Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017)

Review

137min

Genre:     Action, Adventure, Sci-fi

Director:  Luc Besson

Cast:       Dane DeHaan, Cara Delevingne, Clive Owen…and more

Writers:   Luc Besson, Pierre Christin, Jean-Claude Mézières… and more

-Synopsis-

When a mysterious force threatens their space station super-city and the thousand different species who’ve built it over centuries, special galactic agents ‘Valerian’ and ‘Laureline’ are plunged into a race against time to unravel the mystery and stop the destruction in Luc Besson’s lavish adaptation of the groundbreaking futuristic French science fiction comics.

With the era of the comic-book movie undoubtedly in full swing, it was only a matter of time before Hollywood started looking beyond their shores for ideas. Having already mined the land of the rising sun for animation inspiration with films like ‘Kubo and the Two Strings’, and adapted classic Manga with ‘Ghost in the Shell’, English-speaking audiences are now offered a classic long-running Franco-Belgian comic series (courtesy of French studio EuropaCorp)—as writer/director Besson applies his distinct vision to Pierre Christin & Jean-Claude Mézières’s hugely influential 1960s graphic novels ‘Valérian and Laureline’.

Dane DeHaan stars as federal spatio-temporal agent major ‘Valerian’, traversing the galaxy to keep the peace and order among its inhabitants along with his partner sergeant ‘Laureline’ (Cara Delevingne), whom he is determined should be more than just his fellow space cop. When giant space station city ‘Alpha’—home to every species of intelligent life in the known universe—comes under threat from a mysterious menace, Valerian & Laureline embark on a dangerous mission to stop it . . . only to uncover the history an unknown planet and a conspiracy which may go right to the top.

With ‘Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets’ Besson and EuropaCorp are building on solid ground, adapting a much loved piece of fiction which helped to define the ‘space opera’ and influenced cultural goliaths like ‘Star Wars’, as well as Besson’s own 1997 madcap space adventure ‘The Fifth Element’. Yet it also makes it a risk for the director (a huge fan of the comics) in terms of potential fan reaction, but an even greater gamble for the European studio providing a Hollywood blockbuster-sized budget—so the question is did the gamble pay off?, and the answer is . . . not really.

Make no mistake this is an impressive spectacle featuring all the lavish visuals a near $180 million budget can afford. With a blend of extensive CGI and the lived-in space designs pioneered by the comics, resulting in an ‘Avatar’ meets ‘The Fifth Element’ aesthetic, the audience is provided with some impressive action sequences as well as endless fantastical creatures in a real feast for the eyes—but there’s nothing here we haven’t become used to seeing time and again in modern cinema (or indeed in video games), and nothing that really pushes the visual or thematic envelope or separates ‘Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets’ from the big-budget CGI cinema pack.

Yet for all the impressive sights & sounds, when it comes to every other element that makes for classic sci-fi or memorable fantasy adventure, Besson’s space extravaganza leaves much to be desired. The writer/director certainly works hard to infuse his space romp with some social gravitas, by weaving-in a not-so-subtle progressive and humanist narrative about immigration, diversity and strength in unity, but it’s poorly handled and comes off as naive and clichéd—and despite their best efforts, the film’s two stars are nowhere near charismatic enough to hold all the disparate elements together, or sell the often banal dialogue.

Indeed despite model-turned-actress Delevingne exceeding expectations in her career as a thespian so far, and DeHaan’s own stoic talents as a performer, the film’s two stars are out of their depth here and just don’t have the chemistry that’s crucial to the two central roles and their quirky relationship—but to be fair they’re not given much to work with outside of flashy and frenetic action set-pieces.

Ultimately the film has limited character and very little genuine charm, despite the combination of beautiful and bizarre faces, plus all the weird creature creations. The excessive CGI makes Besson’s unbridled imagination transferable to the screen but as usual there is something to be said for limitations—as the lavish visuals put a sterile gloss over everything and suck some of the life out of the narrative. In the end there just isn’t the 90s pop culture cool factor or the gritty quirkiness of something more tangible like the director’s own ‘The Fifth Element’, which is ironic considering how much that film was influenced by the tales of ‘Valérian and Laureline’.

There is certainly more than enough here to make for a reasonably entertaining if disposable piece of escapism, but it could’ve been so much more than that—something which the studio were surely banking on. Only time and Chinese box office results will tell if this potential new fantasy sci-fi franchise has a bright future, but it’s no doubt an inauspicious start for agents Valerian & Laureline at the movies.

The Bottom Line…

A thematically messy but stylistically glossy sci-fi fantasy romp where the visuals are as impressive as the narrative and characters are underwhelming, ‘Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets’ is visually striking and reasonably entertaining but way too underwritten and predictably conceived to stand out in a congested CGI blockbuster movie crowd. Luc Besson’s latest concoction may split opinion between film critics and fans of the hugely influential comic series, but perhaps the biggest gamble ever taken by a European studio will probably struggle to spawn a French comic-book movie franchise . . . though only time will tell.

Similar films you may like (Home Video)

Jupiter Ascending (2015)

A young immigrant domestic cleaner’s life on Earth is turned upside down when she is discovers her intergalactic roots and is pursued by the powerful tyrannical head of an intergalactic family, whom she is determined to fight with the help of a genetically engineered super-soldier in this madcap space sci-fi epic from the creators of ‘The Matrix’.

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