BEFORE: OK, I'm back from San Diego Comic-Con and ready to get back into the swing of things. It feels rather odd that I haven't watched a movie in 6 days, because I was in the epicenter of movie and comic-book promotions - but I just didn't have time to really enjoy it. After working at a booth from 9 am to 7 pm (with breaks, of course) each day, the last thing I wanted to do was go watch a film - I prefer to go out to dinner, have a couple of beers (maybe one with ice cream in it) and then just head back to the hotel (or the AirBnB apartment, in this case) and go right to sleep.
I spent some time today guest/ghost-writing a blog for my boss about the event, and I don't care to repeat all those stories again, so if you're interested in learning what went down this year, please visit:
http://scribblejunkies.blogspot.com/2015/07/we-survived-san-diego-comic-con-2015.html
And if you care to see my photos from SDCC, which I promise are quite interesting, go to:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/66064297@N00/sets/72157655450126599
Now then, I'm picking up where I left off, with Charlize Theron carrying over from "Monster" - and I promised some appropriate sci-fi for (post-)Comic-Con week, so here goes. This is based on an animated series of the same name, directed by Peter Chung, that ran on MTV back in the day.
THE PLOT: Aeon Flux is a mysterious assassin working for the Monicans, a group of rebels trying to overthrow the government. When she is a sent on a mission to kill the Chairman, a whole new mystery is found.
AFTER: I kind of remember, a few Comic-Cons ago, that Peter Chung came to visit our booth. I asked him to pass along a greeting to Karyn Kusama, who I went to NYU with (we were in comedy writing class together) but I don't know if she ever got my message. Perhaps I should check for her on LinkedIn or something. Perhaps I committed a faux pas by asking Mr. Chung to try and put me in contact with someone who took his storyline and did - well, this with it.
I remember the animated series was a bit confusing, but people treated it like it was artistic. I think sometimes you can get away with a lot more in animation just because of its nature - if you don't like the way something looks, just draw it different. If you want something to be scary, violent, edgy, just experiment with a few styles and speeds and you'll eventually land on something that will convey the right tone. The other advantage the animated show had was being episodic, which allowed it to tell short stories, relate its information out to the audience in little bits and pieces, as long as each episode ended on a cliffhanger, people would tune in again, much like with a comic book.
But there's a big difference between a series of animated shorts (or comic-book stories) and a full-length live-action feature. Adapting the storyline from one into the other isn't always easy - for every "Avengers" or "X-Men" that succeeds, there's a "Green Lantern" or "Green Hornet" that doesn't.
In this case, the story was forced to change every so often, which works great for small episodes, but for a feature film, it feels like as soon as the rules of the game were established, they would change, and then change again. The problem is that people are disappearing. No, wait, the problem is that someone is cloning people. No, wait, the problem is that we have to fight this virus. Everyone agrees that there's something wrong in this future society, but no one can seem to agree what exactly it is, or how best to change it.
It seems like a shame, because in addition to being confusing as all heck, this film may have also been a victim of bad timing. The whole dystopian future thing really didn't kick in until the "Hunger Games" novel came out three years later in 2008 - and then the end-of-the-world stories picked up again in the run-up to 2012 (stupid Mayans!).
Look, maybe it's me - maybe I was just exhausted. I flew back across the country, I carried my luggage up a few flights of stairs taking the subway home, I sat in my recliner for the first time in a week, and I admit it, I fell asleep. But I woke up at 2 am, ran the movie back to where I left off and I tried again - and I fell asleep again. But THEN I ran it back to the same spot again, finished the film, and still found it majorly incomprehensible.
For the life of me, I can't see any benefit why one character would have her feet replaced with a second set of hands. I mean, you can walk on your hands but you can't really run on them, right? I guess they'd help you if you wanted to climb trees like a monkey but for running, flipping and the other acrobatic stunts seen in the movie, I'm not seeing the advantage.
A lot of the other techno-gadgets seen here are confusing as well - some kind of pill that people swallow that enables telepathy? Umm, you know that things you swallow go to the stomach, not the brain, right? Some kind of liquid containment field for people's memories? What the heck happened to videotape, or storing things digitally, or in the cloud? They tried here to predict what tech would look like in the future, and I think someone really got things muddled up.
Also starring Marton Csokas (last seen in "The Amazing Spider-Man 2"), Frances McDormand (last seen in "Something's Gotta Give"), Sophie Okonedo (last seen in "After Earth"), Jonny Lee Miller (last seen in "Melinda and Melinda"), Pete Postlethwaite (last seen in "The Shipping News"), Nikolai Kinski, Paterson Joseph, with a cameo from Stuart Townsend (last seen in "Head in the Clouds").
RATING: 2 out of 10 backflips
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