My memories of the original Aeon Flux are, perhaps appropriately,
fragmentary. Back in the day I didn’t get MTV and in the end I think
I only saw two episodes all the way through. (Remember when MTV was
interesting?) In any case, I remember liking what I saw, so I was
looking forward to the film, although with some caution. After
hearing a bit about it, I entered the theater expecting only
disappointment.

The film itself is an unusual mix. It definitely has its bad
points, which I feel compelled to enumerate. Some of the dialog is
laughable. Stylistically it seems like it can’t decide between a
certain kind of Star Trekian futurism (people in subtly matching
outfits walking easily through crowded outdoor markets), smooth
concrete abstractionism (Flux’s apartment, seemingly located in a
scrubbed out sewer), something more baroque (the library, the
Relical), or something hyper-realistic (close-ups lit to show skin
texture, the unusual posters of the dictator).

Likewise it can’t decide what kind of an action film it wants to
be. The cutting is very choppy and the action scenes are consequently
difficult to follow. At times the settings seem to indicate a more
visually ambitious film is buried in the sub-liminal — the locations
chosen generally impressed me.

Despite its flaws this film did capture elements of the original.
The world is mysterious, post-Picardian Kafka (nicely captured in the
phrase “industrial virus”). The technology is alien and magical and
as viewers we often do not know whether some gadget is taken for
granted in this world where any object can have the function of any
other, where form and function are completely divorced. Perhaps we
are viewing ordinary things. Or perhaps Flux knows as little as we.

It brings to mind the Codex Seraphinianus, which in its own world
is most likely a perfectly ordinary book, no more exotic than an issue
of National Geographic.

The ending was a mild let-down, as were the moments when the film
devolved to mere action and the typical tropes of the genre.

I enjoyed this film quite a bit more than I expected to. In an
artistic sense I found it inspiring, similar to the way that reading a
story by Delany invariably makes me want to write.