Not Just Hot Sciffy Chicks with Guns
I saw two movies recently, AEON FLUX and ULTRAVIOLET, which the adverts made look like typical lonely teen fanboy fare: by which I mean (sorry, lonely teen fanboys) movies made merely to show off the athletic bodies of beautiful women cavorting through gymnastic mayhem. I was pleasantly surprised.
Now, I freely admit it is easier to be pleasantly surprised when one’s expectations are low. If you go into a film thinking it will be lemons, and it does not taste half so sour, you come out thinking that it was almost sweet.
MILD SPOILERS
Not that there was not gymnastic mayhem. I have a mix of elevated tastes and low-class tastes, which all people I know have in some proportion or another. I don’t know anyone who does not have a soft spot in his heart for some trashy or childish diversion, no matter how refined his taste in other fields. Adults who read Batman comic books can’t really look down their noses at adult who revel in Bug Bunny cartoons.
Not that there was not fan service. There was. Both Charlize Theron and Milla Jovovich are very easy on the eyes, and decking them out in futuristic skintight leather certainly did not drive away the lonely teen fanboy movie-going dollars.
Perhaps a psychologist can explain why watching nubile nymphs play gun-toting Amazons using bullet-dodging wire-fu to slay dozens of men with the absurd abandon of Roland or man-slaughtering Achilles is alluring, or perhaps it is better not to hear the explanation, lest the fun be bleached away from it.
But what surprised me was that both stories had a plot, and a fairly decent plot at that, and plots based on at least somewhat feasible science-fictional premises. Each tale moved along at a brisk pace, with nicely Hitchcockian plot twists. Call me gullible, but I was impressed with the plot surprise when Violent in ULTRAVIOLET opens her currier’s package to see what the secret thing she is carrying is; I was even more impressed with the plot twist when Aeon Flux looks into the eyes of a newborn baby in a strange apartment.
Each story had acting better than I supposed it would be. It wasn’t Shakespeare, but I actually liked the theme of missing lost love being found again, despite time and death and hate, in AEON FLUX, or the helpless affection of Garth the bio-handiman in ULTRAVIOLET who helps the emotionally scarred widow-vampire death-assassin babe. It should come as no surprise that Charlize Theron turns in a better performance than Milla Jovovich, but, then again, the plot gave her more to do.
The special effects in ULTRAVIOLENT were given more play, because the fight scenes were more outlandish. The shot of Violet using her ‘gravity inducer’ to ride a motorcycle up the sheer side of the building while attack helicopters spray the glass windows ‘under’ her screaming tires with machinegun bullets is worth the price of admission by itself. If you pay matinee prices, of course.
Both stories were similar in mood and theme: futuristic dystopias ruined by biotechnology gone bad; treasons and betrayals and superspy ninja stuff and lots of bullets flying. The scene in ULTRAVIOLET where the futuristic vampires all pull their n-dimensional swords into existence of the thin air was just Way Cool. The scene in AEON FLUX where Aeon’s foe must decide where his loyalties lie in a murderous three-way battle caught me by surprise by how well acted it was. The same character in the original animated cartoon on MTV was a scrawny, ugly creature, here was appealing, human, and devoted. The cartoon was pervaded by the hip nihilism entirely absent from the movie, which was serious, moving, and idealistic.
I liked all the SFnal gimmicks in both films, both the far-fetched and near-fetched. (Is near-fetched a word? What is the opposite of far-fetched?) Some gimmicks nicely subtle: Aeon pours herself a smart-drink that changes color and heats itself after it leaves the pitcher and enters the glass. Some struck me as feasible: neural interface communications, or coded chemicals containing a message in a syringe. Some made for good theater: vampirism as a blood disease, which granted our ninja-cutie speed and strength to fight grown men twice her size. Another idea I like was the n-dimensional pockets where labs or weapons could be hidden, so that the old Horse Opera cliché about a ranger with never-empty six-shooters was feasible. Some gimmicks were semi-mystical: cloning is not reincarnation, but we can grant for the sake of the story that people might remember parts of the lives of their genetic twins.
Call it “Fair-to-Middling SF”, which I define as, about as feasible according to our present knowledge of science as Psychohistory (FOUNDATION by Asimov) Mind-powers (Lensmen Series by EE Doc Smith) Immortality (CITY AND THE STARS by Clarke) Life after death (STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND by Heinlein).
Now, for fair to middling SF, these movies did something I have not seen certain Hard SF books do, books that garner much more serious respect from SF fans. The main point of SF is to show how humanity is changed, how the human condition reacts, to technological changes. I was sure these shoot-’em-ups would lose sight of their human element, but they did not. I was sure they’d insult my intelligence; they did not. AEON FLUX ranks up there with the Big Dogs of serious SF movies, GATTACA or DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL.
Note to Hollywood: If an A list director like Josh Whedan in SERENITY can make a film with a solid speculative SF premise, and also have the gorgeous actresses in tight clothing murdering with abandon bad guys in pistol, knife, and bare-knuckle brawls that we fan-service fanboys have come to love and expect, and still make a movie with depth, and humanity, and plot, and character; and if even a B flick like AEON FLUX can do the same, it shows that the one need not be sacrificed for the other. Movies can have dignity, artistic merit, stature, and, um, hot chicks in catsuits kicking serious butt.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
