Æon Flux/War

War
Shorts Season 2, Episode 5
Airdate	November 24, 1992
Production Number	—
Written by	Peter Chung
Directed by	J. Garett Sheldrew Peter Chung
← Sx05 Tide	1x01 → Utopia or Deuteranopia?
Æon Flux — Shorts

War is the fifth stand-alone short featuring Æon Flux and is the eleventh short overall. It aired on Liquid Television on November 24, 1992. It is also the last of the Æon Flux shorts that would air on MTV.

Plot Overview

Æon massacres a huge amount of Breens, but manages to miss one. He shoots her gun out of her hand and prepares to shoot her execution style. However, Æon sees a Monican rebel who survived the shoot-out slowly making his way toward her and the soldier. She attempts to distract the soldier long enough to allow the rebel to kill the soldier, but her plan backfires. The soldier shoots them both dead, opens his mask and reveals that he's just a random soldier named Varsh Lockney.

After killing Æon, Varsh climbs the wall and kills several dozen Monican rebels who are attempting to lay siege to Bregnia. He manages to infiltrate their base, but is killed by a man with a sword. An alarm goes off and the man with the sword goes topside to prevent more Breens from attacking the base. He is killed by one of the men with guns.

Cut to a woman who attacks another group of Monicans, who attempt to close the blast doors to their base before she can enter. They nearly succeed, but one of the corpses jams the door from closing entirely. The woman slips into the base, releases a prisoner and the two make a run for it. The short ends with a shot of oil dripping into a puddle on the floor. We know that something awful is going to happen, but the ending is left ambiguous.

Notes

Characters

• Æon: Æon is killed by being shot in the head by Varsh Lockney.

Trivia

The Show

• The Point: Set in an unexplained conflict, this episode builds up one hero to a climax where they are killed and then switches the point of view to the opposite side of the conflict and builds up a new hero. The cycle continues until the end of the short.
• Music: Notice how the music changes with each change in character focus. This marks the beginning of the Breen vs. Monican musical style that would appear throughout the series.
• Names: All of the characters did have names in the script. Their names, in order of appearance, are: Varsh Lockney, Romeo Svengali and Donna Matrix.

Behind the Scenes

• Time: This short is five minutes and twenty seconds long.
• Genesis: This episode was the first episode that Peter Chung came up with for the second season of Liquid Television.

Allusions and References

• Raiders of the Lost Ark: The scene in which Varsh and Romeo stand off against each other with Romeo twirling his sword seems to be a takeoff on the scene from Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark where a man waving a scimitar is shot by Indy after a complex kind of sword dance. Of course, the opposite occurs in this episode, although the character with the gun's cockiness is still clear.

Memorable Moments

• Æon licks her lips and attempts to distract Varsh by being seductive. Her plan fails miserably when she and her accomplice are both shot dead.