Valerian is Luc Besson updating the 5th Element for the kids. The 5th Element let the director go a little loopy and dig deep into his imagination to craft something differently, destined for cult status among a few die hard fans. Valerian feels like it will have similar midnight screenings and dedicated fans. The City of a Thousand planets is the 5th Element on steroids, so if you are big into crazy creatures and fun special effects, you’ll have a blast. If not, the lame story doesn’t have enough pop to keep you watching.
The city of a thousand planets is Alpha, a space station that kept growing and growing to the point where it developed its own gravity and was set adrift to continue to grow across the universe. As a result, peacekeepers are needed to keep the harmony from this world going forward. Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and Laureline (Cara Delevingne) are two such officers. Not only are they one of the best pairs of cops around, they’re also romantically involved and considering marriage. The marriage plans get sidetracked when Valerian starts having visions that converge with his current assignment, involving the military Commander Arun Filitt (Clive Owen), Bob the Pirate (Alain Chabat), and shapeshifting Rihanna.
Besson had won me over by shapeshifting Rihanna (her intro is amazing). As far as I’m concerned, we should keep tapping that dude’s mind for strange but beautiful images. The opening 10 minutes is just a gorgeous creation of a world we know nothing about, but are instantly drawn to like. Besson goes for the dream/VR type shooting to make it feel like you live amongst these worlds already but can’t see them, giving the movie a surreal feel. That being said, the worlds Besson creates are pretty spectacular to look at, and co exist in really fun ways. The best sequence of the movie is when Valerian is chasing a ship through the planets and he has to enter a vast array of the ecosystems available on Alpha. After each world is shown, I wanted to shout, “Hey wait! let me hang out there a little longer!” Helping a lot is the creature creation, which is more than just a CGI spectacle; each creature has some sort of society Valerian/Laureline have to maneuver around to accomplish their goals, which left me fascinated and intrigued.
Probably because the main characters’ story is the opposite. Dane DeHaan proves here he can’t really play a traditional leading man; not for one second do you believe he can be a swash buckling alpha male, and really don’t understand what Cara Delevingne sees in him (she fares much better, getting in on the joke). The movie NEEDS us to believe in their love for the story to mean something. I know the comics must have been built around these two, but if I had to guess, Luc Besson probably realized the material around the main characters was more fun and engaging, so he probably cut the story bare so he could jump around more and have fun in this awesome world. This does give Besson enough time to craft an engaging allegory about projection of war mongers onto peaceful people, but the love story sucks any chance of more than a surface level discussion of this topic.
But when you have a character named Jolly the Pimp played by Ethan Hawke, you can be forgiven for those mistake. Should there be more of these films, I’m sure Luc Besson would push to sideline the leads and just build the movie around Alpha (like Jurassic Park). Or we just swap Dane Dehaan for Miles Teller and pretend nothing happened. Or we make it a 2 hour Rihanna music video. That’s probably the winner.
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