Viewers who like sci-fi and fantasy movies for their visual appeal will certainly get their money’s worth at “Aeon Flux.” You could watch this flick with the sound off and get the same level of enjoyment out of it.

In fact, it would probably be better.

The big draw for this big-screen version of the animated short films that aired on MTV’s “Liquid Television” in the early 1990s is Charlize Theron, in a role that couldn’t be more of a contrast to her Oscar-winning turn as a prostitute serial killer in “Monster.” Theron has shed the 30 pounds she packed on for that character, stretched out and toned up, and looks absolutely jaw-dropping in a clingy black full-length bodysuit with killer high-heel boots.

As an agent of a secret rebellion in a Utopian walled city 400 years in the future, Theron’s mission is to assassinate the leader of the city’s government (played by Marton Csokas, looking incredibly like the love child of Kevin Spacey and Clive Owen). Her real, unscripted mission is to show off her gymnastics and ballet training in impossible action sequences while modeling costume designer Beatrix Aruna Pasztor’s impossibly futuristic getups.

I was actually glad to see that “Aeon Flux” made a decent showing at the box office on its opening weekend. Its take will probably cover Theron’s paycheck. This role certainly couldn’t have been anything more than a physical challenge for the actress – the character’s nothing but a good-looking warrior. The only glimpse of a real person in that bodysuit comes when a fellow assassin mentions Aeon should try having some “modifications” done like hers – surgically replacing her feet with hands for better agility. “I like my shoes,” Aeon replies.

Oh, there is a story. It’s played out in stultifyingly static scenes of – get this – government officials sitting around talking. At least they’re wearing more of Pasztor’s outrageously designed ensembles. (Note to future fashion designers: Since you can’t improve much on the basic jacket-and-pants outfit, you’ll have to settle for going wild with the coat lapels.)

The plot deals with the descendants of the 1 percent of Earth’s population who survived a deadly virus in the year 2011. These 5 million folks now live in a carefully controlled society, isolated from the wild, overgrown outside world in their Bauhaus-inspired city and ruled by the family of the scientist who found the cure to the virus.

But something is wrong, Aeon tells us in a helpful voiceover at the beginning. The populace in general is troubled by bad dreams. ‘Scuse me, but when your method of communicating with your rebel commander is through a psychotropic neuro-transmitter drug, I would think bad dreams would be passe.

Despite its fairly short running time of an hour and a half, “Aeon Flux” feels like a week’s worth of soap opera episodes where characters revisit the same conversation several times without advancing the story one bit. The meat-and-potatoes theme is one Gene Roddenberry could have written on a bathroom break.

Actually, I think Roddenberry would have loved “Aeon Flux,” given his penchant for showcasing the female form and his infatuation with themes of morality in otherworldly settings. And really, with a bit less bloodshed, this movie would fit the mold of a weak “Star Trek” episode, just without the forced joke at the end.