‘Aeon Flux’ hits the theaters without advance critic screening
When Hollywood sends a film into theaters without screening it in advance for critics, it usually means one thing: that even the execs who greenlighted the project think it stinks.
The studios hope for a big opening weekend before the reviews and word-of-mouth – usually bad – start coming in.
“Aeon Flux,” which opens today, is the latest of 2005’s not-previewed-for-the-press question marks.
Hailing from Paramount Pictures and said to have cost in the vicinity of $55 million, it stars Charlize Theron – a best-actress Oscar-winner, mind you – as a deadly secret agent.
The film is based on Peter Chung’s cartoon series, set 400 years in the future, which debuted on MTV’s “Liquid TV” in 1992 – violent, sci-fi affairs about a ripped, angular, raven-haired beauty who could show kindness and conscience one episode, and ruthless amorality the next.
“It was a very foreign genre to me,” Theron said, excitedly, during an interview at the Toronto International Film Festival in September.
“I wasn’t raised on ‘Star Wars.’ I was raised on ‘Sophie’s Choice’ and ‘Kramer vs. Kramer,’ yet when I go to see these (action) films I really quite enjoy them. But the genre is very foreign for me as an actor. I really didn’t know the process.”
That process involved training with a Cirque du Soleil gymnast, learning stage combat and weaponry, wearing slinky black catsuits and leather chest plates, and doing a lot of stunts. (Theron sustained a neck injury that delayed production for months.)
“It’s a very physical process, which is something I always wanted to do since I came from a ballet background and I really like telling stories with my body,” she said. “And I like that she barely spoke in this film – everything came from a physical aspect.”
Theron also liked the unlikely choice of director: Karyn Kusama, a Brooklynite whose only previous feature credit was 2000’s femme-boxing art-house hit, “Girlfight.”
“I love Karyn Kusama,” Theron said. “It was interesting to see somebody like her in the genre that wasn’t an action director. She was an actor’s director coming into the genre very passionately.”
Whether Kusama’s passion, and Theron’s balletic action moves, translates to the screen remains to be seen – starting today, at a theater near you.
In the meantime, Paramount Home Video has released “Aeon Flux: The Complete Animated Collection,” a 221-minute, three-disc DVD set of all of Chung’s and co-director Howard E. Baker’s futuristic femme fatale ‘toons.
With little dialogue and lots of senseless mayhem, the series is tailor-made for that key demographic group: 14- to 21-year-old males.
And who knows, maybe enough of them will turn out this weekend to make “Aeon Flux,” the movie, a success.