It was a long time rumoured, and long time in arriving, but finally Aeon Flux achieved live action status and stars the gorgeous Charlize Theron in the title role as FLux. As plots go, it’s a little all over the place and even manages to be rather cliched. The story runs along the lines of there being an industrial disease that wipes out 99% of the world’s population.

The remaining 1% somehow survive and encapsulate themselves in a man-made bubble to protect them from the infected 99% of the world. Of course this brings around the concept of the Big Brother environment where all you do is known and seen by the people in power, and therefore the freedom that many value is actually an illusion. Or at least that’s the crux of it.

So, in light of this revelation, some people don’t like it, and these people are often called rebels, or freedom fighters, who don’t believe in a totalitarian power and there feel the need to kick back like an infant that won’t get his or her sweeties. this works in part, but the fall back is that the rebels are then wanted dead, rather than alive, and considered criminals. Well, anyway, you get the basic idea. Aeon is one of these rebels living in the real world as one person, and acting secretly with the Monicans (the not-so-secret rebel faction) against Trevor Goodchild (the person in power) and his cronies.

If you watched the aniamted series you can appreciate that the film makers had a pretty tough time trying to translate the dystopian future into a full realised world for the general audience who are more interested in celebrity actors and actresses than animation, unless it’s something by Disney, then we can all hold hands and rejoice and say what fun it is for the entire family. Aeon Flux isn’t for the entire family, and really shouldn’t be seen by anyone under the age of fiteen.

There’s a lot of violence, both in hand to hand combat and in gun toting bravado from both Aeon and the cronies who want her dead. Blood sprays, bones breaks, heads are snapped and people die. Lots of people die, for your sheer entertainment. The violence doesn’t add anything to the film, it’s simply there to give the audience what they want. At least it’s in keeping with the animated series then. To be fair, the choice of Charlize Theron as Flux was probably limited by the fact that there aren’t any real female leads out there that could do an action film. The only other person that might have pulled it off is perhaps Angelina Jolie, and the more I think about it, she would be a prettier, but closer version of Flux, than Ms Theron. Still, you get what you get and we get Theron who doesn’t do too bad a job of playing the anti-hero.

The same can’t be said for the rest of the cast, nor the pace of the film. It’s your bog standard sci-fi fare with the one man army replaced by the one woman army, unable to turn to anyone since everyone becomes an enemy of her own making.

So now that I’ve waffled on a bit, what did I actually think of the film? With the lead excluded, the rest of the film was pretty bad. The acting wasn’t particularly startling, and it’s fair to argue that I shouldn’t be expecting anything impressive from an MTV produced film. This would be a fair statement to make.

The only film I can recall which uses the MTV tag and has lived up to the hype was the release of Beavis and Butthead Do America. Apart from that, the rest of the stable of low substance and high polish products has been lacking in entertainment to say the least. The special effects weren’t grand, the action sequences were cliche at best and medicore at worst.

Performances all round were rather lacklustre, doing little to lift the film from the deserved label of humdrum sci fi with little to offer. The material with which they had to work with was pretty good, as the animation offered cult viewing. The film adaptation doesn’t offer cult viewing, or any viewing at all if I was strictly honest about what I got from the film.

It’s one of those films that you don’t really know is going to be as bad as you think, only to find it’s worse and then you want your time back that you spent boring yourself out of your head, sometimes raising an eyebrow to see what Ms Theron was up to, only to fall back in to the lull of sleep. In short, Aeon Flux could have been brilliant, instead it stinks.

Verdict: A cult series turned into a steaming pile of celluloid poop. Avoid.