If an action-sci-fi movie starring Charlize Theron and directed by Karyn Kusama was announced today, anticipation among movie geeks would likely skyrocket. Imagine, the pugnacious action star from Mad Max: Fury Road and Atomic Blonde cooking something up with the director of Girlfight, Jennifer’s Body, and Destroyer! But when this exact pairing arrived 20 years ago, it received miserable reviews and negligible box office upon release on Dec. 2, 2005. The live-action version of Aeon Flux is remembered less as a dream-team pairing and more as a misbegotten flop. That is, if it’s remembered at all. Aeon Flux does deserve some attention, though — and not just as a disaster doomed by studio interference. It’s also a movie with outsized (if accidental) influence on the careers it was supposed to launch into blockbuster territory.
This especially applies to Kusama, who arrived as the force behind the Sundance fave Girlfight, about a teenage girl (Michelle Rodriguez) who becomes a boxer. That movie is as much a character study as a sports or action picture, but the prospect of a talented new director taking control of an ambitious sci-fi adaptation was still an exciting one, especially after such a long wait for a follow-up.
There are remnants of that excitement throughout Aeon Flux. Based on an animated serial that originally aired through MTV’s Liquid Television, the movie takes place 400 years in the future. Following a devastating plague, the world population has been reduced to just five million, living in a well-manicured but antiseptic-looking city where citizens are routinely disappeared by an authoritarian government. Aeon Flux (Theron) is a member of a rebel group called the Monicans, who carry out missions with the goal of eventually dismantling those government forces. But when Aeon is assigned to kill leader Trevor Goodchild (Martin Csokas), she finds herself unable to go through with it, and uncovers even greater secrets about this brave new world.
It’s a simple story with convoluted sci-fi details, with both of those qualities exacerbated by hellish behind-the-scenes dueling that saw Kusama’s original two-hour cut hacked down to 71 minutes without her, and then built back up to 92 minutes (and an even skimpier 86 minutes sans credits) with her supervised involvement. Kusama goes into greater detail in a lengthy Buzzfeed profile from 2016, revealing how various characters and subplots were bowdlerized along the way. “I felt like I was having, like, open-heart surgery without the painkillers,” she said at the time.
What remains is an oddly skeletal, underpopulated blockbuster. Yes, the planet’s last city is supposed to represent a decimated population, but it rarely looks like a place where 10,000 people live, let alone five million. Yet that also lends the movie a spare, eye-catching clarity. The ornate detail of the animated show becomes more akin to the cleaner splash-page geometry of Paul W.S. Anderson, like a bloodless Resident Evil installment, or a cash-strapped Matrix spinoff focused on Trinity. It’s hard to stay mad at a movie featuring a roaming science lab housed in a dirigible. The story doesn’t really have the room to work, but Kusama’s talent as an image-maker shines through.
Kusama frames the problems with the story in terms of executives uncomfortable with its more emotional aspects, which includes (in the released version) traces of a star-crossed lovers plotline via cloning. “The emotional core of things was always being questioned as sentimental, over-romantic, short of literally saying the words ‘female’ or ‘feminine,’” she told BuzzFeed. With that storyline gutted, the dull male characters seem like they’re there primarily to make sure that supporting players like Frances McDormand, Sophie Okonedo, and Caroline Chikezie don’t get too much screen time.
Kusama’s later work doesn’t feel nearly as constricted in this regard. Jennifer’s Body, though mismarketed and critically derided in its time, derives its staying power from a portrayal of a complicated relationship between two young women. The boys in that movie are just as wan as the guys in Aeon Flux; the difference is, Jennifer’s Body doesn’t have to pretend otherwise because the women drive the story. Kusama’s most recent film Destroyer unapologetically centers its mess of female cop protagonist, indelibly embodied by Nicole Kidman; beyond gender focus, all of the too-few movies Kusama directed in the 20 years since Aeon Flux have a grit that’s missing from her big Hollywood break.
Less was riding on this movie for Theron. She already had an Oscar, in fact, from her transformational work in the serial-killer drama Monster, and she received her second Best Actress nomination for a whole separate 2005 movie where she also co-stars with Frances McDormand. (In a damning indictment of Oscar buzz, the multi-nominated North Country is scarcely better-remembered than Aeon Flux, and may be rewatched even less.) However, it clearly wasn’t yet time for her to become the action-movie staple she is today.
Theron’s performance in Aeon Flux prioritizes iconography: that sleek black haircut, those futuristic catsuit variations, all of her spider-walking sneaky moves during her agreeably silly mission sequences. In her later action roles, Theron doesn’t let the costumes wear her; Fury Road’s Furiosa has an iconic look with a shaved head and robotic arm, yet her every movement feels weighted by her history and rooted in the movie’s harsh environment. Aeon Flux is supposed to be similarly haunted (albeit in a hazier, past-lives sort of way), but Theron plays her more like she’s focusing on her imminent gymnastics routines. Her spy character in Atomic Blonde could be reduced to her considerable style, too, but those fight scenes are raw and muscular.
In 2005, Aeon Flux seemed like just another example of how hard it is to adapt animation into live action and/or create a big-screen sci-fi franchise. Today, though, its struggles feel more revealing, particularly of behind-the-scenes hesitation over how women (in front of and behind the camera) should navigate a traditionally male-dominated space. Kusama, along with screenwriters Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi, attempted to give the Aeon Flux character some emotional heft lacking from the more obtuse cartoon version, only to draw executive ire. And despite her then-recent Oscar win, Theron feels stiffer and less at ease than she would as an older action star, caught between excised sensitivity and sleek posing. It’s a shame the final film doesn’t show off what either the star or director are truly capable of in their respective roles. But maybe Aeon Flux nudged Kusama and Theron to do exactly that for the last 20 years.
