SEE ALSO: The Animatrix BUY IT

[by Scott Thill]

[previous page: I think as long as it's done well, whether it's exactly the same or not, there's no issue. You have to see if the work holds up well on its own terms.]

Morphizm: Are you confident in how the film adaptation will channel the animated series?
Peter Chung: I can't really answer the question about confidence, but I support the film and I support their efforts. The people really responsible for interpretation of the character, more than Karyn and Charlize, are the writers. Whether or not those changes appeal to more people than the animated version does is something I think they wanted to gamble on. I think the studio felt that, as strong as the characters were in the animated series, they may have a limited appeal to the majority of the audience. So they thought they could get a bigger audience by taking the characters in different directions.

Morphizm: Were there other issues that concerned you?
Peter Chung: They made a lot of changes that I wasn't sure about. For example, the look of the soliders is completely different. It's funny, because they decided to keep some things exactly while others were changed entirely, and I'm not exactly sure what was the reasoning behind it all. I don't understand how they decided what should remain faithful and what they shouldn't. The Breen soldiers look completely different. Trevor looks completely different. He has dark hair and dresses in black.

Morphizm: Do you think it was a mistake to set the film on a specific date in the future?
Peter Chung: When you nail those things down, the film becomes locked in them and starts to lose its symbolic value. A lot of science-fiction films make the mistake of taking their premise literally rather than metaphorically. The thinking is that it will have more relevance if you nail it down, that it will become unambigious. But I think the opposite effect is acheived. The more you're able to project your own world upon the work, the more power it has. Whereas if you nail down the time and place, the more you can say, "Oh, this is a story about their world that takes place in that time and that place. It has nothing to do with us."

Morphizm: How would you describe the world that this movie takes place in? As well as the animated version, if you find serious discrepancies.
Peter Chung: The world that the movie takes place in is narrowly defined. The majority of the population has been wiped out and the only survivors of Earth are restricted behind this walled city ruled by Trevor, which was never the backstory of the animated series, where it was implied that there was a wider world existing beyond those boundaries. I'm not going to talk too much about the world of the movie, but I'd just expand on that idea that these stories are more meaningful the more you meet them with the language of metaphor.

Morphizm: What animated work did you have a hand in prior to Aeon Flux?
Peter Chung: I worked on Transformers in the '80s. I also worked on the Ralph Bakshi film Fire and Ice, as well as Rugrats. I also did an animated film for The Chronicles of Riddick; it was a one-off, half-hour project. So it's kind of funny: I've done two of these short films based on live-action films, Chronicles of Riddick and The Animatrix. I was actually proposing another one for Aeon Flux on DVD to accompany the release of the live-action version, and that's something I'm talking with the studio about right now. The Riddick short, called 'Dark Fury,' is very different from 'Matriculated.' For one, I didn't write it. It was handed to me, so I was just strictly the designer and director. But fans of Riddick really liked it. It's pretty much a straight action piece, but you can see some flashes of me in there.

Morphizm: So explain your work with Rugrats and other shows.
Peter Chung: My first directing gig was with Rugrats. I directed the pilot episode, which actually got the series sold. I did a lot of design work for that show. I designed Angelica and some of the recurring characters. I created storyboards for Transformers, and was a character designer on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. After Aeon Flux, I ended up doing a lot of commercials. (Laughs).

Morphizm: There's good money in it! That's what Bill Plympton told me.
Peter Chung: Yeah, it's funny. A lot of commercial agencies want to go after a Japanese animation look, but don't want to actually hire a Japanese animator! (Laughs). So a lot of those jobs come to me, because I can work in that style.

Morphizm: What would you say that style is? How did you arrive at it?
Peter Chung: Well, I don't know if it's right for an artist or designer to comment on how his own style came about. I know that sounds like a copout, but in a way the ideal is to try not to achieve a style but rather approach everything in a way that feels most natural to yourself, and that ends up being your style. You end up with these labels after the fact. It's a very complex process. Yes, you obviously pick up points from artists whose work you like, but that's just half of it. The other half of it is avoiding formulas used by designs you don't like. And, in a way, that's a lot harder to do that it sounds. It's very hard not to show signs of influence. It's why so many animators draw in such similar styles. It's even harder to shed yourself of those influences.

Morphizm: It also helps to know what an artists has done throughout his career, not just the stuff he or she did that was popular. The idea that you were partially behind the design of Rugrats seems to irrevocably change the idea of a "Peter Chung" aesthetic, one that seems mostly informed by Aeon Flux. Just as knowing, as many don't, that much of popular Japanese animation was informed by Walt Disney.
Peter Chung: Right, through Osamu Tezuka. I would say that right now a lot of Japanese animation has become very incestouos and inbred. It's become so much like anaimation of animation. Know what I'm saying?

Morphizm: A copy of a copy.
Peter Chung: Right, in the same way some Cartoon Network shows, like Powerpuff Girls and Dexter's Laboratory, take that retro Hanna-Barbera style to the extent that it looks like animation made by people who spent their childhoods watching animation.

Morphizm: Who were your influences?
Peter Chung: Definitely the ones mentioned earlier, Mobius and Egon Schiele. Those were probably two of the most important influences on my work, especially visually. There are a ton of others. But that's just something that's very obvious, in terms of the way characters are drawn.

Morphizm: Has there been anything since that 1998 article was written that you felt worthy to add to the list?
Peter Chung: Actually no. (Laughs). Not in the area of comics at least.

Morphizm: What about Sin City?
Peter Chung: Sin City was a faithful adapatation of a comic book, but whether or not it was a good film depends on how you liked the comic. But I think it did a lot of things that are necessary in the comic book, but not in the film. Like the voice-over narration, for example. Where the characters are constantly describing stuff you're actually seeing happen. Which became irritating after a while.

Morphizm: They were going for the film noir vibe.
Peter Chung: That's another thing, which is kind of a pet peeve of mine. Like I was saying earlier, you don't set out to make something in a certain style, whether its film noir or whatever. When the original filmmakers were making film noir, they didn't know what film noir was. That was a term a French critic slapped on the films later on. Those artists were making films that were based on what they observed and the evnironments they lived in.

Morphizm: But these things become part of the cultural grammar.
Peter Chung: Right, they do. But you shouldn't set out to make things that way. Then it's no longer authentic.

18 December 05

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