FURIOUS nads! by The One True b!X

With each new commercial or trailer for the Æon Flux movie, I become more and more convinced that it will be unrecognizable to those of us who actually recall the animated versions which preceded it a decade or so ago.

This evening I finally got around to wondering whether or not those originals were available on DVD, as they properly ought to be.

Lo and behold, it turns out that this Tuesday brings with it the release of Æon Flux - The Complete Animated Collection, a three-disc set which, all told, comes in at over three hours worth of material.

What I fully expect to be missing from the film is the sheer (a)moral ambiguity of the originals, and the headache-inducing ways in which any given character (of those few which actually carried over from any given episode into any other) would not necessarily come across consistently.

Not because the creators were lazy, but because it just seemed to be part of what they were doing.

It would seem that amongst the various definitions for an Æon (or aeon or eon) is that it was considered to be ” a divine power or nature emanating from the Supreme Being and playing various roles in the operation of the universe” — and that amongst the “higher” such powers or natures were “Mind, Reason, Power, Truth, and Life.”

(Both of those apparently come from the 1913 Websters which is included in most online dictionaries. That same source also is cited for this: “Eons were considered to be emanations sent forth by God from the depths of His grand solitude to fulfill various functions in the material and spiritual universe.”)

All of which fairly neatly sums up the dynamics at play in any given episode of the Æon originals which aired on MTV, which may have been the single greatest contribution MTV’s ever made to my own personal cultural history.

Any given episode or installment of the originals can be considered some sort of nearly stream-of-consciousness meditation upon some combination of mind, reason, power, truth, and life.

In an “all the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players” sort of way, it didn’t much matter which role any particular character was playing in that meditation. One could argue, in fact, that the Æons were in flux, hence the name.

It’s not particularly likely that I’ll see the film when it’s released at the start of December, although I may rent it when the time comes, to see just how far short it falls of the originals.

But at least, in this Thanksgiving week, I can be thankful that the originals hit the DVD shelves in a mere two days’ time.