The State of Flux: "Perfect Future Shock"

The perfect society. That's the myth at the heart of the new Paramount Pictures movie, Aeon Flux starring Charlize Theron in the title role. Set four centuries after a doomsday scenario has wiped out all but 5 million people on the planet, the only survivors live in the last human city of Bregna, sealed off from the outside world.

The movie is based on the animated series of the same name created by Peter Chung for MTV in the 1990s. The live action version, directed by Karyn Kusama, is a visually stunning piece with exhilarating action sequences, but unlike many action films today the story is driven by an intellectually stimulating and imaginative plot. Elements of the series' dark sensuality remain, but they are sharply curtailed when compared to the original.

The scientist named Goodchild who discovered the cure to the industrial virus founded Bregna, instituting a totalitarian regime to keep order and protect civilians from the encroaching threats of the untamed wilderness and further outbreaks of disease. Thus, the foundational conflict in the movie is between rebels against the dictatorial state, known as the Monicans, and the familial Goodchild government, now headed by Chairman Trevor Goodchild.

The Goodchild regime has all the earmarks of a modern-day tyranny, with images of the Chairman reproduced throughout the city, a devastatingly effective secret police that ruthlessly eliminates any opposition to the government, and pervasive information gathering technology to keep track of all of the inhabitants' activities. The parallels between Bregna and contemporary despotic states like North Korea are unmistakable.

Aeon Flux, who is the premier assassin among the rebel Monicans, can in some way be seen as an embodiment of the same commitment to freedom and liberty at work in the founding of the United States. The Declaration of Independence refers to the rights and duties of people who live under tyranny: "When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

This, in a nutshell, is the mission of Aeon Flux, who transcends her Monican associates, who simply want to "throw off" the Goodchild government but seem quite capable of replacing his totalitarian regime with one of their own. They are truly rebels. Aeon, by contrast, hopes for a positive future full of the hope of freedom and human flourishing, and thus becomes a revolutionary.