UPDATED: OK, I’ll be honest, I had barely a passing familiarity with the animated Aeon Flux series. I really remembered next to nothing about it, and only caught tiny pieces of it from time to time. I’m a big sci-fi fan, and naturally had no trouble convincing myself to see this movie. The trailers didn’t make it look super-great, but it looked like it might at least be some mindless, cool fun. However, it’s actually a well conceived and written piece of classic style science fiction. I mean, the basic premise and story of this movie could easily be an episode of The Outer Limits. This is the kinda stuff that the most traiditional of sci-fi is – a “what if?” situation involving technology and morality. Upon a second viewing of the movie, I liked the film even more. The sense of style impressed me more. The action sequences work better for some reason once I knew how everything fit together (I have no idea why that’s true). The cast does a nice job. Theron makes both the dramatic material and the slick action material work very well. The production is quite good. There’s no shortage of style to be found, including some very nice production and set design. While this movie doesn’t quite have the brilliance of, say, Dark City, it is easily a very good sci-fi concept film. I have since gone back to check out the animated series and couldn’t get through more than the first brief episode. It’s got animation that just plain annoys me, completely pointless plotting, and is pretty lame in general. I’m wondering how it evolved into this intelligent film. I didn’t notice some direct references in the film to the first episode that I did watch (the “fly in the eye” and such). After having seen the film a second time, I’m bumping it up my list for the year a bit. I can already tell it’s going to be one of those films that I will watch fairly regularly once it hits DVD. One of those sci-fi action films that just plays well on multiple viewings to pop on from time to time.