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Aeon Flux, Talk Amongst Yourselves
Kasracer writes "The movie Aeon Flux has been getting a mixture of reviews since its debut and most tend to be on the negative side. A review posted on BinaryIdiot goes a bit more in-depth than most reviews and gives the movie a fair shot. From the review: "First of all, I have to say that I'm disappointed, but not altogether surprised by the reviews I've seen thus far. Those who review films for a living are notoriously unreliable, and in many cases, they miss the whole point altogether. Rest assured, even though I'm as skeptical as they come, and can find a flaw in absolutely anything, I won't pick on this movie simply because the plot may be too hard for some people to understand."
"
FTFA:
you were able to get into the mindset the movie prepares for you, you'll find these characters as believable and as real as they were meant to be. If you found yourself bored and not at all involved within the first 10 minutes, blame it on your lack of imagination.
and even better:
It's easy to be biased toward Charlize, and if I were capable of being biased toward anyone, it would be her, but I managed to control myself. The way I saw it was that the movie was fantastic and Charlize was phenomenal, but if anyone else had done it (as well as or better) and had that same "it" factor that Charlize has flowing out of every pore on her gorgeous face, I would have felt exactly the same about the film as I do right now. And that is true.
Proof that the ability for any schmo to publish their thoughts for all to see is not necessarily a good thing!
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1/ Other reviewers are dim-witted and don't look into the real depths of the universe/plot (8 lines) 2/ OMG Charlize is teh Roxor. (40 lines). He may have a point though. (don't you sometimes wish you could mod down an entire story instead of a single comment?)
First of all, the movie is a fairly typical Hollywood special effects/sci-fi film. So its entertaining. But it suffers from the same problem as I, Robot, which is to say, it has nothing to do with the what it's named after.
The problem when you watch the original Aeon Flux animated series is that other than people having the same names, it has little in common. Aeon Flux is fairly, er, kinky in the animated series. This is almost a defining part of the role. In the series, the Trevor Goodchild is really a bad guy. In the movie, he's a nice guy who is just misunderstood. In the series, the plots were odd, bordering on bizarre. In the movie, its "good guy trying to save the world".
I'm saying all this as somebody who isn't a particular fan of the series. But the movie just misses the point. I would think they would have been better off making more of the animated series; it would cost less, and probably entertain people more.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
It actually informed what the movie was about for about a sentence or two - that it was 400 years in the future and 5 million people were left after some disease wiped the rest out.
So there's the set-up, but anything about the plot/storyline?
Not anything coherent (a hint of romance between two unnamed characters), but mostly just fanboyish drooling over Charlize Theron.
This "review" was just pathetic.
I don't know but I get the feeling this reviewer has some biases towards Charlize in skin tight outfits. And maybe instead of insulting the audience that "doesn't understand" this movie, he should analyze the issues they bring up instead of saying they're wrong?
/..
I'll give the guy some points though, the movie was better than made out to be in a lot of reviews. But I still don't understand how this random review gets on the front page of
was, "Well, noone will be able to accuse him of deviating from the original story line." Back in the Liquid TV days, this seemed more about an artist having a little creative fun with a character without being hindered by any consistent storyline. Oh sure, toward the end he played around with an actual story, but I always got the impression that this was just a character study.
On the other hand, I'm sorry I never got to see Reign. The concept was interesting and I'd really liked to have seen what he would have done with a fully developed study.
As this movie goes, it just screams "renter"
A goal is a dream with a deadline
This is the main slashdot arrogance. Basically, "everybody who disagrees with my view is an idiot, shortsighted, underinformed. I, as a coder, am much more capable of being objective and have a wider ken than credentialed or recognized professionals in:"
- Law (especially pertaining copyright, etc.)
- Politics
- Economics (especially the economics of copyright, etc.)
- Business (especially when it involves telling copyright holders how to run theirs..)
- and now... movie reviews!
Double plus extra my comment if the subjet matter involves one of the following:One thing that everyone seems to forget is that all the characters, as far as I understood it, were having severe problems due to remembering their past iterations. In my mind, this explains the flat delivery that just about everyone gave.
This isn't a review. Its an opinion . . . and it seems to have been posted by someone that thinks the movie is "great" but really cannot or chooses not to explain what made the movie great (a single actress alone does not make a good movie). He attacks other reviewers for not understanding the plot and attacks those that aren't captivated by the film for having no imagination . . . but he offers very little of his own opinion. He attacks others . . . but fails offer a convincing opinion of his own . . . except that it was an "awesome" film. I finshed reading the article and I was unconvinced . . . there is very little substance to the review . . . except that other reviewers are wrong . . . and this one is right . . . like the logic of a six year old.
Is it just me or has slashdot been posting a lot more lame articles like this? I'm not sure but I get the opinion that the editors have changed tack and are going for a more inflammatory style. The rhetorical questions that they post at the end of their first posts are often poorly thought out and sometimes just plain illogical or indicative that they failed to read the article or pay attention when they read the article.
I can only assume that inflammatory opinions posted as reviews or illogical rhetorical questions serve as flamebait to drive up the number of posts on /. As circumstantial evidence of competitive pressures I submit ancedotally that /.'s competitors such as Digg and other sites have been getting more press lately.
I don't know whether the editors will read this comment or take it into account . . . . but I have to say that I have been highly underwhelmed with the recent content of slashdot. This inflammatory attack on other movie reviewers that is thinly disguised as a movie review is more evidence that Slashdot is using a strategy of posting material that might otherwise be considered flamebait to drive up the number of posts.
I dont understand why they named it "Aeon Flux" when all it shared were poorly-placed references to the series. This might have been a half-okay-maybe movie (*I doubt it) if they just called it The Clonus Disaster or something. All that was gained by calling it Aeon Flux was my thinking "Why would you try to tack on some silly lame-ass reason for Aeon and Trevor's relationship?"
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
That sounds like an...odd...comparison to me. But yes, everyone should read that Clarke story.
If you can find it, read the original novella, Against the Fall of Night. I found that The City and the Stars didn't really add anything, and the original version was more direct and compact.
The Clark/Benford book Beyond the Fall of Night, where Benford continues Clarke's story, was IMHO disappointing.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Oh, I don't know. I think that Slashdot has always been much like it is today. You can see it as a good thing, or a bad thing, but at least they are consistent. Poor spelling, off base comments at the ends of postings, lame articles that make the front page, and the dubious practice of calling themselves editors when they don't have been here at least as long as I have, back in '96 or '97.
That said, I keep coming back for more. Go figure.
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Good points -
The tech stuff was nice, like the "living" gardens that were bio-engineered permieter security systems.
The lead actress was worth looking at.
The over all look and feel was nice and clean, it looked fresh and sharp.
Bad points -
The plot could be summed up as pandemic hits the world, a few are immunised just in time to save humanity and congregate in a single "utopian" city (movie starts here) the cure has a side effect, infertility, so they started cloning each other, 7th generation clone leader/dictator searches for a cure only to discover nature has spontaneously fixed the problem somehow, clone leaders clone sibling tries to supress this to maintain the status quo, cue lots of fighting scenes.
The action was cartooney, eg not credible, blade runner did it right, one "soldier", no matter how well trained, cannot take on and defeat hordes of other soldiers with at least equal access to military tech
The acting was two dimensional, but then that's all this film ever called for.
The ending was of course utterly predictable.
Was it worth watching? -
Seeing as I downloaded it for free from usenet it was worth the expense and the 90 minutes of my time to watch it, I've seen a __LOT__ worse films.... eg compared to the dukes of hazzard this was a masterpiece, but compared to blade runner it was trite, it was on a par with a trekkie type movie mebbe
If I'd paid ten UK pounds for a cinema ticket I'd have been well pissed.
HTH
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I was wondering if anyone here remembers LTV back in the day...it was a really nice segment that was unique and refreshing...does anyone here miss it at all in the middle of the mud that is reality tv?
That said, I keep coming back for more. Go figure.
I bet the last portion of the topic headline ("Talk Amongst Yourselves") is actually the reason why you keep coming back to Slashdot; it's certainly why I keep coming back. Increasingly, the articles that slashdot will link to (including this one) are completely irrelevant and what is truly interesting and informative reading are the comments that the article elicits. Slashdot should have more posts that are completely opinionless "talk amongst yourselves" kind of posts; the community and the moderation system will assuredly provide content far more interesting than one link to one guy's smoldering blog. Slashdot should act as the "Tim Russert" character, bringing up the topics for discussion and then getting out of the way.
~jeff
my smoldering blog
I went to Aeon Flux with a bunch of guys from Work Friday afternoon, and then to a late-night showing of Narnia with some friends from Church. I enjoyed both.
And each makes a cultural / mythic statement, touching a part of human nature. Aeon Flux did a good job of showing the MTV cultural milleiu from which it sprang. Fairly nihilistic / materialistic showing the alienation of living in a comfortable prosperous society. When Aeon says there's something wrong inside everyone, that wrongness resonates with me. (The Pope said something about America's "culture of death" and I wondered how much he had this in mind.) Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed Aeon Flux a lot. I'd seen it on MTV but hadn't been able to catch enough episodes to grok the story arc. Seeing it all at once, it made sense. I thought it said something significant about human nature.
Narnia also said something about human nature. I like to think myself something better than I am. In truth, I'm more like Edmond the traitor in the Narnia story. Almost everyone in Narnia was flawed in some way. And that's the point of that story. How does one cope with one's own flaws? How does one cope with a loved one who betrays us?
Both movies' plots turned upon a traitor among siblings. Each story adopted a different strategy for dealing with traitors. Aeon Flux and Trevor Goodchild were heroes of one sort. The Pevensies were heroes of another sort.
Amen. That's the way it is already. Posts about a specific RFC or patch digress quickly into a political / technological debate about the merits of the underlying technology, the fix, or the fallacy of penetrate-and-patch. Any story containing "Web 2.0" or "AJAX" turns into a philosophical melee about the direction of Internet content, Applications, and inevitably ends with posters deriding the buzzword simply because they can't put it on their resume. Stories about aviation and space exploration digress into discussions of interplanetary flight, colonization, terraforming, the long-since dead X25, and the over-political nature of state-sponsored flight. Biology and evolution stories turn into religious flamewars faster than you can say "bang".
I've been here for a long time (I'm apparently missing a digit in my UID), and it's never been any different. I don't expect it will. You can't stop the community from discussing the topics that are interesting to it. But, the articles are usually good enough to bring out an informative, relevant discussion on the topic. Enough posters put up links to relevant materials online that sometimes it's better to read their links instead of the actual FA. At least the editors don't post every dot-zero-one update of the Linux Kernel anymore. Or maybe I set my preferences to filter those out. I can't remember.
Jasin NataelTrue science means that when you re-evaluate the evidence, you re-evaluate your faith.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
A lot of movies get made and you wonder "WTF? How did this piece of drek ever scare up the capital?"
And for every turkey that covers the screen with its gibblets, there are some movies out there aren't getting screen play or even finding investment money.
Theatre owners and broadcasters are to blame for the entire "supply-side" mess that we're finding ourselves in.
You pour in $100,000,000 of money and it has only got 2 or 3 weeks to run when it's got to make that money back, or you can hope that it makes dough being broadcast and then comes the video rentals.
And the process of making actual movies doesn't cost $100,000,000 but the process of fighting for the screen time does. You're NOT getting your movie money's worth. Ever!
I think that the audience will be the winners what the 'internet effect' comes to movies (like its already begun to come to radio with podcasting, giving the ClearChannels and Infinity Broadcasting oligopolies of the world a hollow victory [There's no one else left standing, but the pool of listeners is shrinking, FAST!]) as its starting to with TV shows coming to the iPod.
Instead of just being viewed as passive vessels for content and cows waiting to be milked of cash, we, the audience, will be active participants in what we actually watch and listen to.
We could/should/would be funding projects, pooling resources and uniting to make sure that 'demand-side' economics get us the most bang for the buck instead of letting the supply-siders waste our money like drunken sailors on their first night ashore in six months.
Movies right now lose money because they are limited in the time they run and the extreme costs of promotion. The 'supply-siders' are in control. They make their money by creating and capitalizing on the foment that having too producers fighting for an audience with access to too few 'supply-siders' media outlets.
They make even more money and exercise more power by restricting what consumers can actually get at the end of the process. Can't stand Brittany Spears? Tough! And you can't avoid her either. And the medium costs the same as it always has despite its vertiginous drop in real value.
Enter the internet where:
* on the production side, you can hunt for capital sources, produce and promote your content and distribute it for practical amounts of money, and where,
* also on the production side, you can hunt for a project you feel would be worth your investment, and where,
* on the consumption side, you can hunt for content of interest to you, for reviews of interest to you, and download this content for filling your senses at a time and place of your choosing.
Content, audio and movies, produced on the 'demand-side' CAN'T lose money.
They're time-shifted, media-shifted and inherently of interest to someone, either the funders who can be garanteed to be in the audience or the producers themselves.
The resources made available to the producers and content originators will reflect the involvement of the resources of the audience.
The content will remain available for download and continue to provide a revenue stream (even if its only a steady trickle) to the content producer, as opposed to the largely useless 'back catalog' of content that's being obscured by new content churned atop of it.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
This isn't a review. Its an opinion
All reviews are opinions.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
This isn't a review. Its an opinion . . .
And other reviews are fact?!? I've not seen Aeon Flux, and probably won't, so I've got no agenda here. But all reviews are opinion. And all of them just point out things they liked and didn't like, which only occasionally line up with the things I liked or didn't like, and they fumble arond to justify their opinion. Professional reviewers often degrade to just throwing insults, sometimes personal ones, at the actors, writer or directors. The really good profesional ones do it well with scathing wit. But it certainly isn't any more than opinion.
Cheers.
If you think that Charlize Theron is "Fat", you are one warped motherfucker. Perhaps you should spend less time looking at cartoon images of women and spending time with real, actual women.
I'm not a fan really, but Charlize Theron is thin by any stretch of the imagination.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
The same thing with the entire:
"remake old movies"
"remake old TV series"
"remake old comic books"
"remake remake remake remake remake"
and "sequel"!
You have an automatic audience of people who saw the original and have good memories of it. And Hollywood is all about automatic audiences.
What if you get a movie's plot, and the guy next to you doesn't? Are you then too smart, or is the movie shit?
I don't know that a movie has to reach everyone to be a good movie, just like not everyone will understand certain music or art. Does everything have to be dummed down to the lowest common denominator?