The title character, Aeon Flux, is – as her name implies – a dynamic operative working for a group (called the Monicans) rebelling against the overly sanitized government of Bregna, led by her archenemy, Trevor Goodchild. Tall, sexy, and lethal, Aeon is given a mission to assassinate Trevor: a mission she has been waiting to receive for her entire life. “She thinks this one mission will change her life and make everything better, but nothing is that simple,” says Charlize Theron, who brings Aeon to life.
The role was the first that Theron took on after her Oscar-winning performance in “Monster.” She also recently starred in the drama “North Country.” “I was looking for something completely different,” says Theron. “I felt this part was quite a challenge to take on.”
Theron notes that “Aeon Flux” is a very different kind of film than any she’s done before. Looking at Peter Chung’s animated series, she found inspiration, but also enough room to make the character her own. “I wanted to stay as true as I could to Peter’s creation, but – like he told me – she’s constantly evolving,” says Theron. “I had a blueprint for the role from Peter, but I was able to mold it, like a piece of clay, and play around with it. It was important to me that the character would come from a real place – I couldn’t think of it as far-fetched or futuristic.
Bregna is ruled by Trevor Goodchild, a benevolent dictator whose rule is absolute but who claims to have the best interests of Bregnans at heart. As Aeon closes in on Trevor – the target of her secret mission – the assassin and the target are struck by a connection to each other.
Marton Csokas, who previously played Celeborn, husband to Galadriel, in “Lord of the Rings,” brings Trevor to life. “Trevor knows a lot more about Aeon than Aeon knows about Trevor,” said the Hungarian-born actor. “There’s something undeniable between the two of them and she has a certain memory or feeling that triggers the past, not that she would necessarily identify it as that.”
Csokas says that Trevor’s ultimate goal is to find a balance between security and liberty. “In some ways, what he is doing to maintain the human race is good – after all, humanity is surviving,” said Csokas. “But, at the same time, he is denying people a certain degree of free will and choice.”
Trevor’s right hand man in ruling Bregna is his brother, Oren Goodchild, played by Jonny Lee Miller. A relationship that has become strained over the years, the brothers’ trust in each other wanes as the film progresses. “There’s a bit of a Cain and Abel story in the relationship between Trevor and Oren,” Marton Csokas explains. “There are a lot of dynamics at work. You have a triangle between Trevor, Oren and Aeon that none of them are aware of at the beginning of the story. When Aeon suddenly reappears to Trevor, it unleashes a chain of events that takes all of them on a life-altering journey.”
Academy Award nominee Sophie Okonedo plays Sithandra, Aeon’s protégé. “My character is a soldier and completely in awe of Aeon. She’s very focused, like a machine, and not one to improvise or change direction, as Aeon does,” says Okonedo. “For Sithandra, Aeon is a perfect person whom she idolizes. As Aeon makes her choices, Sithandra doesn’t quite know how to cope with it. She’s not very good at coping with any sort of emotion.”
In the film, Sithandra has elected to modify her body in order to be a more effective soldier. She has surgically altered her feet to make them hands, or “fands” (a contraction of “feet-for-hands”), and Okonedo learned to walk in a new way – as if on hands. “I experimented and put on music and played around trying to find a different way of walking,” said Okonedo. “It’s much tougher than you’d think.”
Okonedo trained for four to five hours a day for five weeks, focusing on flexibility and balance. Yoga, gymnastics, running, cycling, and wire harness practice were part of the daily regimen. “I’ve never in my life played anything like this,” said Okonedo. “I never had to learn to fight or train so intensely. It’s all completely new to me. When I got the part, I didn’t let them know that I was quite scared of heights, but as an actor, you tend to say, `Yes, I can do everything!’ So, on my first day on set, I was raised 50 feet in the air on a wire. It certainly cured my fear of heights quickly.”
Frances McDormand plays The Handler, Aeon’s commander in the Monican rebellion. “She’s an ambiguous character,” says McDormand, noting that The Handler controls Aeon, though Aeon is fighting for personal freedom. “How much of the plot does she actually know? How much can she direct Aeon, and how much is left in Aeon’s hands? What is predestined, and what can they control? I think that ambiguity fits the themes of the film.”
One final character holds the key to the Goodchilds’ hold on Bregna and the answers to all of Aeon’s questions. The Keeper, as the name suggests, is the individual Trevor and Oren have entrusted with accessing and securing information on of all Bregna’s citizens. Unknown to all but the Goodchilds, the Keeper lives in a floating memorial high above Bregna.
Academy Award nominee Pete Postlethwaite sees his character as someone who has rebelled against the government he serves for a long time: “The Keeper is someone who has fought against the system, really,” Postlethwaite says. “Generations ago, he saw this was the wrong way to go. I think he decided to stay alive so long in the hope and with the knowledge that there were people still available who could put this right, one of them being Aeon Flux.”
Training
After gaining 30-plus pounds for her Academy Award-winning turn in “Monster,” Theron was eager to take on the physical challenges of “Aeon Flux.” “I got very excited about how far I could actually push myself, and how many new things I could learn to do on my own on this film to really physically feel like I was this character,” she says. “I got excited about pushing my body to that limit.”
Theron trained for almost four months prior to the start of production. “When I began training, I hadn’t done anything with my body for two years,” says Theron. “I had to lose weight and build muscle, get some strength back. I wanted to get to a place where I felt stronger and more capable of doing the things that I had to do in this film.
To lose the final pounds and build long, lean muscle, Theron combined gymnastics, trampoline and acrobatic work and dance with elements of karate, judo, Capoiera and Krav Maga, the Israeli fighting style. The aim was to build flexibility and strength.
Theron insists that stunt work is a necessary part of finding the character. “It was important to me – if I could believe in myself doing these things, then it wasn’t so unrealistic,” says Theron. “That was a question that I asked myself every time we did a stunt. The physical aspect sometimes is so much more important than my lines of dialogue – and that’s the case for a character as physical as Aeon. I know I am being helped at times by a wire and mats – there has to be a security blanket – but I think it is important to get as close as you possibly can to doing it yourself. I think it helps tremendously with playing a character like this.”
“We were very fortunate that we got Charlize,” said stunt coordinator Charlie Croughwell. “She is as dedicated, strong, and as capable as you could hope for in any actor. Aeon Flux is a human being with a purpose and a great deal of knowledge, skill and discipline. Charlize’s physicality is very flexible.”
Theron trained with Cirque du Soleil gymnast Terry Bartlett, who guided her through the acrobatic, trampoline, and wire work. Mika Saito was on-hand to help with strength training and other stunt work.
Bregna
The characters of Aeon Flux live in the walled city of Bregna, ruled by Trevor and Oren Goodchild. The filmmakers’ vision for Bregna was far from the overpolluted, gritty future worlds seen in other films; rather, they strove for a hyper-sanitized environment – one that dissembles the sinister intentions of its rulers.
“I wanted to portray an organic world, one that’s less hardware-driven, “ says the director, Karyn Kusama. “I wanted to create a sunny, beautiful world on the surface, where we discover secrets and strains as we venture deeper into the story.”
As Kusama and her production designer, Andrew McAlpine, began their process of designing a world four centuries in the future, they first looked to history. “To understand 400 years in the future, you have to look some 400 years in the past,” said McAlpine. “You discover that many things have remained the same – like utensils, tools, plates, beds, shelves, windows – and you start moving from there.”
Bregna is a walled city that protects its citizens from nature. The last city on earth, it is surrounded by overgrowth. It’s a small, protected place with no interaction with the outside world.
The filmmakers found what they were looking for – that combination of yesterday and tomorrow – in the buldings and gardens of Berlin and Potsdam, Germany. The Bauhaus architectural style, which Walter Gropius popularized as director of the Bauhaus art school from 1919 to 1928, exemplified what Kusama wanted to achieve on screen. The Bauhaus belief, that the union of art and technology could bring about new social conditions through the creation of new visual surroundings, underscores the principles that guided Kusama’s choices in creating the look of the highly controlled and contained city-state of Bregna, where ordinary citizens are constantly under surveillance and nothing is quite as it appears to be.
With clean, unbroken lines, the geometric modernism of Bauhaus design fit perfectly with the stylized but organic look of “Aeon Flux.” “We’re looking at the most beautiful thinking on form anywhere,” McAlpine said of the Bauhaus Museum, which doubles as Una Flux’s apartment complex. “It’s the last building Gropius ever built and we’re working with some of the most pure architecture imaginable. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”
Location managers Christian Alexander Klempert and Matthias Braun combed the buildings and gardens of Berlin and Potsdam, and found an almost surreal combination of stunning modern and historic architectural wonders. “There were astonishing places that had never been photographed, ranging from the 1700s to the 1960s,” says McAlpine, noting that, until recently, these places had been behind the Iron Curtain. “We had access to amazing 400-year-old architecture as well as incredible modern designs, all of which had beautiful curvatures and geometric shapes to them.” The filmmakers’ chosen locations include the parks and palaces of Potsdam’s Schloss Sanssouci and Buga Park and Berlin’s Maria Regina Martyrum.
Peter Chung, creator of the animated series, feels that the filmmaker’s dedication to “getting it right” paid off. “In Berlin, I saw the crew filming Charlize on several sets, all of which were in real historical structures with all the texture and functionality of lived-in spaces,” says Chung. “The locations of the movie look and feel very real, while seeming to have been lifted straight out of the animation.”
That was exactly the impact such images had on Frances McDormand. “Karyn used Berlin’s amazing architecture to create a stunning filmic statement,” she says. “It was really the perfect city to film this film.”
One location took on a special importance for the filmmakers. A majority of the film’s exterior and interior government complex scenes were filmed at Tierheim, a privately funded animal rescue shelter and veterinary center outside Berlin. Members of the crew, who enjoyed shooting at the location and wanted to give something back, organized a fundraiser for the shelter, which depends on donations to survive. A group of singers and musicians on the crew began meeting on their only day off to practice for a one-night performance at Berlin’s Hard Rock Cafe. The sold-out show, attended and supported by the rest of the cast and crew, raised more than $3,000 for the no-kill shelter.
Aeon Flux (2005)
Directed by: Karyn Kusama
Starring: Charlize Theron, Frances McDormand, Marton Csokas, Pete Postlethwaite, Johny Lee Miller, Caroline Chikezie, Amelia Warner, Sophie Okonedo, Nikolai Kinski, Yangzom Brauen
Screenplay by: Phil Hay, Matt Manfredi
Production Design by: Andrew McAlpine
Cinematography by: Stuart Dryburgh
Film Editing by: Jeff Gullo, Peter Honess, Plummy Tucker
Costume Design by: Beatrix Aruna Pasztor
Set Decoration by: Bernhard Henrich
Art Direction by: Marco Bittner Rosser, John Frankish, Gary Freeman, Sarah Horton, Andreas Olshausen
Music by: Graeme Revell
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sequences of violence and sexual content.
Distributed by: Paramount Pictures
Release Date: December 2, 2005
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