writes:
The characters speak in generalities and abstractions, and you wish someone would explain what they’re all talking about. Eventually, people do, and you kind of wish they hadn’t.
Maybe the highest praise given so far is from Keith Breese of filmcritic.com, who calls it “both gorgeously surreal and vacuously arty.”
In all fairness, those are probably complaints you could sometimes make against the original cartoons as well. They’re visually terrific, full of interesting and odd ideas, but it’s often unclear just what the hell, if anything, they’re supposed to be about. As even creator Peter Chung has acknowledged, “When it was actually on, people would say, ‘What the hell is this?'” The show could be confusing.
But it worked — in spite of, or maybe because of that. From the moment I saw the trailer for the new film, my biggest worry was that this was going to be Aeon Flux in name only. They tinkered with the story — which is, in a way, to say they gave it one — and they tinkered with the visual look of things to the point that, if they hadn’t said it was Aeon Flux, I doubt I would have known.
So the reviews so far seem to be almost universally bad. (Which is not to say badly written, although, hoo boy, there’s a whole ‘nother story.) It seems like maybe the one good thing to come out of the film is a renewed interest in the original on which it’s based. You can buy (or, I guess, rent) the complete animated collection. And, if you’re really new to the world of AF, Backwards City offers links to two primers — one from Metafilter, and the other from the Boston Globe (unofficial version here) — plus a link to MTV Overdrive, where you can watch some of the original cartoons (under “Movies”).
The original is definitely worth checking out. So if you’ve never seen it, and you’re hesitant to go see what could turn out to be this season’s worst box-office bomb, I highly recommend the cartoons.