The parade of some of the most beautiful actresses in Hollywood continued at Comic-Con International 2005, as Charlize Theron made her first Comic-Con appearance to promote her upcoming sci-fi action flick Æon Flux, from Paramount Pictures.
She was joined on stage by “Æon Flux” creator and animator Peter Chung, producers Gale Anne Hurd and David Gale, director Karyn Kusama (Girl Fight), and actor Marton Csokas, who will be playing Trevor Goodchild, the leader who Flux has been hired to assassinate.
Based on the animated series that ran on MTV’s “Liquid Television” in 1992 and its own ten-episode series in 1995, the feature film was shot in Berlin and other places. The panelists told the audience how they got involved with the project, with Theron saying that she was looking for something “completely different from ‘Monster'”. Before getting into the obligatory question and answer segment, they showed an introductory presentation to get people up to speed on Chung’s character. After a few clips from the animated show, including the memorable title sequence with the fly caught in Flux’s eyelashes, the presentation reel had interviews with Chung, Hurd, Theron and actress Sophie Okonedo.
It then got right into what everyone had been waiting for, footage from the film, which showed far too much information for any one person to absorb, but mainly a lot of Theron in many skimpy costumes running, flying and doing all sorts of contortions and acrobatics. (10% of the audience in attendance lost their virginity during one shot of Theron stretching.*) It’s obviously the most physical role the actress has ever done, but there were three extended sequences that stuck out:
In the first sequence, Theron is seen walking down stairs in a black outfit with a veil covering her face. She walks up to a man and they get into a deep French kiss, during which he passes a tablet to her using his tongue. The camera follows the tablet as it travels down her throat and dissolves, sending some sort of energy through her innards.
After that, there is a scene in which Flux whistles while looking up through a grate, activating dozens of small silver spheres, which roll towards her down the grate and following her before creating a formation against the wall and then blowing it up.
In the last sequence, Theron races Sophie Okonedo through a garden filled with spiked grass, which Okonedo’s character steps on, and Theron leaps and lands face first mere millimeters away from the spikes.
Portions of these scenes can be seen in the upcoming action-packed trailer, and Hurd decided to give the audience a treat by debuting an unfinished version of that trailer at Comic-Con. The trailer begins with Æon Flux jumping off a platform, doing a mid-air flip and landing on another platform, and it gives a good idea of the film’s futuristic look and environments, as well as the amount of action that should be expected.
Æon Flux is scheduled to be released later this year. We’ll have even more with Theron and the creative team behind the film very soon.
Source: Edward Douglas
