Aeon Flux: Aeon Flux (Pilot)

I’m not sure if this was meant to be a short or a long episode. The longs were produced for MTV and the shorts were sort of trailers by Liquid Television. This episode fits somewhere in between. Personally, I think it was the original MTV trailer and let me tell you – It’s the best ever. This episode has everything, sex, violence, intrigue and a thought provoking script.

The show opens with a blood curdling battle between a few thousand Breen soldiers and our lovely Aeon Flux. Needless to say, Aeon is winning. She seems to dispatch death with every bullet fired. She shoots from the hip and is far too accurate to be believable. She looks dammed sexy doing it though.

The turquoise soldier’s (male and female) drop like ninepins as Aeon rushes to her goal, the apartment of a Breen politician. The battle sequences are so miraculous that you just can’t help wonder if they are intended to be comical.

One particular far-fetched confrontation involved Aeon needing to climb a 50-foot wall to get to a small platform….She fired at it and immediately attracted a guard who started firing at her atop the platform. She dodged the bullets and fired a sort of grappling hook attached to a rope into the chest of the guard. As he died, he fell over the railings and acted as a counterbalance for Aeon to traverse the wall. As she went up, she fired at a multitude of guards below her, killing each one. Then she runs down a corridor and, firing both guns, kills hundreds of Breen soldiers with each elegant sweep of her arms.

Even I was starting to get a little uncomfortable at the excessive and gratuitous violence given out by Aeon as she tore her way through the Breen military installation. As if to bring this point home more effectively, we are then subjected to views of dead Breens piled high all around. Their blood covering the floor like a leak from a giant tomato-sauce tanker. Aeon paddles through, picking off stray Breen soldiers as she goes.

One such soldier is standing alone amid this death and destruction. She notices that one of her comrades is badly injured but alive and takes of his mask so that he might die in comfort. She then takes off her mask and we see her beautiful face cry at the calamity of her situation. Both she and the other injured soldier seem to have a sort of skin infection. Their faces are scored with blue veins. Aeon then runs past and shoots her. The beautiful soldier with blue veins falls to the ground.

As she falls we see Trevor standing on a small island. A river of blood washes past him and we see his plaster, yes a plaster, floating past. He walks to the edge of the river of blood and notices a blue beetle like insect. He bends down to pick it up and, as the lady soldier falls dead, he places the beetle into a small opening in his finger.

Aeon meanwhile, discovers two soldiers fighting. It seems that there has been a battle between Monican and Breen soldiers over an attaché case. There are only two soldiers left and they are bashing the hell out of each other. Aeon is intrigued and wonders what the case contains. She despatched the two fighting soldiers without much effort and in doing so makes you wonder which side she is on! If she’s a Monican, then surely she should have helped her comrade. She doesn’t, she brutally fires about a hundred rounds of ammunition into him.

As she examines the contents of the case, she notices a Breen soldier approaching. He is obviously ill and exhibits the tell tale blue veins on his face. Aeon absentmindedly empties the contents (purple liquid) of a flask onto the floor and places a grenade into a flask. You get the feeling that the purple liquid is perhaps some sort of antidote for the blue vein illness.

The soldier fires a shot at Aeon who dodges the bullet and throws the flask into the corner of the room. The half-dazed soldier follows the flask but doesn’t quite manage to get there. He collapses, exhausted, and looks at the flask. It seems to change shape in front of his eyes, it gradually changes into a fish (?) then the grenade explodes.

Aeon meanwhile, rushes off to find the rooms of her target, a Breen politician. As she approaches, she steps on a nail. The nail partially lodges in the heal of her boot. Her next complete step would see the nail penetrate her foot. Aeon climbs a ladder and then crawls along a ledge. The nails is still lodged in her heal.

When Aeon reaches the window of the politician, she notices a half-dressed woman walk by the politicians’ bed. The politician (an ugly old bloke – aren’t they all) is lying dead on the bed. The supposed assassin walks past and into another room.

The next scene is really strange but it does seem to explain a lot. The lady assassin sits in front of a VERY wide screen TV. Then Trevor enters the room and takes off the plaster on his finger. Then he opens a wound in the side of his finger and takes out a little blue beetle. The beetle drops into a glass. Then, as if my stomach couldn’t take any more, Trevor uses a knife to scrape, what look like beetle droppings out of the wound in his finger and spreads them on a cracker!! He then EATS the cracker!! Euuuwww!

On the TV we see a report of the deaths of all those Breen soldiers, it shows some of their relatives and explains the problem of the blue beetle spreading germs by biting its victim. The bite is apparently lethal. The lady assassin, concerned for Trevor’s well being, approaches him. Trevor gestures that he has had an inoculation and next we see the lady assassin disrobed and presumably receiving the same treatment (no rude bits were shown).

Aeon watches from outside through the window. She then takes out her gun and is just about to jump inside and start shooting when the nail that was lodged in her heal penetrates her foot.

Aeon screams in pain and falls off the ledge to her death. CRUNCH!

At this point you might be forgiven for thinking that the show was over. However, it just gets stranger! …..

After we see Aeons dead and crumpled body, we see a computer operative (in the Monican Republic) notice that one of the Monican agents, Aeon Flux, has expired. He presses a button on a console and Aeons body is suddenly incinerated as is her apartment. It’s as if they have wiped all trace of her from the planet.

Meanwhile life in Bregna takes on a new purpose. Children are inoculated, and posters carrying messages about the foul and deadly beetles are everywhere. Trevor is in the media with his friend (the lady assassin) posing for pictures – with a baby! (where did that come from?) and a statue of the old ugly politician is taken down. It seems that a crisis has been averted and that Trevor is now the hero of the hour.

Our poor dead Aeon however seems to have moved on to a new life. She is whisked away, stripped and placed on a sort of platform raised above the clear blue sea below a calm sunny sky. She gently pulls a lever and a weird looking robot bubbles up from the water and extends his tongue (seriously – honest, I haven’t smoked anything in aaaagggeees!). Then he erm….. erm…. extends his tongue and erm…. erm… tickles Aeons feet!!! I suppose it must be Aeons idea of heaven!

As if that wasn’t enough, we are then taken to a magazine store where we see a number of ‘specialist’ magazines on show. A young bloke takes one called EA-2 which has a special feature of feet and a picture of Aeon Flux tickling her foot with a feather on the front cover! The pervert buys the magazine and drives off in his car – a normal car, by that I mean one like yours and mine (though mine has go-faster stripes and mag wheels).

We are then left wondering if the death of Monican agents and the resulting heavenly experience is the subject of stories and pictorials of our very own fetish magazines. Works for me!

Wadda blast!

46,202 out of 10 (extra 200 points for the foot massage stuff).
What did you think?

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The “Pilot” episode review is © 1999 – 2019 Tony Fawl.
Not for reproduction without the authors express permission.

The Aeon Flux names, characters, pictures and everything else associated with the series are the property of Peter Chung, Chung, MTV Networks, Colossal Pictures and Liquid Television. All rights reserved.