Æon Flux

''Æon Flux'' is an American avant-garde science fiction adventure animated television series that aired on MTV from November 30, 1991, until October 10, 1995, with film, comic book, and video game adaptations following thereafter. It premiered on MTV's '' Liquid Television'' experimental animation show, as a six-part serial of short films, followed in 1992 by five individual short episodes. In 1995, a season of ten half-hour episodes aired as a stand-alone series. ''Æon Flux'' was created by American animator Peter Chung. Each episode's plot has elements of social science fiction, biopunk, allegory, dystopian fiction, spy fiction, psychological drama, postmodern visual, psychedelic imagery and Gnostic symbolism.

The live-action movie '' Æon Flux'', loosely based upon the series and starring Charlize Theron, was released in theaters on December 2, 2005, preceded in November of that year by a tie-in video game of the same name based mostly on the movie but containing some elements of the original TV series.

Plot

''Æon Flux'' is set in a surreal German Expressionist-style futuristic universe. The setting comprises a bizarre dystopia populated by mutant creatures, clones, and robots, set within the separated border-wall cities of Monica and Bregna. The title character is a tall, sexy, scantily clad dominatrix secret agent from the city of Monica — skilled in espionage, assassination and acrobatics. Her mission is to infiltrate and destroy the strongholds of the city of Bregna , which is led by her sworn enemy, and sometimes lover, Trevor Goodchild — the technocratic dictator of Bregna, whose citizens are called Breens. The two cities engage in a futile, never-ending war for ideological supremacy. While Monica represents a dynamic nihilistic, anarchist society where rules do not exist, Bregna embodies a centralized, scientifically planned Orwellian police state. The names of their respective characters reflect this: Flux, as the self-directed agent from Monica, and Goodchild, as the self-appointed leader of Bregna. Themes of tragic/forbidden love run throughout the series as Trevor has everything but what he truly wants, Æon; and Æon can accomplish anything she wants except killing Trevor.

Voice cast

Development

Some authors consider the title a reference to the Gnostic notion of an Æon in one episode,Aeon Flux: All You've Ever Needed From Sci-Fi
by Alison Veneto, SMRT TV, April 24, 2006, "...Æon Flux has a serious Gnostic bent. The ancient mystery religion is where they got the concepts of aeons and the demiurge, amongst other things." and that the relationship between the main characters parallels the Valentinian notion of a syzygy. Peter Chung, the creator, says the main character's name "started out just being the name of the cartoon and then eventually it stuck, so that's her name." The character Æon Flux was not meant to be part of the series, but MTV pushed to keep her in it, despite Æon dying at the end of the first batch of shorts. Chung intended the cartoon to be a reaction to heroic Hollywood action films, not as a spoof, but rather as a way to make the audience wonder about the wider context of these action heroes and evoke thought. ''Æon Flux'' is therefore notable as one of the very few American adult animated series to be a drama rather than a comedy, as well as one of the only such series to air for more than one season.

One peculiarity of the early shorts is the violent death of Æon Flux, which occurs in each installment. According to the commentary by Peter Chung in the 2005 DVD release, she dies in every short episode after the initial six-part pilot because he never intended to make more episodes and felt the best solution was to have her keep dying; by contrast, she only "dies" once in the half-hour series. Often her death is caused by fate, while other times she dies due to her own incompetence. One of the half-hour episodes, "A Last Time for Everything", ends with the original Æon being killed and replaced by an identical clone. (In the episode "Chronophasia", Æon is apparently killed repeatedly by a monstrous baby, but the reality of these events is ambiguous. In "Ether Drift Theory", Æon is suspended indefinitely in an inanimate state, but remains technically alive.)

Style

Chung describes the style of the show as "academic": "I was interested in experimenting with visual narrative, telling a story without dialogue and also trying to create a style of telling a story with animation that wasn't influenced by the usual kinds of things that you see." ''Æon Flux'' depicts graphic violence and sexuality, including fetishism and domination. The featurette ''Investigation: The History of Æon Flux'' (included on the 2005 DVD release) notes that Peter Chung had worked on ''Rugrats'' prior to ''Æon Flux'', and had become extremely frustrated by the limitations of the characters before creating ''Æon Flux''. Chung says the visual style was also influenced by Hergé, Ligne Claire, Egon Schiele and Moebius.

With the exceptions of the exclamation "No!" in the pilot and the single word "plop" in the episode "Leisure", all of the short episodes are completely devoid of intelligible speech. Instead, the sound track employs a variety of sound effects, including sounds such as laughter, grunts, and sighs. It would not be until the beginning of Season 3 that dialogue would be used much more extensively.

Music

The music and sound design for the original television series was created by Drew Neumann, who also created music for ''Aaahh!!! Real Monsters'' and ''The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy''. Peter Stone (of Xorcist) served as assistant sound editor for the original MTV series. The music was later compiled on the album ''Eye Spy, Ears Only Confidential''. The initials "AF" were used on song titles and in the credits to replace the words "Æon Flux" due to the lack of licensing permissions from MTV. The album includes two discs worth of material from the series and also from the defunct original (1995) PC and PlayStation video-game project. A CD, ''Æon Flux: Music from the Animated Series'', was included as a bonus with certain editions of the 2005 series compilation DVD that included 11 songs from the show with dialogue snippets featuring Æon and Trevor in-between the songs as standalone tracks. The extended fully remastered soundtrack ''Eye Spy: Declassified, Freedom of Information Act'' was re-released in 2010 as high-quality MP3s with new artwork by Peter Chung and a previously unreleased third volume of music.

A soundtrack is also available for the 2005 live-action film, composed by Graeme Revell.

Episodes

Broadcast history

MTV was the exclusive broadcaster of the series in the United States. In Canada, the shorts aired on MuchMusic and the third season aired a year or so later on the youth-oriented network YTV, in a late-night timeslot, during a period when the network was trying to appeal to an older audience. In Australia and New Zealand, during the early to mid-1990s, the ''Liquid Television'' shorts and the first series were shown on the program ''Eat Carpet'' on SBS television. In Southeast Asia the third season was broadcast in 1996 via the MTV Southeast Asia channel, which at the time was free to anyone with a satellite dish. In the UK, MTV first showed the shorts and the 30-minute episodes from 1992. In the mid-1990s, the BBC
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