Your ability to enjoy Valerian and The City of a Thousand Planets
is going to depend heavily on your tolerance for stupidity. Based on a
long-running, highly influential French comic series, this is a movie that
director Luc Besson (Leon: The
Professional, The Fifth Element, Lucy) has wanted to make for a long time. There
are moments in Valerian that are
truly inspired and hint at the seeds of brilliance, but it’s
undercut by some weird writing decisions and an eye rolling third act that
seems like it was pulled out of Besson’s ass at the last minute. On one hand, I
would highly recommend seeing this solely on the basis that it has some of the
best visuals I’ve ever seen in any movie. If that’s enough to tide you over,
then go see it in theaters and buy it on Blu-ray. But if you pay close
attention, you can pinpoint the precise moment when the wheels start to fall
off.
Our story takes place 700
years in the future where all species in the universe have joined together to
create Alpha, the titular City of a Thousand Planets, a cross-cultural hub that
is the home to thousands of different alien species who share their knowledge
and cultures with each other. Our titular character, Valerian (Dane DeHaan) is
a special agent for the Galactic Federation who receives a psychic message from
the princess of an indigenous alien race just as her home planet is destroyed.
After he and his partner/lover Laureline (Cara Delevingne) are brought in to
Alpha after a mission retrieving a lost item from said planet, they find out it’s
at the center of some mysterious doings going on in the depths of the city that
threaten to undo the centuries of process that they’ve made.
While Valerian is plagued with
issues, there are plenty of bright spots that make it worth the trip. The
opening sequence in particular is a moving montage of the formation of the
city, beginning with the expansion of the International Space Station and a
series of handshakes between astronauts of different nations until different
alien species join the fold and connect their station to theirs, forming a
giant skeletal mass over the course of hundreds of years, all set to David
Bowie’s “Space Oddity”. There’s also a large chunk of the first act that takes
place in a marketplace that’s only accessible through another dimension that
could be the premise of an entire franchise, but the series treats it as just
another set-piece. The movie also sports a vast array of unique and interesting
alien designs that could give Star Wars
a run for its money. If this ends up taking home some Oscars for the visual
department, I would have no qualms with it.
The main issue is that the
script is a bit of a mess. While there is a lot going on, it’s fairly
streamlined and never really gets confusing. It’s just that it’s so jam packed with
cool ideas but doesn’t focus on any of them long enough to expound on them before
moving on to the next big set piece. Hell, there’s this big madcap chase
sequence where Valerian is crashing through the walls of different parts of the
city that’s each its own unique environment, while he uses special features in
his spacesuit that would make Batman’s utility belt blush, but it’s over before
it can settle in. But the screenplay isn’t so much a coherent narrative as it
is an excuse to have our characters dropped into bizarre situations, some of
which don’t factor into the main plot at all. There’s one part where Valerian
falls off the grid and Laureline has to find track him down by sticking her
head inside a jellyfish that feeds off of memories, and then it’s never brought
up again. Valerian then has to save Laureline from a group of frog people that
want to eat her, and once he does that it's never mentioned again. Rihanna makes an appearance as a shapeshifting
burlesque dancer who gets a three-minute long dance number and helps Valerian rescue
Laureline, but she dies immediately after she’s outlived her usefulness. The big
reveal of what’s causing all the mayhem also starts to lose its luster once it’s
revealed, especially since it bears a more than passing resemblance to another special effects-heavy sci-fi epic involving blue, nature loving indigenous aliens who are the unwitting victims of galactic colonialism.
It also doesn’t help that the
acting is all over the place. Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne are bereft of
chemistry, which makes the love/hate banter that makes up the chunk of their
dialogue fall flat. DeHaan especially is woefully miscast. I’ve never read the
comics, but I can tell that they were trying to make Valerian this rugged,
womanizing rogue, and while DeHaan can be great when he’s in his element, but
here he doesn’t have the charisma to cut it. This is probably the first movie I’ve
seen where Cara Delevingne is actually required to be a full participant (then
again, the only other things I’ve seen her in are Paper Towns and Suicide Squad),
and while character is more likeable and interesting than Valerian (which
raises the question of why her name was omitted from the title), I had a hard
time getting fully invested in her since her performance since about 80% of her
dialogue with Valerian was just pointless bickering.
Overall, Valerian and The City of a Thousand Planets is a textbook example
of a “turn your brain off” movie. While the effects and visuals make it worth
the price of admission, it’s hamstrung but a shoddy story, lackluster acting
and a script that seems to actively punish you for putting too much thought
into it. For a movie that wants to buck the trends of modern Hollywood, it
falls pretty short. That said, if you do plan on seeing this, you might as well
see it on the big screen if for no other reason than so you can say you were
there first when it becomes a cult favorite later down the line.
6/10
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