Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

Let's not write it off too quickly. The foreign markets aren't in yet, and as a European film based on a popular French comic series, directed by one if not the biggest director of France in modern times, it stands to reason that it will be way more popular in Europe. And considering all the eye candy, it'll probably also do quite well in Asian markets.

Personally, I've been too busy to go see it this weekend with working the late shift all week with today (Sunday) being my only free day, and this was the birthday of my brother.
But I'll go see it early next week.

 

A very lovely film. I would have liked to see Chris Foss type spaceships...

 

I saw the film. It was "meh". "The Fifth Element" was the better film. I came to believe, and invest, in the relationship between the leads in that film. The relationship between the leads in the newer film left me cold. There was more relationship between Valerian and Bubbles, and I was bummed out about what happen to Bubbles.

 

I enjoyed it. I thought the worst part of the movie was Valerian, who I found bland, arrogant, and unlikeable, but, luckily, despite being the title character, he's not around as much as you'd think. I also wasn't thrilled with the casting of the General and the Commander as both being brown-haired middle-aged white men, which made it a little hard to distinguish their characters before they were separated (also not helpful; that the Commander outranked the General. Add that to Valerian and Laureline apparently being one step in rank apart from their uniforms, but being a Major and a Sergeant, respectively, and it seemed we were going with a nonsense BSG-style hierarchy, here. Makes it hard to figure out the interpersonal dynamics of who gets to tell who what to do).

Still, it was a visually stunning film, the opening sequence was especially wonderful, and Bubbles was definitely the breakout character (though her last scene almost screamed "Surprise, your Famous Person for your Famous Person Cameo needs to leave set a week earlier than we thought. Just write around it").

 

I saw it opening day and loved it. I saw it as a follow-up to Dunkirk, which I saw on the same day, and noted that Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets couldn't be further from the stark reality of Dunkirk. While there was certainly certainly more flash than substance in Valerian, it does have a fair amount of substance, mostly in the two lead characters. I particularly enjoyed the serial narrative of the film, jumping from one mini-adventure to the next while part of a larger encompassing story. I agree that Valerian is somewhat unlikable and I far preferred Laureline. I did like how, at least for one part of the film, it focused on Laureline being the lead and rescuing Valerian (although the immediately squandered it by completely flipping it back to the normal trope).

I noticed that as well, and as a sailor, that bugged me somewhat, but it wasn't a big deal because of the style of the film, i.e. extravagant and irrational.

 

I liked it. I don't really have much to say about it, but it was a fun movie and exactly the kind of space opera television and movies really could use more of, IMO.

I rationalized that as the Commander's actual rank likely is General, and Commander is actually his title. Kind of like in Star Trek III, Admiral Morrow's title was Starfleet Commander, and they do interchangeably refer to him as Admiral or Commander throughout the movie. This is also somewhat supported by the fact that the computer files are restricted to everyone except five star Generals (according to Alex the Computer) but the Commander is the only one who can access them, even when the General takes over in the Commander's absence he on has limited access. Which I guess means the Commander is a five star General, while the General himself is four star or something.

Really though, I'm clearly overthinking the matter. The movie's military clearly isn't meant to be an accurate depiction of the military.

 

Yeah, that was my thought too. That he actually outranked the other General, but since he was the commander of Alpha, or at least the Federation soldiers on Alpha, they called him Commander.

 

Valerian is supposed to be this arrogant unlikeable type...I have long looked forward to see if anyone could make this crazy universe into a movie!
Still got the comics and the newer ones as well...
I am waiting for it to premier here!

 

Dane DeHaan was well cast then.

 

It is not a Hollywood thing

 

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

My Grade: C+
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This movie is a tough one.... There's a lot to like and there's a lot to dislike. There's Luc Besson who gave us the imaginative world of The Fifth Element but then also the oddness and strange editing choices of Lucy.

Valerian starts of with an interesting, cool, montage of events occurring in Earth orbit with the docking meeting of Apollo 18 and the Russian space station Salyut and the two astronauts meeting at the docking hatch for the first time and shaking hands. A union of scientists and early space explorers both coming from governments in high opposition of one another. We jump forward to a few years in the future as the montage continues, showing more space-craft docking to, presumably, the ISS and hands been shaken with each additional government joining the space station, we jump forward a few decades or so and a module docks that generates artificial gravity, we go forward a century or so and we see an alien craft docking, and then we go into a series of scenes of various aliens docking with the space station, walking aboard, and shaking hands with the humans greeting them in the entry foyer. The space station grows and grows to a massive jumble of ships in Earth's orbit and we're told that the size of the space-station is starting to cause problems with Earth's orbit from it's own gravity it's starting to generate so it's given some thrusters, pushed out of orbit, and off into deep space to go out and continue to grow on its own.

It's really a remarkable, very well done, beautiful scene done to David Bowie's "Space Oddity" (Major Tom.)

We flash forward another few centuries where the station is in deep space, humans are big explorers in space with FTL travel and.... The "story" starts.

Well, first we're treated to a long scene of aliens and some ritual involving magical pearls on their home planet before it's soon destroyed by space debris for unknown reasons or causes that's explored in the rest of the movie.... Eventually.

We're next introduced to two "special forces" agents set out on a mission to recover an alien artifact in another dimension.

Overall on the surface the story in of it's self isn't "terrible" but the biggest problem is that the main cast isn't interesting or charismatic enough to pull it off. Comparing this to The Fifth Element, the TFE only works because of Bruce Willis, Mila Jolovich and Gary Oldman. Good actors who really brought their characters to life and, in Oldman's case, chewed scenery. Almost any other actors and the movie wouldn't have worked and had been forgotten.

That's the problem here the actors are boring. The main guy (DeHaan) is suppsoed to be this bad-ass universe's best super secret agent, and big time womanizer. He looks like he's the guy who picked on you in High School and ended up with a career working in the lumber section at Home Depot. I do not buy him as this galactic super-agent. He doesn't have that level of screen presence or charisma. Had this been a Channing Tatum, Ryan Reynolds or someone like that it would've worked a lot more. But this guy, you kind of want to punch him more in his expressionless, yet somehow still smirking, face more than you want to root for him,

The main actress (Previously most seen as the Air Dancer/Enchantress in Suicide Screen) does okay. She's a little flat but she's a little more interesting and fits into her character's trope better than DeHaan does.

Another problem I had with the movie is.... You don't know what's happening, or why, through pretty much all of it. There's MacGuffins that characters or after and you only sort-of know why, there's stock "Evil Generals" there but you don't know what their aim/goal is and things like that. The movie finally explains all of this stuff to you at the start of the last act. (Sort of late to fill your audience in on what's going on.)

The movie also gets side-tracked during all of this, seemingly wanting to have you experience the complexities of this universe but it feels more like getting dragged into pointless side-quests or time-filler quests in a video game. The Enchantress girl needs to find out what's going on so she has to go off on this mini-quest to get an alien jellyfish that can help her learn this and has to enlist the help of some NPCs.

DeHaan has to save Enchantress but she's in a place he can't go so he has to go off on a side-quest to acquire a shape-shifting alien that can help him so we spend several minutes with him doing this and watch a striptease/dance in a brothel.

(Which gives us one of only a couple interesting characters, Rhiana as the shapeshifting alien "Bubble." A character I buy the connection between her DeHaan with more than the connection he has with his own supposed fiancee.)

As visually interesting these side-quests and such are, and as interesting as it is to explore this universe, dammit, these actors can't quite make everything else interesting to watch between these "set pieces."

The movie does start of great an interesting through showing us the development of this space station through the centuries and an extended, dialogless scene on an alien planet. Great world-building here. Then the main-characters come in and the movie starts to drag a bit.

Then a set piece on NotTatooine! Going between this barren planet an an alien market in another dimension!

Then character nonsense.

Then an action scene with aliens capturing a commander and chasing them down!

Then character nonsense.

There's some good universe-building here but just not much with the characters, I was more invested in the alien characters we get in the opening sequence and shape-changing stripper than I was our leads. The splendor of the movie is worth seeing, just don't expect to be that interested in what's going on between the set-pieces.

 

I enjoyed it. Like a more cerebral Guardians of the Galaxy. Really enjoyed Rihanna's character, though I did turn my head a couple times during her dance (I'm a married man). I get the buzz about Cara Delevigne now. Very interesting person. This was the second thing that I've seen Dehaan in, after Chronicle. He's a decent actor. Has a "please slap me" face that works well with cocky roles.

 

So...... being a married man means you can't watch a PG-13 dance done by a woman who is practically fully clothed?

Even if it were a nude scene.... What does being married have to do with it? You're not sleeping with her you looking at a visual of her. Is this not the 21st century, why turn your head during this scene because you're married? I'm genuinely confused.

 

Agreed, the opening sequence was one of the better things I've seen in recent movies.

 

I thought it was okay in it's own way. Both of the main characters were 'gary or mary sue' - and honestly neither 'grew' much or had much of an internal arc or conflict. Like I said, it was okay, and had the occasional interesting or odd (in a good way) or funny bit.

However, if you're not in 'Heavy Metal' (the magazine) type stories, you probably wouldn't find it enjoyable.

I did like it better than the last film of his I saw: Lucy.

 

^that's setting the bar rather low, isn't it?

 

The movie comes to a crashing halt in order to beat us over the head with a totally unnecessary (hence gratuitous) strip-tease act that seems to sort of revel over the guilty-pleasure of male-gaze, that's why. Valerian is presented as merely a stand-in for the audience and we're all but invited to drool and sport wood over it.

 

Just came home from seeing it. I'm very pleased with the movie.

 

I highly recommend the first 30 minutes or so.

A gloriously humanistic intro montage, then a visit to a gorgeous planet that had me thinking they should have got Besson to direct Star Wars, and a clever dimension crossing introductory mission for the protagonists.

Then it becomes evident that these two recovering heroin addicts have no chemistry, and the film starts to die.

 

Spolers--A sad blow to the Pearls early on--but like Dresden--that's war.

Ironically--with FTL drives, the only way you'd have fleets near a planet is if it were being attacked-otherwise one could outrun fleets.
I wonder about the identity of the squid ship. Some culpability there as well.

Idea for a sequel, maybe...