Friday, October 18, 2013

Toons After Dark: Aeon Flux (1991)

Aeon Flux was one of two series spun off from MTV's 1991 anthology series, Liquid Television. Of course, the other one was Beavis & Butt-Head, and the only other thing the two series have in common is that both graduated to the big screen. However, the feature film version of Aeon was a live-action film starring Charlize Theron, which didn't do very well at the box office.

Animator Peter Chung had worked on Nickelodeon's Rugrats, but wanted to do his own thing. In fact, you can probably detect a certain similarity in the designs, although MTV didn't contract Klasky-Csupo, producers of Rugrats, to help with their show. Aeon was as far removed from anything else on Liquid Television as you could possibly get. The six short features would lead to the regular series a year later, but that lasted just 5 episodes, and was brought back three years after that for 10 more. The common thread was a glaring lack of continuity. Aeon was being killed off in every episode, supposedly because Chung didn't think there'd be a need for further episodes. So you can say that this particular gimmick was ripped off by South Park, which launched just a couple of years after Aeon ended.

Here's the open:



Chung was better off getting a comic book deal.

Rating: C.

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