Aeon Flux (2005)

Hello, I'm Gill Anne Hurd, one of the producers on Aeon Flux. And I'm Charlize Theron, and I play Aeon Flux. Aeon Flux began as an animated series on MTV from the great creative brain of Peter Chung. And the film was written and adapted by Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi. and directed by Karin Kusama. We shot the entire picture in Berlin, Germany. And one of the things I think that you'll notice very early on is a nod to Peter Chung's animated series is the fly that is under the initial cars that you see at the beginning of the film.

It's definitely one of the first things that grabs you when you watch the animated series. It's very unusual, very well done. This was always very interesting to me, to create a world that wasn't a futuristic world that felt like this kind of dreamt-up world, but something that had some kind of reality based on the issues that we're dealing with today. So I always liked that little write-up and that this world of Bragna with this voiceover that that happens is a place that doesn't feel too futuristic. It feels very real, feels very much like we could be heading that way if we don't watch ourselves. A lot of the issues in the film are really relevant to the world we live in today and I think help it be a touchstone for the concerns of of audiences and all of us as filmmakers. Certainly the idea that people are being spied on, that freedom really isn't free, is a theme of the film and something that we're grappling with in the world today. You know, who is a terrorist, who's a freedom fighter? Our government's always right. And certainly in the world of Bregna, there are no elections. It's really not a free society, yet it's beautiful. It has so much to offer. the citizens, but at what price? The good child regime provides for us as long as we stay quiet. So we trade freedom for a gilded cage. But there are rebels who refuse to make that trade. Who fight to overthrow a government that silences us. Who fight in the name of the disappeared.

They call themselves the Monacans. This was my first day, wasn't it? It was. Coming down the stairs here. Yeah, that right there is the first thing we shot. And let me tell you, those heels and those steps, trouble. Can you imagine? I twist my ankle just coming down steps and high heels on this film, Eon Flex, with all the special effects. I would be such a lame-o for that. Not because of some big stunt or anything. No, I was just walking down some steps with some heels on. And with Stuart watching. Yes, and with Stuart watching. This was an interesting scene because when it was scripted, we never knew we were talking about shooting it or going in with special effects to kind of see the tongue taking the pill. And then we never did anything digital because I was lucky enough to get my real boy there. And we had rehearsed the scene for a couple of years, so. You got it right. You got it right by now. We got it right by now. So we didn't have to do anything digital, which was, I think, really great. And we kind of tried to do that as much as possible in this film to try and stick with as much reality as we possibly can instead of just throwing a green screen up or taking the easy route out. And I like that. We have an assignment. We want you to sabotage Goodchild's central surveillance facility. This location was at a veterinary university in Berlin and on their National Register of Historic Places, as is this location, which is the Sanssouci Park in Potsdam. Some great locations we got to shoot at. Each mission brings us closer to defeating the Goodchild regime.

And this was the Mexican embassy in Berlin. She disappeared two months ago. Help me, please, miss. She disappeared two months ago. And this is actually a set. Part of it we did film on an actual location in Berlin. And I think it's seamless, the way that it moves from the actual location to the set. Mm-hmm. Interesting relationship. Two children coming out of the same household. seeing the world in such different ways. And obviously Ian being very passionate about questioning the government and what's going on. And her sister on the other hand just trying to live a peaceful life. What kind of life is it? The choices that everyone has to make when they're living in a society that really isn't free and prescribes what its citizens can do. So I have a surprise for you. Tell me. Tonight. So be careful. It's also nice to see Eon before, to see the humanity and the caring relationship she has with her sister. Mm-hmm.

And this is the House of Culture in Berlin. Combined with the studio set, we had like a little set, right? Yes. That part. It's the rooftop. So much of it just runs so seamlessly onto each other. This was a freezing, freezing, freezing night. I felt so bad for everybody. It was actually, I think, below freezing. It was so cold. And everyone who was on the rooftop had to, because it was so icy, there was a lot of removal of safety wires. Not that it affected the action, but just to make it a safe location.

This was my first time doing a film like this. And actually watching it right now, you realize how you shoot these really tiny little moments constantly because it really is impossible to shoot everything at one place. And if you do that, I don't think it lends itself to the visual film as this one is. And so I'm realizing all these little moments that you just shoot like three seconds here on one location and then... maybe like 15 seconds of the continuation of it on another place. But the incredible thing about Charlize's performance is she's able to maintain that same intensity or the same emotion, regardless of whether we filmed it at the beginning of the schedule, the end of the schedule. Sometimes we started at the end of the scene and picked up the beginning of the scene later on. That's very nice.

And the interior of this location was inspired by a fencing facility that we location scouted that was adjacent to the Olympic Stadium from the 1930s. But we weren't able to shoot in that location, but we did replicate it in CGI and on the stages at the Babelsberg Studios, which have quite a history. Mm-hmm. It was great to be on that place, just knowing all the history and all the films that were made there. You're early, Claudius. Wasn't this the... The Bauhaus. This is the Bauhaus Museum in Berlin. Great building.

and Bauhaus and that sensibility in terms of architecture. Mm-hmm. We did get really lucky with our locations, really incredible locations where we got to shoot. And that's one of the interesting things, I think, about Berlin is that in Peter Chung's animated series, it's a divided city. And, of course, the recent heritage of Berlin as a divided city really worked. Yeah, definitely. For this film.

I had a family once. I had a life. Now all I have is a mission. Great production designer, Andrew McAlpine. Yes. Did a really incredible job.

He's a New Zealand production designer who did such amazing films as The Piano. And we did have a limited budget, and I don't think that you would guess that, given what he was able to do. And also, I think it's interesting that Stuart Dreiberg, who was our director of photography, and Andrew had worked together before. They're both from New Zealand. And they also worked very well with Beatrice Aruna Pastor, our costume designer. And this is the one scene in the film that I think is a nod to the costumes from Peter Chung's animated series. Yeah. Because in the animated series, Eon Flux wears very little and bears quite a lot of skin. Which is fine when you're dealing with an animated character, but a little less comfortable if you're... See, I said let's go for it, but then Gail was like, no. We just didn't have enough of a body makeup budget to cover the bruises. Yeah, no, that would have just been really impossible. Good child. We've intercepted information that will allow us to penetrate his security. Of course, right here, the incredible, incredible Fran McDormand. That would have been suicide. Not for me. Patience, Ian. It has taken a year to get the information we need. She was so game. She's always so game. I was lucky to do another film right after this with her. And it doesn't matter if she's showing up for three days of work or three months. I mean, just such a great attitude, this woman. And she's so committed. So committed. She became creatively involved as, of course, Charlize is. in the look of her character, in the costumes, in the hair. And I think it's also interesting to be able to see the post-production process of being able to work with digital color timers at E! Film to create this interesting enhancement of the character so that you're always wondering, is she real or is she a chemical character that exists only in the minds of the Monacans. There's also another aspect of the motif of the film, the organic motif with the flower and the pollen. And we're about to see a sequence when that organic nature is used as a weapon. Yeah, the throwback to nature is great. Another wonderful actress, Sofia Canedo. When we worked with her, Hotel Rwanda had not been released yet. And it was really exciting to see the success of that film and to have Sophie nominated for an Academy Award. She was great. She trained in London, where she lives, and I was training here in L.A. So we didn't really get to meet each other until three weeks before we started shooting. We trained for the last bit in Berlin and She was just such a great personality to be doing all this incredibly hard physical stuff with because I think we were both really scared when we were training separately that we'd meet up and that one person would be really just like hardcore, you know, superhuman, capable of doing everything. And then when we met each other, we were exactly the same. We had exactly the same personality. Like, you know, when we had to do it, we did it, and we completely committed. But we really, you know, had to, no matter how disciplined we were, we were both girls and human at the same time. So we had a lot of laughs about that. And I kept saying to her, I was like, I was so sure that you were going to show up with your firm arms and be all, you know, superhuman, and I was going to be dragging my butt behind you. And she was like, I was thinking the same.

It's amazing when you go through that kind of physical training because a lot of it is so mental too. I think it really brought us very close together. We became very, very good friends, still stay in touch with each other because it's so much easier when you have a partner. It became a joy all of a sudden when I had her next to me. If I couldn't go down in the split, it was okay because she didn't look at me like, you loser. She's a very funny girl too, a very funny actress. I can't wait to see her in a real comedy. When we brought Charlize in, It's a little difficult talking about you when you're sitting right next to me, but I think that it's important to mention that Charlie Crowell, who is our stunt coordinator, put together an amazing team to both train and to stunt rig for these very complicated action sequences. And one of the first things that Charlie said to me was that he had never worked with an actor male or female, who got it as quickly and made the process so easy and made the stunt team look so good as Charlize, that she has a natural facility. And it seemed so important to the character as well that because Charlize is in 99% of the action sequences, that that becomes so much part of the character. It's not... okay, now we'll see the stunt person create the character or continue the character as if it's some sort of station break. It is Charlize all the way through, and I think that's why you get this sense of connection to Eon Flex the way that you wouldn't if we had used a stunt double or had to use a stunt double. Not everyone is as flexible, as athletic, and... as talented as picking up these complicated action and stunts as Charlize. I agree with you, Charlie. And his team, just so incredible. And I really have to thank them because it's amazing when somebody believes in you and that whole little crew. You know, I spent three months with them before I really spent time with anybody on this film, and they were kind of like my little support group. You know, I was training five hours a day. sometimes six days a week. Learning skill wasn't just about transforming a body. It was really about learning gymnastics and learning capoeira and getting as supple as I possibly could. And all of those guys just, I couldn't have done it without them. I mean, there were days where I could barely get out of bed. And somehow when I got to the studio to train with them, they just got me through it. And so I have to thank them. And the funny thing is, I knew The thing when you say yes to a film is that you have to kind of throw your entire body into it. And I knew that this was going to be literally that. And yet I was so excited by it because I was a ballerina for 12 years of my life. And in many ways, I always looked at that as my theater background, telling stories with your body. And I liked that about this character, that she didn't say much, that she didn't have major monologues or she didn't really know how to verbalize her feelings. and that everything kind of came from a physical play. So there was no other way to play this character but to actually really go and learn those skills, because otherwise you really wouldn't be doing anything, because the physical aspect to me was really 90% of what the character was all about for me. And yes, I'm sure everybody who's listening to this right now knows that there was a little accident, which I think put Gail... into one of the hardest places I think a producer can be in, which is where your actor gets hurt. I herniated a disc doing a back handspring on our tenth day of filming. Yes. It was an accident. It wasn't even while we were filming. I was just kind of rehearsing, and my foot slipped, and I landed on my neck. And I think, you know, once we realized what it was, and I realized... while I was in a German hospital and poor Gail was standing, not leaving me alone for one second, completely there with me while I'm like, I want to go home, what's going on? And Gail and I not understanding what the doctors are saying to us. Great team though, everybody looked after us really well, but I could see and I knew that it was a very difficult place for Gail to be because she knew that when we came back and we had talked about it, that There was no way that I could, we had another 80 days, 90 days left. Most of the movie. Most of the movie that I could come back and not do the physical stuff. So I just want to say thank you to you for trusting in me because a lot of people were like, oh, that would just be the stupidest thing ever to let this actress come back and hurt herself again. But the thing is, you know, with injuries like that is you're always careful. It wasn't like we weren't careful before. You're always careful. And when an accident like that happens, you can't just kind of hide away from it completely. And I then finished the film with no injuries except a couple of scratches, which makes you always look cool. So I couldn't complain about those. But that was a tough place for Gail because she'd be behind the monitor and she'd see me do crazy back handsprings and stuff. And she'd just be like, at least take the high heels off, please. But what a tribute. to Charlize's commitment. When you start learning a skill, you start backing away from not the safety of it, but in a way it becomes easier to do it by yourself than to have a wire kind of do it for you. And so when it comes to speed and things like that, which is very much a big part of this character, that she had this incredible speed about her. When we started doing the gymnastics, when I was on the wire and I had a safety wire kind of help me lift me up, it became slower. And when I did it by myself, It became faster. And this is, mind you, how people learn gymnastics. So it wasn't like we were doing anything. And I was trained with all these little 11-year-old kids in the room all the time, too. So I got pretty fearless with them around. Because if you've ever seen an 11-year-old kid do gymnastics... Well, they're also closer to the ground. That's true. Yeah. But the amazing thing is, certainly there were conversations with everyone about, okay, you know... There's just no way that Shirley's will be able to come back and maintain that kind of physical commitment that she made before the accident. And I remember talking with you in Los Angeles during the five-week hiatus, and you never once wavered. You never once said, I'm scared. And that's just one of the most astonishing things that I've encountered in my 20-some-odd years of producing, is that you did not let fear enter into the equation. And your commitment, if anything, was even greater. And luckily, we were able to reschedule the film so that you had time to heal. But it didn't change our approach to the physical action at all. Charlize did it all. And it was troubling seeing some of the postings on the internet that said otherwise. And that was really hurtful. It was weird, though, because it was definitely, look, I'm incredibly grateful because it could have been worse. But the thing, and I really respect Charlie Croquel for this and his team, because I was an athlete for most of my life, too. And as a ballerina, you deal with injuries all the time. And I think it's hard sometimes for insurance people or studio people to sometimes understand that that happens. And to say that an accident happens is not being blasé about it. And so when it happened, it was one of those things where we all had to take a step back, which was very unfortunate. Look, you know, I don't ever want people to lose money or to have to... There was nothing worse than having to wait five, six weeks, I mean, to sit on your couch and do physiotherapy. And know that there's this whole film that you just want to go do because you're ready to do it, but this one thing is holding you back is incredibly frustrating. But we did the right thing. We knew I had to come back. We knew I had to heal, go through the physiotherapy. And then in going back, know that I was strong enough to go and do it again. And that's what we did. And, yeah, I mean, look, it's like I said before. If people believe in you, and thank God I had Gail who wasn't. I could see her sometimes go, no, please. And then other times go, just go for it then. And Gail was always the one that I would go up to and say, I can run in heels. It's totally fine. And she's like, okay, she's fine. She can run in heels. It's all good. But it is one of those films that you have to just kind of, you have to be prepared for anything. I think that's it. And that makes it really challenging because you really don't know anything can happen at any moment. But that's really any film too, but of course the physical aspect of this raised the bar on that.

Now, this is a very interesting location. We filmed at an animal rescue facility called Tierheim. Tierheim. And it really is one of the most beautiful facilities, I think, of its kind in the world. Actually, that inside right there is those little apartments. That's where the little doggies stay. It really is an incredible place. There's only like 10 dogs in each little hut. But the architecture is just amazing. And it has reflecting ponds. And we were there for so long, so we were able to see how well the dogs are taken care of. This is also at Tierheim. Yeah, it's a huge space. It's so big. He needs to learn to accept more traditional... But yeah, you'd never ever guess that that was an animal rescue facility. And the only reason why I didn't come home with anything is because they were looked after so well. But it was a great pastime. Cut, five minutes, run in and go hang out with the doggies. As I recall, you did bond with a couple? I did. Lennon. Yes, he was one of my favorites. And I had my dogs there. And so it was pretty interesting to go back to the trailer with all the little other doggy smells. My dogs were just constantly like, what the, what is going on, Mom? Who have you been hanging out with? Exactly. And it's also interesting that Charlize's dogs are also all rescue dogs. Johnny Lee Miller was another terrific addition to the cast. Great guy. And an interesting relationship between the brothers Oren and Trevor Goodchild. I think it's something that anyone who has a sibling can relate to. Especially if you have to come back in every lifetime as the inferior. The one who is there to help your brother who is the great scientist, the great leader, the chairman Goodchild. And you are consigned to this life and you know it. It's already preordained. So true. And I think that it really does come through in Johnny's performance, which is a complicated one because you don't want to give it away very early on. And he certainly can't give it away to his brother Trevor. Claudius. Another interesting character, Nikolai Kinski. Yes. Whose father was Klaus Kinski. You don't know. What don't I know? They killed her. And you're still alive. You killed her, Ian. They thought she was a monarch and that's why she died. Una's life was worth more than that. She was all I had. You're not the only one.

What are you really doing here, Claudius? This was a habitat facility in Potsdam that's part of a park, Buga Park, where we filmed all of the Frontier Garden action sequence. It's a biosphere, which was a perfect location for this facility. Memories of things that never happened to you? Una had them. I have them. It's happening all across Bregna. What is it? I don't know. They only tell us what we need to know. My work is a small part of a larger experiment. There's another aspect of Bregna that's very interesting because of the cloning. People are beginning to break down. They're having these memories that come through that they have no connection to. Waking nightmares. We're sick. And Trevor's trying to cure us. That's all I know. And it's interesting that Claudius is working under Trevor's edges on nature that is outside the wall, nature that hasn't been contained, that hasn't been controlled, that is free. I think that's another interesting underlying thematic and subtext of the film. That's how it works. And it's the first time we get a sense, something that's very important at the end of the film, that perhaps if you go outside the wall, that world that has been kept outside that the Bregan citizens are so fearful of, it's actually time to break down the physical wall as well as the internal walls that the citizens have accepted. Leon, I'm sorry for the pain, but it's not safe to talk in the open. Another element of the film is the chemical communication, this message from Trevor, as well as the pills that are used for the mannequins to communicate. There's another interesting aspect of neon flux. Martin Chokas is a New Zealand actor. that people might be familiar with from The Lord of the Rings, as well as a film, Asylum, and also The Bourne Supremacy. Why am I here? I needed to see you again. You killed my sister. I didn't know anything about... This is a beautiful set. Love the space and the detail. It's a great example of Stuart Dreiberg, our cinematographer, and Andrew, Michael Pond, just working so well together. I don't need that to kill you. But it would be easier, wouldn't it? Everything changed when I saw you. I know you, and you know me. Why do I know you? Why? Why did you come back? What do you want from me? What do I want? I want my sister back. I want to remember what it feels like to be a person. One of the stages where we filmed at Babelsberg Studios was the stage in which Fritz Lang shot Metropolis, which was something that all of us who were science fiction fans and film fans, you could feel that. You could feel that great history. Yeah. And at the same time, there's a legacy that also informed the film, which is that it was used for propaganda films by the Third Reich under Hitler. That's right. I forgot about that. So there was such a juxtaposition, which is also, I think, consistent with the subtext of this film.

I don't think this is the morning after that Trevor Goodchild was expecting. I want you to eliminate him. Come back. I'm not who you think I am, Mia. I loved this conflict that I think... Peter Chung created for her where she was very much a sexual creature, but she's very much a solo traveler and not very much an emotional person. And I think this conflict of being that and then feeling all of these very strange emotional connections and affection and attraction. but it's not just sexual to this person was very interesting to play. That really gave this story, I felt, a good ground to stand on, I thought, because I felt like with that you could really go anywhere with it. If you had that love story or whether you want to call it a love story or this kind of like opposites, these two characters trying to figure each other out and trying to understand each their circumstances, I felt like you could really go anywhere with the story as long as you had that. And it was an interesting conflict, I thought, for her to have because of how Peter had kind of created her through his animated series. It felt like a very organic progression for her from the animated series. And in the animated series... There's a very complicated relationship, as there is in the film, between Trevor Goodchild and Eon Flux. There's almost a love-hate relationship. And I think it's a tribute to Charlize's portrayal of Eon that when she doesn't shoot Trevor, when he's practicing his speech, that you don't look away and go, well, that doesn't make any sense. You're with her. You're with her journey of discovery. And and her conflict about the emotions that she's feeling. And then it twists again after they have had a sexual encounter where you expect connection to be even greater and for her to give in to those emotions. That's when she almost kills him. Yeah. So I think that's a really interesting dynamic.

I also just want to kind of just point out the team who came up with, you know, again, like Gail said, in the animated world, it's so different. And Beatrix, you know, did such a great job with the costumes, but also the hair that was created for Eon Flex. Absolutely. You know, the animated series. It would be impossible to do that. And I thought that Enzo Angeleri, who designed and cut this hair, thought that he did such a great, it was such a great throwback and homage to the original and yet something that we could work with. I just thought he did such a brilliant job. And it was also one of the first things that Peter Chung said when he came to the set was that he loved the hair, which was really great. Shane Paish, who designed the makeup. It's a tricky thing with a character like this to get away with, you know, her and the animated being pretty much made up and definitely having a look, but also not making it ridiculous and not letting it kind of take over the film or the character. They all did a really great job. I have to say, I think that the team of Enzo and Shane are the best hair and makeup team I've ever worked with. And I'm going to second that, but I might be just biased. I'm not. They're definitely the easiest. Yeah, definitely so creative, but also they make it so easy. And, you know, when you work these long hours, the last thing you want to do is sit in a chair for two hours or three hours. And they're so understanding of that. That was a fun little scene to do. The fight in the lab was the day that Harry Knowles was on the set. Yes. And I think he was wondering what kind of film we were making. Although I think he was liking it. It is something you don't see a lot. hands-on fighting between two women that doesn't feel gratuitous is really tough. And I think that the fight between Freya and Eon and then the fight between Sathandra and Eon proves that you can get great action. And also there's emotion in both of the sequences. You know, the subtext that we felt was that Freya And Trevor had had a relationship that was quite a bit more than professional. I found her in the library. I think I wounded her. You attacked her? Because she takes it quite personally that Trevor doesn't back her up when she says that she wounded Eon. Of course, she thinks that's a great thing. That's her protecting him. Is Oren aware of this? I can't find him. Stay close.

No matter what Trevor's done for us in the past, he's not above reproach. This was another interesting location, which, given that it's Berlin, was difficult for me. I'm half Jewish, and it's a contemporary building, but it is a crematorium. And there was a lot of mixed emotions being in a space like this that, of course, was not around during the Nazi era. And yet, of course, brought all of those emotions and all of that conflict of filming in Germany to the surface. And I thought it was also very interesting. When people found out I was Jewish, the first thing that almost every Berliner that I spoke with said was, have you been to the Jewish Museum? There's a great deal of pride for a museum in Berlin, which is a remarkable museum. Look up and question what's happening here. Review progress of subjects from test group 7B. Sandrin Veams, Greta Salk, Una Flux. Schedule a relical visit to retrieve new data. 8.26, 7.19. Greta Salk. And the fight sequence that's about to happen between me and Sathandra is one that we talked about a lot. The relationship, the way these two fight, very different to how Ion and Freya fights. Obviously, Sithandra is trained by me, so there's not a lot of surprises with us. We kind of know each other a little bit too well, but I loved the idea of this fight being somewhat... I guess there's a respect that they both have for each other, and... And Eon treats her very much as an equal. And in this sequence, there was kind of like this notion of like, she's obviously feeling very strong that Trevor is somehow not involved and that there's something going on that they don't know about and that she really needs to figure out. She doesn't, she can't articulate or show any evidence of why Seth Andrews should follow her. So this fight sequence to me was really about why she had to kind of get her out of the way so that she can continue doing this, but also kind of saying, I'm still training you. There's also a sense here that Sithandra and Eon both believe that they can sway the person to their point of view. Just kind of look between them like, are you kidding me? We're friends. And they both feel a deep sense of betrayal. Oh, yes, very much. Obviously, you can see in this fight sequence, these two, there's an elevation about the way they fight. And the way to justify that is because they are both so good. that the only way to get away from each other is through elevation. Whereas with Freya, it's much more grounded. It's much more hands-on. It's also fighting somebody that they don't know how you fight, and you don't know how they fight. Whereas here, these two, they really know each other very well. Also, Thandra is... Hands for feet are another nod from Peter Chung's animated series. This sort of thing used to be fun. Now what do I do with you?

This was probably one of the scariest things I did. I have a little bit of fear of heights. This was built on a stage, and it was... How high do you think it was, so that I'm not exaggerating? 35 feet? Something like that. It was enough to scare me. And this platform that I'm standing on... runs out into a sharp point, so it gets skinnier and skinnier the further you walk out on it. And in a minute you'll see that my gun, I can't get this wire to attach to the relical, so I basically have to jump for it. Obviously I was on wires, but I had to run off this platform and basically just dive into the air. That was a little freaky, but then it became so much fun that I just wanted to keep doing it. Well, at least that part was fun. I think interacting with the banners was a lot less than fun. That was a really... That right there, that kind of free dive was something that I actually really did, and we shot that on a stage. And then all of this sequence we did at the end of the film. We had two days, three days of green screen, something like that. And so for three, four days, all we did was just, I hung from a wire 10 hours a day. And we did all of this stuff, which was really, really hard. It doesn't look like it's going to be hard. And certainly if you'd asked me at the beginning of the film, what would be... One of the most difficult sequences. You wouldn't think it's this stuff. But it was a bear. Yeah. It's very difficult to shoot this stuff, too. And you do get kind of, you know, because you're stuck in front of the same green screen, different banner, different wind machine. You're hanging off all these very strange apparatuses and machines that they build to make you look like you're flying. But there's something really painful about it. hanging from a wire with your entire body weight condensed in your crutch area. Not fun. And also, it's very rare that you're actually interacting with the banner in the physical world. In other words, Charlize was upside down. She was on a belly pan. She was on a back pan. And the physics of it made it really difficult. And we had to get the banners had to be moving at just the right speed, and her reach had to be at just the right moment. And you just wouldn't think that that would be a three-day sequence. But because she has such a great sense of her body in space, something which I know I have none of, so I know what a gift it is and also how difficult it is to orient yourself. I think Charlize was able to do something that the stunt people couldn't pick up as quickly. This was an interesting set. This is a set that most of what you see we built, and we did digital set extensions. And we added in more of the clear monofilament strands later on. Address. This stuff was hard, too. I remember talking to Sophie that night. She was in the water in a tank all day. Yeah. And... Very, very brave. If you're claustrophobic, this is... Not a good place. This is your worst nightmare. To have your hands tied, be in a tank of water, breathing through a straw. Handler. Satandra. Good child is still alive. The unfailed. She let him live. There's something between them. Something personal. Explain. She abandoned the mission. I tried to stop her. And she attacked me and left me here. Are you secure where you are? Fairly. Help is coming. Eon Flux is now considered a fugitive. She has betrayed the Resistance and must be considered a threat. She has aligned herself with Goodchild and is with him now. We must move quickly. You will eliminate her, kill her, and then complete her mission. Savandra, show them where you are. Do you see? It's interesting that we really did have a multinational cast. The hit squad, we hired them all out of Berlin. And... Giroux, played by Patterson Joseph, was out of London. Sophie from London. Johnny Lee Miller from London. Amelia Warner, who plays Una, we cast out of London. Martin from New Zealand. Really was a United Nations cast. And Pete. Oh, and Pete. Pete Possilthwaite. Great Pete. My God. You just look into his eyes and you just melt. Great actor from Ireland. Great, great emotional range. And the incredible thing is the emotions he's able to portray under what was five and a half hours of makeup. Sitting in a chair for five and a half hours. So true. Show me all of 7B. Sandrine Fiennes. Member of 7B. Killed in police action. Where is she? Okay, then here comes the days with the baby. Okay. So, yeah. Wow. This was, and kids usually like me, and I like kids. And it took me a while to realize that it was, you know, I think even babies at that age, They can feel emotion. And obviously when I'm holding this baby and I start getting emotional and I think the black outfit and the black hair and I just, the baby knew. And the baby screamed. And the baby screamed. And screamed. And screamed and screamed. And then, you know, then I would kind of like be all cute with the baby and the baby would be okay and the mom would come in and we'd be like, shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot. As soon as that camera rolled and I picked that baby up, it was like, and you watch the dailies and it's pretty incredible that we got through it. And all you want to do when a baby cries is comfort it. And so a lot of times from the baby's back, I had to just hold this baby and act through it like the baby was happy to see me. I know the great thing was that we could keep the mother really close by, just underneath. And it was great because a lot of the connecting stuff with the child, the mother could do because we just basically put my sleeves on her and it's her hands touching the baby and getting the baby to be really happy and excited. But I got to tell you, it hurt my feelings a little bit. Hurt my feelings a little bit. So I never had that response. And I think they just feel it. They feel that energy. And they don't like it. Sterility. Only one more generation of our species could survive. It was a desperate time. Cloning had never been used on humans successfully. But we succeeded. Now, when a person dies, their DNA is recycled. Oren and I built the relicle to store the DNA and conceal the cloning process. The keeper finds a suitable couple, and using food additives, we induce a chemical pregnancy. When the woman comes in for an exam, we implant a cloned embryo. From there, things happen naturally. In nine months, a citizen who died is reborn. For seven generations, Oren and I have cloned ourselves, taught ourselves, so that I could keep trying to find a cure while we all live on. That's what we are. Copies. We're more than that. There's an interesting conflict here between Eon, who doesn't believe that cloning is an answer, even if it's the only way to keep the human species alive. And Trevor's perspective, which is, that's the compromise you need to make until you can find a cure. And then, of course, there's Oren's perspective. which is having human control over everything, is perfection. And of course, that allows him to live forever. Her baby would have been one of the first new children in 400 years. Warren's changed. He doesn't want to go back. He doesn't want a cure. He wants to live forever.

You must have been expecting this after helping that moniker. Your loyalty to Trevor can't protect you anymore. I'm loyal to something deeper than any of this. I don't understand people like you and Trevor. Your sentimentality, your devotion to the past. To things that are gone. I couldn't live without those things. How can you?

certainly an interesting commentary on power and absolute power corrupts absolutely and I think that Oren's character rather than Trevor's is the one who believes in a world of secrets who believes that that that is the best possible society is one in which he is in charge and the population is is kept in the dark and and not allowed to question and lives in fear.

We also worked with a wonderful second unit director, Alexander Witt, who'd worked with Charlize before on The Italian Job. Yeah. And Charlize and Martin and Sophie worked with him in these sequences. So it isn't as if when Alexander was filming the action sequences, there were stunt doubles. He worked with the actors as well so that there is that continuity of performance. Another challenge was to create costumes for these characters, for the shock troopers. I think she did such a great job. Which was no easy task. No. This was also an example of how we were able to do our own version of recycling. This set was a revamp of the Marketplace set, where Aeon and her sister Una talk at the beginning of the film. The monorail platform was actually the parking structure of the velodrome, which was in the former East Berlin and is a bicycle racing facility, an indoor bicycle racing facility. And in something that we became quite used to was freezing. We had two weeks of summer on the film and the rest of it was winter. It was so cold. Yeah. I don't think I've ever been so cold in my entire life. A lot of times you work in cold conditions, but in my career, I'm doing mostly contemporary or not far back, period. The character, if you're in the cold, the character dresses for the cold. Whereas in this case, I had my new dart. And that was it. But yeah, a really great costumer named Isabel. She was great. And she made these little heat packs, suits for me to wear in between. And she had all these secret little places to hide little heat packs for me. We can't go to a Monacan safe house. This, as I recall, was one of the coldest. And that platform was like frozen. Absolutely frozen that we were lying on. And it was like a wind tunnel. Somehow the wind just got locked right in there where we were. It was very cold. This location is connected to the location where Eon throws the orbs. as she's infiltrating the government complex. And it was indeed used as an engine testing facility, also by the Third Reich. For airplanes? For airplanes. Such a cool place. I mean, just so insanely strange, yet beautiful, when you walked into it. And so big, so huge. Are you heading anywhere else?

And this was also when Peter Chung visited the set. That's right. That was the day. And it was great to have him there and to have him feel that Charlize was bringing Eon Flux to life the way that he had envisioned an actor would be able to. And that he thought that the world of Bregna that we'd created in the film was what he had hoped it would be. First I have to end this. I need to go back in. I have to get my notes from Mona's test group. Warren will find the lab and destroy it. Everything I've done. This is the wind canal we were talking about. And it really looks like that. I mean, Stur did an incredible job lighting it as well, which makes it so dramatic. But it is one of those locations where you just can't believe this really exists. And it is so huge. So big. We need your help. We have orders to shoot you on sight. It's been a coup. Your orders are coming from an illegitimate government. Stay where you are, sir. Great group of German actors. Sir? I want to know your name. This is, I think, another interesting scene that's relevant to the world we live in. Do you take orders that come over the... internet you know what happens when the leader that you have been loyal to throughout your service comes to you and says that the coup is an illegal coup and you see also the humanity and Trevor's character that he's able to connect with Ord with Lieutenant Ord and I think that it's Eon's influence on him that has brought back his humanity. We're getting closer. Wait. This was a crazy place too. This cellar, what was it used for? This was a water filtration system. That's what it was. From the 1800s. It was, what, six, seven, eight feet of sand. Not surprisingly, also freezing cold. The name you called me. Catherine. That was my name. You were my wife. We had a life together, just like anybody else. Wait. You need to tell me And being romantic, this scene really resonates with me. The idea of love that transcends death. That there really are soulmates. You were an idea I kept alive. Something I had to imagine. But when I saw you, what I felt was real. I knew you. I remembered you. What we had then survived in us, past death, past everything. I was looking for you. I've been waiting. We were different people. We were. Those people are gone. But something in them came back.

It's chaos out there. There's a coup against Goodchild. Made it easier to slip in. Did you bring a way to find her? As long as there's a trace of the pill in her, we can track her. No. And once Ian remembers, as an audience member, I think you wonder, now that the two of them have reconnected with this love, will she still be committed to her goal, which is to change the society, to stop the cloning process? You know, I think there's a moment during this sequence where you wonder whether her commitment will falter. It's all gone.

We have to keep moving. But she is still Eon. There's still one more thing to do. There's nothing left to do. You and I need to get out of here. We'll go outside the wall. You'll find a way to live. There's one more thing to do. I need to destroy it. No. She's willing to sacrifice. herself, and this connection with Trevor. To do the right thing, the thing that she believes in. I love this. I love that. It's not very often you hear that in a film. And yet it's so true. The thing that we maybe fear the most, or even if you dive into the topic of death and And that's definitely obviously been done. But to say something like that at this high point of, like, two people finding each other in the beginning of a love, to talk that openly about death, I really loved those lines. That that aspect of life, this is why she does it, it makes everything worthwhile. It makes everything matter. Without it, there's no weight. I don't want to lose you again. You don't have to. You'll find the cure again. It's over, Trevor. Now we're back at the exterior of Tirheim. And we planted those cherry trees, right? They were actually cherry trees from China. But we brought the little flowers, right? Yes, we did. Because I don't think cherry blossoms would be blossoming in November. They healed themselves. And you killed them too? I had to stop it. How many? How many, Oren? Doesn't matter. Nature's finally found a way. In position. Position acquired. Nature's the one who's obsolete, not us. How can you not understand the beauty of what you made? I do. Situation's getting complicated. I don't know if anybody's noticed, but the sky is so incredible in Berlin. And these clouds just kept coming in and out. It makes for a beautiful sky, but I know it drove poor Steward insane, especially when we did the frontier garden sequence. It looks so beautiful, but the wind would just move it across so quickly, and so the light was constantly changing. And then it would pour with rain. Yeah. And an hour later be clear. Exactly. It can't last. It's falling apart.

Sethandra, give us the signal. Sethandra. Take Flux down first. You're wrong in this, Auror. We've beaten death. We've beaten nature. We've gone beyond you. Now I need to be free.

And so is Trevor. I would never betray you. Help me. Sethandra. You still know me. Finish it. You can choose to trust me. Finish it. I'm sorry, Oren.

Cover Eon. Cover good child. I think Sophie's so good in that moment. She just don't know where she's going to go with her decision. The other thing that you don't automatically think of as being a challenge for a film like this, but the score is... very difficult to do for a film like this, especially in a sequence like this. When you have a standoff, you have an emotional story between the two brothers, between Sathandra and Eon, and you have to keep the tension going at the same time. And I think that Graham Revell did a... An incredible job. A terrific job on the film. Coming, Eon! Ah! It's amazing what goes into all of these sequences from the visual effects vendors, from digital domain, And the orphanage and hydraulics, you know, different vendors. And yet I don't think you can, you look at the film and you think, you know, these are different sensibilities. The sensibilities all work together. And then editorially, it's also a challenge. And I think they were terrific contributions.

That was a crazy day. I've never seen so many bodies had to fall off buildings. And I never knew this, but they land on open boxes, cardboard boxes that they build up. And it just looks like a recipe for disaster. And yet it works perfect. The air just breaks the fall. It was quite impressive to see these guys fall off that building. Over and over again. Yes. And also that shot, we had a gigantic crane. Like 80 feet, yeah. Ridiculous. And Betty Okina, who was... Olympic gymnast. Bronze medalist. Yeah. Had to jump off the crane. And yet the most dangerous thing that happened to Betty in the entire film was when she was stung by a wasp. Yeah. I remember that. At Buga Park and was allergic and almost died. And started throwing up, yeah. As you said, you never know. You never, ever know. So wasp sting. Exactly, right? How do you prepare for that?

for your orders you're not part of this whatever we are we're not anarchists there have to be rules thank you love this piece of music

This is one of my favorite scenes to do. In a way, the handler is the mother that disappoints Eon. The keeper is kind of like the father. And I always loved this scene. She realizes that she's only alive because of him. Your DNA is good. Destroy it. And that he's fulfilled his destiny. And he wants to be set free. I kept your DNA hidden here, dormant. I've waited until now to bring you back. Why? I knew that your strength would survive with you. I thought that if I brought you back, you could reach Trevor. You always could. I have to end it.

Start over. What about you? I've waited 400 years for this day. I'm tired. Stay alive, Leon. You are needed.

some more banner things to do. I think in this sequence, hydraulics did a really terrific job. No, they really did. It's like you said, everybody worked so well together. There's a combination, actually, of digital domain and hydraulics in this sequence. And you always wonder, how do you end a film like this? What tonally is right from the action perspective, from the character's perspective? And I think it's the combination of her fulfilling her action destiny, in a sense, which is to destroy the relical, to break open the wall that has kept Bregna contained. Now it's open to nature again, and she survived. But it's a bittersweet ending. It's not an ending where you feel as if there isn't a lot of work left to do. Yeah. It's a beginning. But there are going to be a lot of obstacles. Now we can move forward. To live once. For real. And then give way. To people who might do it better. I always loved this. Catherine, will I see you again? The first Catherine before Eon, before the world has gone through the industrial disease. And to see them meeting for the first time, the resonance of the fact that they are now Beginning again. Exactly. So I'm Charlize Theron, and thank you for listening to us blabbering. And Gail Ann Hurd, thank you for watching.