Female superheroes are notoriously difficult to pull off especially, it seems, when they’re fronted by Oscar-winning actresses. Halle Berry got a kicking for Catwoman and then Charlize Theron turned up in the "hilariously daft" futuristic thriller Aeon Flux (based on the MTV cartoon). Girlfight helmer Karyn Kusama took most of the punches though and the film took a dive at the box office.

A New Aeon

While the story is flat, the visuals hit you right between the eyes. The Locations Of Aeon Flux reveals that Kusama initially wanted to shoot the film in Brasilia, Brazil, which was built in the 50s as a model of the future. However that wasn’t possible so the crew relocated to Berlin, Germany to exploit the city’s eclectic architecture and give the landscape the feel of a restful utopia that contrasts with the steely grey vistas usually associated with sci-fi. We hear a little more about this vision in Creating A World, but mostly this featurette delves into the peripheral issues of designing a post-apocalyptic future.

Screenwriters Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi explain that the biggest challenge in transferring the cartoon to the big screen was the "aggressively anti-narrative" approach of series creator Peter Chung. Kusama talks about wanting to "honour its weirdness and spirit" while Theron says the script resonated with her because of its emphasis on "the realisation and the importance of death" - not that she’s morbid or anything. Co-stars Sophie Okonedo and Pete Postlethwaite chip in too.

According to a featurette on costume design, Kusama took her inspiration from Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1970 drama The Conformist. The general idea, we’re told, was to have the women be "more elegant and less overtly sexual than the cartoon vision." The costumes had to be stretchy though because, as we see in The Stunts Of Aeon Flux, Theron and Okonedo had to bend their bodies in unlikely ways. Cameras follow Theron into the gym where she practices the Brazilian martial art of capoeira and producer Gale Anne Hurd gives us the usual spiel about the star doing "95 percent" of her own stunts. The final featurette is a redundant look at 'The Craft Of The Set Photographer' who basically shows off his range of long lenses. (Freud would shake his head.)

Fighting The System

Theron talks more about her training regime in a commentary with producer Gale Anne Hurd and hints at a little competition between her and Okonedo; "We were both really scared when we were training separately that one person would be really hardcore, superhuman... and I would be dragging my ass behind her." Of course there were other problems with this film that ran much deeper and both commentaries address these (albeit inadvertently). Hurd gives an overly earnest appraisal of the script and its themes, insisting that, "a lot of the issues are really relevant to the world we live in today," ie cloning. However, she doesn’t acknowledge any comedy in Theron being able to catch flies in her eyelashes.

In the second track, co-writers Hay and Manfredi very politely criticise the studio suits for coming down on some of their "crazy ideas". For instance, they thought about killing off Aeon Flux at the end of the first act and then bringing her back in homage to the cartoon series where she is repeatedly killed and reborn. However the studio didn’t see that as the basis for a "viable commercial film." It’s obvious the duo aren’t entirely happy with the final film, one of them noting, "I think it had an opportunity to be much more affecting."

Although it’s difficult to recommend the film itself, the DVD extras do provide a few fascinating insights into the struggle of trying to adapt an experimental story for the mainstream. Unsurprisingly it’s a state of constant flux.

EXTRA FEATURES