Æon Flux: Difference between revisions

[[File:aeonflux.jpg|frame|"My name is [[Aeon Flux]]. I'm here on a mission to assassinate Trevor Goodchild. Is everybody listening? Do you believe me?"]]

 

 

Back when [[MTV]] produced animated programming (yes, this was a long, long time ago...), they fronted some experimental animation. ''[[Aeon Flux]]'' is probably the third-best known example of these series (after ''[[Beavis and Butthead]]'' and ''[[Daria]]'').

 

Probably the best way to describe ''Aeon Flux'' is that if you had ever seen it before, you would be able to recognize it immediately. The art style is a strange combination of [[German Expressionism|Expressionism]], [[Cyberpunk]], and Gnosticism. One of the most enduring images of the series is that of a human eye staring at a fly that is trapped in its eyelashes, wherein the eye's iris rolls in to stare at it. The episodes would attempt to use the art style to further the viewer's interest as opposed to wordiness. The early shorts had no spoken words to speak of, unless you count a single "plop". As a whole, the show was a thorough [[Deconstruction]] of action hero tropes and cliches.

The episodes tend to be fairly disconnected from each other, and center on the two main characters' (Aeon and Trevor) interactions, political and personal, and the themes surrounding them.

 

 

{{tropelist}}

* [[All There in the Manual]]: There was a companion book published during the airing of the third season, ''The Herodotus File'', which saw a brief return to print as a tie-in with the movie. It was a set of [[Fictional Document|Fictional Documents]] telling the story of how Aeon and Trevor first met and other info about their world. This being Aeon Flux, it doesn't really have much effect on the [[Canon]], such as it is.

* [[All There in the Script]]: The names of most of the characters in the silent shorts, which are also mentioned in the DVD commentaries.

* [[Anti-Villain]]: Trevor Goodchild is a morally ambiguous figure much like Aeon Flux is herself. He genuinely believes that his people are better off by submitting to his authority, just as Aeon is convinced that her borderline terrorist activities are also for the greater good.

* [[An Arm and a Leg]]: Amputees are common in Bregna, most of them apparently being people who failed to make it across the border into Monica.

* [[Attention Deficit Ooh Shiny]]: One of Aeon's many flaws in the silent episodes.

* [[Author Appeal]]: Peter Chung obviously has a thing for domination, feet and eyes.

'''You're skating the edge.'''

''[[I Am the Trope|I am the edge]].''

* [[Order Versus Chaos]]: Aeon's not actually "good" and Trevor's not really a cut-and-dried bad guy; they're just [[You Rebel Scum|The Rebel]] and [[The Man|The Establishment]], respectively.

* [[Our Hero Is Dead]]: Literally in [[Once an Episode|every single episode]] during the silent shorts. During the half-hour episodes, however, Aeon tends to survive, some partial exceptions being: One episode where {{spoiler|a copy of her kills the original (which was planned all along)}}, another where she's trapped {{spoiler|in a sea of paralytic fluid at the end (although the fluid could be neutralized)}}, and another where she seems to die multiple times, but nobody knows [[Mind Screw|what the hell was literal in that episode anyway]]. {{spoiler|Explained somewhat in the video game.}}

* [[Police State]]: Both incarnations of Bregna.

* [[Post Cyber Punk]]: [[Deconstruction]] of [[Cyberpunk]], anyway.

* [[Red Oni, Blue Oni]]: Trevor and Aeon, respectively. The vain and people-oriented red oni (Trevor) represents order, while the cold and anti-social blue oni (Aeon) represents chaos.

* [[Royals Who Actually Do Something]]: Trevor Goodchild is the leader of Bregna, but he's also a doctor and he does lots of community volunteer work. He's also extremely hands-on in whatever the episode is about; he doesn't just issue orders, he gets in there and gets his hands dirty.

* [[Scaramanga Special]]: Trevor's got a cigarette case that unfolds into a pistol; this becomes very important in one episode.

* [[Stripperiffic]]: Many outfits worn by various characters are a shade away from pure bondage gear, most notably Aeon's. In the [[DVD Commentary]], Chung states that the lack of significant clothing also served to make the body language in the silent shorts easier to see, and compared it to the popularity of nudity in art.

* [[Sympathetic POV]]: Played with in the original short episode pilot and in the second short episode. "Pilot" opens with typical action movie music and Aeon gunning down extremely implausible numbers of soldiers, action hero style - then the perspective abruptly changes to that of two enemy soldiers trying to support each other as they gasp for life, shot and dying in the middle of a giant pool of blood. In "War", the identity of the protagonist changes every 20 seconds or so, each one dying when his time is up, as a satire of how viewer sympathy is manipulated in typical action movies.

* [[Writing Around Trademarks]]: Because MTV didn't support the release of Drew Neumann's soundtrack album, the album had to use the title ''Eye Spy: Ears Only, Confidential'' and not mention Aeon Flux at all. Peter Chung drew the cover art using [[Expies]] of ''his own characters''.

* [[You Are Number Six]]: Many of Trevor's immediate subordinates have numbers instead of names.

 

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[[Category:Science Fiction Western Animation]]

[[Category:Western Animation]]

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