Luc Besson’s "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets" follows agents Valerian and Laureline (Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne, respectively) who are part of a galactic government and set out on a mission to protect a species on the brink of extinction. "Valerian" is an interesting movie, to say the least. Parts of the film frustrated me due to how all the aspects that were both good and bad were so jumbled up with one another, making it difficult to decipher the overall quality. Loaded with extraordinary visuals, fast-paced yet engaging action, and incredibly detailed designs, this movie is a true feast for the eyes but falls flat on delivering dialogue and plot lines that a general audience will stick with.
The opening of this film was easily my favorite sequence, David Bowie’s “Ground Control to Major Tom” plays in a montage detailing the overall world of this film. It takes place in a fictional future where one sole space station progressively got larger and interacted with more people from all around the world. As the space station grows and eventually becomes its own city, pulling away from earth’s atmosphere, aliens start to interact with the humans to share their knowledge with one another. As I mentioned earlier, the designs for these alien creatures are astounding. While they’re all computer-generated creatures, you can tell that there was so much work and detail put in to make each one stand out individually. It can be difficult to suck in a general audience when background characters are weird-looking aliens, so doing this in a no-dialogue intro montage that tells a simple story of life forms from all over the galaxy sharing knowledge and coming together is a welcoming way to get audiences to understand what they’re watching.
Each planet that is visited in this movie is completely gorgeous to look at, you get to witness an ordinary day in the life of a random species and the movie does what so many other movies fail to accomplish: “show, don’t tell.” We’re able to see life on this planet without any dialogue, we’re able to piece traditions and behaviors via context clues, facial features and reactions. The movie immediately sucks you into this world and asks the audience to suspend any doubts for a few hours and take a journey, you’re either in or you’re out by the time the first 10 minutes are up. Embracing the weirdness of the galaxy and opening your mind to these unique planets and alien designs is the only true way to experience Valerian.
When you wake up and remember you're living in a desktop screensaver.
The main two characters, Valerian and Laureline, have a believable chemistry with one another. After watching the trailers for this film I was dreading Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne’s performances immensely, I thought they would not work well together and feel out of place with one another. I’m surprised how wrong I was, while the details of their relationship might be somewhat convoluted, I think they play with flirtatious banter very well and they also physically look like they belong together in the context of the film. I’m very glad we didn’t see the origins of how they became a team and didn’t flashback to it, I like when a movie can establish an already existing relationship and not hold the audience’s hand and explain just how everything came to be.
The movie drops you off right in the middle of their relationship and it works just fine. Cara Delevingne’s character, Laureline, acts very stiff and reserved initially which I thought would be an issue but it’s clearly a character choice and at the very least it has consistency throughout the movie. One point where I was very disappointed with her performance was about halfway through when she gets kidnapped by a group of aliens. Instead of screaming for help or showing any sense of panic or distress, she just weakly calls out for Valerian’s help in a tone I wouldn’t even call urgent. It seemed incredibly passive and not how any character would react to being tied up in an alien fishing net.
Whenever these two characters are separated from each other there’s a huge lull in the whole environment, it’s easy to see that these actors don’t have anything or anyone else to work with if they’re on their own. The movie does a good job of keeping them together for the most parts, but in the one or two scenes where they’re kept away from each other, you can tell that the chemistry is missing.
Get used to these facial expressions folks, it's the only face they'll make the entire movie.
Now, there are these 3 alien background characters that I thought worked extremely well. They're weird platypus/pterodactyl/pigeon hybrid-looking creatures. They show up once or twice to move the plot along or explain things to the main characters. They bring a nice touch of comedy to the scenes they're in.
Their entire gimmick is that they all speak as one, meaning they basically complete each other sentences. At first, I was worried this would get old but they're goofy voices and mannerisms kept me hooked each time they showed up. The best way I could describe their speaking style is by comparing them to those little green aliens from the Toy Story franchise.
Howard the Duck on crack? Huey, Dewey and Louie turned into Gremlins? WHAT ARE THESE THINGS?
The score for this movie really helps set the tone and the overall sense of mystic wonder, each background score matches the current location perfectly. During one sequence set on a desert-filled planet we can hear Egyptian-sounding music that really helps complete the scene. The ideas brought out during this movie are so interesting and unique that it makes up for the lack of compelling dialogue, on this desert planet there’s an area called “Big Market” that is essentially a virtual mall. Tourists come in and wander through the desert, but they were these visors and gloves that help them see a hugely detailed marketplace full of a million stores. The editing during the heist that takes place on this planet is great because it seamlessly transitions from the desert wasteland to the expansive marketplace during chase scenes with characters both in and out of the virtual mall. The tech is phenomenally utilized, even small aspects like how seat belts work establishes how thought-out this movie was from conception. There are unique cloaking devices, translators, navigators, guns, etc.
The action set-pieces also make up for the admittedly weak plot. There’s a chase scene in particular that sends you through at least 4 different environments that each have their own color palette, gravity, atmosphere and feel. It’s a very fun action sequence that is paced well and engaging. Every other action scene is handled uniquely and differs from the prior, as I mentioned earlier, the technology present in the world of this movie makes these action sequences great because they’re handled in a way that sparks so much intrigue in the logistics of this world. The concepts, tactics and fight styles vary throughout the whole movie and keep you ready for the next.
I feel like I need a whole separate paragraph to talk about Rihanna’s character, Bubble. I’m not sure what Rihanna’s politics are or her stance on women’s issues but I was surprised to see that she willingly decided to take this role of, a term I’m a coining, a shapeshifter stripper. Our introduction to Bubble is through a long, drawn-out stripper dance around a stripper pole where her shape-shifting creature changes from sexy schoolgirl, to sexy maid, to sexy cat, to sexy African queen, to sexy clown, to sexy... stripper!
It was like every “sexy” Halloween costume all in one show. I think the idea of a stripper who’s able to change her form to better suit any customer that walks in is a clever idea, but the execution was so bad in my opinion. There were at least 3 times during her dance number that I thought Valerian would interrupt her and make her stop but it just kept going on. What’s weird is that as the movie goes on, she becomes an interesting character and a useful sidekick to Valerian when rescuing Laureline. The problem is that she’s written out of the movie almost immediately and only has about 20 minutes of screentime. Bubble is in this movie so little that it’s really difficult to connect to her character or care during her last emotional scene.
I don't want to spoil what her character's "true form" is because that is something you have to see for yourself.
Overall, I’d actually recommend this movie to anyone who was even slightly curious to check it out. It’s not a perfect movie by any means, the storyline isn’t convoluted but it’s not necessarily groundbreaking either. The movie is entertaining and that's what most movies should aspire to be, I had a fun time in the theater despite noticing flaws as the movie progressed. If you are going to see it, I suggest watching it on the biggest screen in 3D, I usually don’t recommend 3D but it does this movie a huge favor. I was initially completely uninterested in this movie and only went to check it out because I thought it’d be “so bad that’s it’s good.”
Turns out it was just good. This movie has beautiful visuals that seem to tell their own story, separate from the main plot. The movie also succeeds in touching on themes like war vs. peace and death vs. humiliation. It’s truly an experience that’s worth seeing in a theater, I’m not sure it would benefit much from a home-video viewing. The vastness of the planets and the features of the aliens are better viewed on the biggest screen you can find in your area. Are stunning visuals and clever ideas enough to make up for a shoddy plot and cheesy dialogue? I'll let you decide... but in this case the answer is yes. If you're a fan of sci-fi, check it out before it leaves theaters.
