Æon Flux (1991)

“That which does not kill us, makes us stranger.” — Trevor Goodchild

The French philosopher Michel Foucault once wrote, “The gaze that sees is the gaze that dominates.” Though originally intended to describe the biological reductionist philosophy of modern medicine, this phrase could easily serve as the maxim of Æon Flux. Combining the far and varied influences of New Wave cinema, artistic expressionism, Franco-Belgian comics, and spiritual gnosticism, the 1991 avant-garde animated series follows the exploits of a mysterious dominatrix-cum-agent saboteur and her authoritarian nemesis/lover Trevor Goodchild – two opposing forces clashing as the pretenses of morality and justice are left morphed and unrecognizable in their wake.

When animator Peter Chung was first approached by Colossal Pictures' Japhet Asher in the early nineties to direct a series of shorts for MTV’s experimental animation block Liquid Television, Chung seized the opportunity to break out of the mold of his previous work on such shows as Transformers and Klasky Csupo’s Rugrats and create a series that was all its own. Spanning six animated shorts and ten half-hour episodes, Chung’s magnum opus eschewed convention and defied the trite assumptions of what was possible to achieve through network animation. Far from being simply enthralling on a visual level, Æon Flux was at once a shrewd deconstruction of Hollywood sensationalism and a savvy examination of the power inherent in the act of both seeing and being seen. Nowhere is this more succinctly exemplified than in the series’ opening title sequence; an errant fly, skittering along the rim of an unconscious eye, only to be trapped in the folds of lashes. The muscles of the iris part, rolling forward and tightening in focus of its prey. Punctuated by a discordant sting, this image is the essence of Æon Flux made literal: an unflinching force of violence and seduction, manifest in an entity whose true motives are all but alien and inscrutable to the audience.

This core visual would later go on to bookend the full length title sequence for Æon Flux’s ten episode run of half-hour episodes. While the repartee between Æon and Trevor serves as a centrepiece amid the sequence’s dynamic visuals and idiosyncratic score, their words reveal only the most perfunctory slivers of their relationship and intent. Triple entendres later revealed as feints in a unending game of wills, where the truth more often lies far from what is said, but at periphery of what is seen.

A discussion with Æon Flux Creator PETER CHUNG and Composer & Sound Designer DREW NEUMANN.



What were the first production meetings for the Aeon Flux title sequence like? What sort of themes and ideas from the shorts and series did you want to incorporate in the show’s sequences?

Peter: You know, it’s funny. I always regretted having to create that sequence [for the half-hour series]. In the end, I think it turned out well, but I actually always prefered the Liquid Television version of the title sequence, which is just a close-up of the eye with the fly crawling up the…

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