text: Laughable.<br /><br />Clichéd.<br /><br />Overdoses on style to compensate for poor writing.<br /><br />Remember when MTV actually used to air music videos and other shows besides Reality Shows? Aeon Flux (2005) is based upon one such show  a cartoon from the mid-90s  featuring a superhuman female protagonist in black latex clothing. Aeon, played by the lovely Charlize Theron in this adaptation, is a cold detached rebel who is as dexterous as a line-dancer and as deadly as a viper-snake. She needs to be, if she expects to kick the asses of the totalitarian government.<br /><br />I love science fiction, but hate the sudden influx of half-assed futuristic dystopian technology-overdosed films like The Island (2005) and Equilibrium (2002) (bottom of the pile). Aeon Flux has all the problems that are present in these films, but amplified. That is, there is nothing original left to show so they compensate for it with the sleek style that Matrix (1999) catalyzed. The special effects are therefore sensational in Aeon Flux which earns it a few points, but scratch the surface and there is literally nothing there.<br /><br />To make matters worse, all performances in this film are atrocious and some actually wound me to watch. Charlize Theron's character Aeon Flux is interwoven with the most cheesy tough-chick schtick and it seems as though the director Karyn Kusama cannot quite decide where to go with her next  should she make her more detached or more emotional? She doesn't know! Let's go both ways! Imagine you take a shotgun, load it chock-full of character developments of different sorts and there fire into a random mess. This is the character of Aeon Flux.<br /><br />The film Aeon Flux puts forward all the 'mandatory' ideas in a dystopian society - individual vs. society, nature vs. science, emotion vs. cold reason, etc. You've seen all of this before, and better done at that. Go read Orwell, Bradbury or Huxley, or even watch Logan's Run (1976) or Blade Runner (1982)... anything! Avoid this viciously uninvolving cheese-fest for as long as you can.<br /><br />3/10