Aeon Flux

[Kernan]

Paramount is attempting to revive Aeon Flux for its DVD launch this coming Tuesday so it's a good chance to revisit yet another sad failure of modern Hollywood to properly tap cult material for a mainstream feature...
http://www.smart-popcorn.com/reviews/1129/

Yes that is a link to my own review which is a little whorey self promotion but it happens to the only one on this site so....

The DVD for Aeon Flux is a dazzling single disc presentation filled with features, five behind the scenes featurettes and two commentaries, one by Writers Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi and the other by Charlize Theron and Producer Gale Ann Hurd. Oddly Director Karyn Kusama is not involved with the commentaries or much of anything to do with the DVD. She may be busy with another project but it seems curious that she has no part in the DVD.
Writer Phil Hay is certainly involved. He is doing some press for the DVD including this wide ranging interview with chud.com....

http://www.chud.com/

In the interview Hay mentions that Karyn Kusama has a directors cut of the film that is 25 minutes longer and edited to a much different beat than the theatrical version. Hay blames the films marketing for the films box office failure claiming marketers made the thoughtful sci fi flick into a bang bang action picture.
In addressing critics of the film Hay takes the usual company line on films not screened for critic, he attacks the critics who deign to mention that the film was not screened for critics. Hay claim critics write bad reviews of movies that are not screened for them in advance because critics hate watching movies with the average movie goer. Horse shit!
In reading many of the Rotten Tomatos reviews of Aeon Flux critics are not complaining about not seeing the film in advance. The critics mention this fact as a reaffirmation of why films are not screened for critics, because they suck and the studio knows it. The critics writing about Aeon Flux simply mention that Aeon Flux confirmed the stereotype of films held from critics.
One thing Hay fails to address is how far the movie strayed from the TV series. As a fan I felt that the movie went too far away from what made the TV show so brilliant. That definitely compounded my disappointment in the film.
Despite my disappointment I would certainly want to check out a directors cut of Aeon Flux. If what Phil Hay says in the interview is true then maybe there was a whole different Aeon Flux movie out there than the one that failed so miserably back in December and will be released on Tuesday.
_________________
Kernan

[Thom]

You know, I was thinking about Aeon Flux just the other day... And I gotta think maybe there just is/was no commercially viable way to make this movie. The source material is, I think, too eccentric to pull in a mainstream audience, but then any attempt to make the movie more palatable (as was the case) turns the whole thing into a generic Sci-Fi blah-fest.

Nothing against the source material. Not my thing but I can see how it can be appreciated. Just goes back to the whole commerce-versus-art thing, as summed up in one of my favorite quotes:

"Commerce and art are always trying to make love with each other...
but sometimes commerce fucks art and leaves it feeling somehow cheapened."
- Unknown

[MotionPictures]

There's a slightly more polite version of that in the 2002 Nicholas Nickleby, as Mrs. Crummles says to her theatrical husband: "There is a great struggle going on between Art and Commerce. And Art is in its usual position ... of jeopardy."

[Thom]