Aeon Flux wish list

A fresh new chapter lies ahead, will Aeon be older? Overall technology has improved as evidenced by the DVD boxset enhancements, so I imagine Peter and co. will take advantage of new avenues enabling them to continue to tell interesting stories in novel ways. Matriculated is a good example of whats to come, and that's 3 years old now.

Peter's mentioned several times his concern about the varying consistancy in the way Aeon and other characters are drawn, so perhaps partnerships have formed meanwhile that will ensure a more accurate visual representation.

I've been watching the DVD, absorbing each episode like I could never do before (I'm still embarrassed that I forgot that Una is definitely NOT Aeon's sister in the series), and somehow I feel the new episodes will not be like the old ones.

So much has changed since Aeon first came out. Beavis and Butthead first gained noteriety around the same time, and what is acceptable and/or shocking has shifted quite a bit since then.

I'm quite psyched to see new Aeon enter the world mind, and place total trust in the artist who brought her to us!

And Barb, I'm totally with you on hearing Drew Newman's music again.

Maybe redue the demiurge so it fits his vision. Keep it off tv and let it go straight to video he doesnt have to worry as much about the content restrictions. Stay far far away from MTV...

Denise and John together again!

Of course, I hope all the originals are there... Denise and John and Mark and Drew. I also hope the overall visual quality increases (the CG touches would be great), but above all I hope the stories stay strong. I suppose my worst fear is that MTV would require the setting to jive with what they put on the big screen, which could really fuck things up.

And secretly, I hope you get to make an episode that takes what they did with the movie and makes a big farce of it. I finally saw that shit here in Tokyo, and even though I expected the worst, I got worse. The least I was hoping for was some good direction to take my mind off of bad writing but I didn't even get that. Peter, write an episode that has Trevor trying make Aeon his first lady... asking for her hand in marriage and a shot at her uterus. I'd love to see what the real Aeon would do.

Let's face it, mtv animation over the past 6 or 7 years has had a life time of three or four episodes. Even their long running series couldn't last. I can't imagine how a new aeon could survive on mtv myself. Where are they going to stick it, between one marathon of the gauntlet and another marathon of the real world?
13 year olds watch mtv for their favorite stars and adults watch it as soft core porn, what place does aeon have in that? No, one show can't change a network audience. It does make me wonder what kind of plans they could have for it. Maybe rent it out to cartoon network like the WB and FOX have been doing. Or comedy central like where MTV sent those two animated shows about college kids. One was actually pretty good.
My second guess, is that their going to copy the success of adult swim and try to produce their own late night animation block. That idea intrigues me. MTV does have the potential of good things, I've seen it, maybe they can bring an Aeon/the maxx/the head amout of intrigue to the large masses of preteen whores.
Swwwweeeeeeeeet.

What I wish is that the new episodes be on a channel I get, and that they be just as good as the old ones, with new bizarre and wonderful characters, creatures, robots and gadgets, sex and psychology, Drew Neumann, and a brand-new opening title sequence. And that the higher-ups don't cut out any of the naughty bits (ouch!).

they DO use old cartoon characters on some of the other shows... could use Ms. Flux on the Brak show or Space Ghost?

But beyond the wishes I do wonder how they come up with the ideas for those scripts. What approach they will take, because whatever it is, I know it will surprise me, but not entirely. I'll recognize it as some subject I've considered on some other level, and that's what I'm really wishing to see. Something that will take me to another level as that series always did. I just feel positive about that.

I only hope the writers don't come here and feel frustrated because they're working on some other direction entirely. Wishes are just wishes and not necessarily good ideas, lol.

And Drew Newman's music really is so much of the series to me, I'd want him back for sure. I think as long as you get that crowd of people into a room together, they're going to produce some solid gold entertainment. I know Peter probably had his share of headbutting with the other writers and directors, I really dug Japhet Asher's and Peter Gaffney's take on things.

Hell, just the idea of a new Aeon series feels like a granted wish for me!

And whom more-available, appropriate, or more-appealing to measure their respective (mutually-exclusive or otherwise) "dispositions" against than one-another: for people like them, like either of them, it's really where the rubber meets the road. And it is much out of a mutual recognition of what the alternative of avoiding the other (and therefore the very opportunity to prove anything meaningful to either of them) would have to amount to. The moot impunity of cowardice before either or both of their own insufferable lights!

And anyhow, a proper, pure eugenics should only consider the question of whose-demise-versus-whose, in the case of the Custodians vis-a-vis their human hosts, with a pure equanimity: though the Custodian's conscience is artificial, it's is still a conscience, nonetheless - and, as such, requires that we equivocate completely when we consider whether it matters or what it means to, in effect, supplant and to obliterate what were formerly only native human conscience via the introduction of the Custodian species in the first place. Perhaps Trevor Goodchild had something else in mind besides creating the Custodians as for the benefit of Man. Perhaps it were the other way around.

You could, on the other hand, claim that it has the ability to learn without the ability to break it's inherent code. Like say a human was born with the genetics of socialization according to one mans standards, and was unable to break them, but instead developed a working personality around and in-between those bindings. Story wise, this could be done with the first child of two custodian possessed parents, provided the custodian were able to imprint on genetics. It makes you wonder how a mind would develop without the capability of breaking the slightest, or stupidest, of rules. Isn't that how were able to form an identity? I mean, look at Aeon, who appears to have a perfect grasp on who she is as a person, and she does so by not working within anyone else’s frame work, or at least being consciously aware of the frame works she‘s in.
Anyways. INTERESTING!!!

Taa, da da dada, dada.... (Aeon's theme.)

Chas, dreamlike. yeah, that's the right word. I wonder if in dreams we linger long on visual aspects of a situation and not the verbal world we're all so immersed in everyday. I still think of a passage in one of Carlos Castaneda's books where he is explained by one of the wizards that the worlds reality is described to us by our constant inner dialog and to get past that to another level of reality we have to learn to shut off the inner dialog and think within the spaces devoid of words.

But then again look how many words I've used to convey thatthought, whereas one segment of animation going what, maybe 3 minutes without dialog will do the same.

The question is, I suppose it takes writers to come up with worldless scripts?

It's nice to get some appreciation for Matriculated-- there was so much negative reaction from people who didn't get it. People seem to either hate it or love it; I'll be very frank - consciously or not, fairly or not, someone's reaction to the film always gives me some insight into their personality. It's been heartening that fellow artists whose own work I admire have been (very) enthusiastic. On the other hand, viewers who said they preferred Dark Fury... well I hate to tell them that I don't consider that a compliment (but they already knew that).

Barb, I guess you mean "wordless". A character can stand still and talk with minimal animation and convey complex ideas through dialogue which would be extremely difficult to try to communicate visually. But I find that ideas conveyed verbally reach our brains in a more overt, conscious manner. Using language is an acquired skill, honed by culture, history and institutions. I'm a visual artist first and foremost. By that I mean that I resist the notion that concepts need be inextricably tied to words which have been invented to signify them.

Viewers who think that films without dialogue can't have anything to say are like listeners who think a piece of music's meaning is contained in the lyrics.

Reading the above post, I'm struck by how intelligent and creative you are. Not just visually, but also with your words.
And specifically your ideas.
I had to read the above post about 3 times to take it all in :)

Of course I always knew that you would be a smart guy. Aeon was an unusually smart show, besides the immediate sexyness of it. But the former may have been what actually made it even sexier.
Right now I'm reminded how smart the show always was, even before they ever spoke a word.

Thank you for your response, and my fingers are crossed for a successful new Aeon.

So with that in mind, I'd argue that logic is completely separate from semantics, and that language has nothing to do with organized thought or reason. After all, people brought up without any language lose that function of their brain, but are no less intelligent per se. But I do think that language can loop back onto things like logic and reason, and make distinguishing them pretty difficult.

So I'd argue that it's the mental skills that we start out with, not language. Language is like a tower we ascend as we grow, but it can be hard to climb back down to those wordless levels of pure thought, especially if you're afraid of heights.

Has a lot to say about the fundamentals of language.

Impressions of the book later, after I've reread it.

The first and last ten minutes of this interview touch on the inherent capacity of the mind to reason (in this talk, that is mostly framed in terms of moral calculation). I'd like to believe in Pinker's thesis, but it would seem impossible to prove, in that the only real life example we have of highly organized thought is our own, which is driven by and expressed in language. OK, I'll have to read his books now.

(I find that discussion very relevant to the thought experiment of Matriculated, where the robot runner is in fact, an intelligent, sentient mind built on a different model from our own. Its brain reasons on the basis of numbers-- which is an idea I'd originally wished to include, but which would have been even more inaccessible than the visual-symbolic dream "language" I devised for the VR sequence. Also, the Krellian accelerated-evolution brain-boost in Forbidden Planet is something I'd always wanted to see actually portrayed from the subject's point of view. The selfish vs. altruistic agenda of the humans in assisting the robot's mind-expansion also fits nicely into Pinker's discussion of evolutionary psychology. By the way, I'm revisiting these themes as I develop my Terminator episode.)

As my two opposing viewpoints stated in the above posts suggest, I'm ambivalent about language's role in shaping thought. I know that I'm able to observe events and understand them instinctively, yet I'll admit that my childhood acquisition of language has provided me with the tools to organize my understanding in complex ways that would be unimaginable without words. At the same time, those very words become a trap when they are regarded as possessing any truth in themselves, rather than as mere indicators of something real beyond abstract symbols. In the same way that the flag is sacred only to those who have chosen to invest it with value beyond its woven strands of colored thread.

Matt, you're right that AF is rooted in the view that society and morality are artificial structures invented and exploited by political forces. (This is contrary to the "eternal struggle between the cosmic forces of good and evil" paradigm that is the basis of so much popular mythology--and I'm sorry to the older regulars here who have to keep seeing me harp on this beaten-to-death point.)

When considering the ideas that are being brought up here, this is the kind of thing I keep wondering about - limitations.