Aeon Flux "War" episode analysis

Continuing my new series of breaking down the visual narrative of short films, is the next in the line of shorts from Aeon Flux War. Right from the bat our expectations are subverted by the opening scene. It starts out much like the pilot episode as Aeon Flux assaults a base, leaving piles of bodies in her wake. As she does she notices a door and approaches, this seems like it will be similar to the original pilot until one soldier wakes up and we see him tackle her and hold his gun in a almost phallic position aimed at her as he approaches.

From the director commentary Peter Chang mentions that the goal of this short was to reverse your sympathies and expectations at key climactic moments. So in this scene our sympathy is with Aeon as she tries to flirt her way out of the situation as a friendly approaches from behind to attack him. This moment is something we have seen a thousand times in movies before, our brain almost goes on autopilot and then boom both Aeon and her friend are dead and our sympathies suddenly connect to the goon as he takes his mask off to reveal his face.

The composer of the show also mentioned that they tried making every character have their own musical theme and here we get this epic hero music as he approaches the front of the battlefield and begins killing the enemies as they approach the base. He makes his way through the scene in a really cool way when one guy shoots a grappling hook and when our new protagonist kills him he gets wrapped up in the rope making it taut on both sides. He then Begins to slide down it, killing enemies on both sides.

Once on the ground we hear him approach the enemies base and we hear a gunshot and see a tooth fly off and land in a bottle. He begins to explore the inside of the faccility and we see him approach a door that is slightly open, right before he makes it we run into what will be our next protagonist Romeo. Peter did say he named each one of them and this is the only one I remembered from the commentary, anyway his music is awesome and this interaction and piece of animation is so well done. Peter also mentions that the animator didnt even use reference or rotoscoping which is insane because it looks rotoscoped. 

Romeo quickly deflects a bullet and kills the invader before turning around and counseling a child in the room that the invader was going into before an emergency alarm is set off and we see the men in the base scramble and prepare for a invasion. We see a man sitting in his room painting and then getting some paint on his head before heading out to battle. In both of these situations with the girl and the guy with paint on his head it gives us sympathy for both of these figures and gives us a personal connection and sympathy for them.

So later when we see them die, we feel like something is lost since we the viewer saw another side of them while the enemy that killed them did not. Romeo makes his way to the door and pulls a lever which begins an oil leak on the floor. He makes his way out and we see another cool animated fight scene where he kills four men with knives and then begins to ballet across the ropes killing enemies and jumping on their bodies using them as a staircase to get into the spaceship.

Once inside we get another really cool scene that is very economically shot, we see him approach a group of figures and cut them down 1 by 1 until his forward momentum is stopped suddenly by another character, a female who shoots and kills him. We get a sense that he is still trying to fight as we get a few shots of empty hallways with the sound of his sword and blood on the ground but now we are in the females perspective. 

Another cool moment she takes out some of the men on the ground and rides one of the ropes down as she kills the men protecting their base.  One guy goes to close the hatch door and she kills him but is too late to stop him from shutting the door so she kills another guy strategically close to the door to use him as a wedge to keep the door open. We see her then approach and drop into the facility and we get a close up to see that it was the artist from before. 

We then cut to her shooting out a lock on a prison door to release what we assume is her lover, they counsel each other before someone off screen attacks them  they begin to make their escape and we see them running down the hall towards us while we zoom in on the oil spill from earlier without showing what is going to happen we are left to wander whether they met their end here as well.