A visually stunning, but hollow romp.
Twenty years after The Fifth Element, director Luc Besson returns to sci-fi cinema with the vibrant, imaginative, but wildly uneven Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.
Based on the classic French comic book series Valerian and Laureline, the film follows a pair of space-time security agents tasked with protecting an invaluable resource generator while also uncovering a vast military conspiracy within their ranks. That's the simplest synopsis for this unwieldy story, penned by Besson, that is often an incoherent mess populated with underserved characters.
Paced like an old serial, some "chapters" work better than others in advancing the main plot line. The story's biggest, most jarring detour -- when Valerian sets out to rescue a captured Laureline -- essentially stops the narrative momentum flat in a sequence that offers a lot of zany, kid-friendly humor which actress Cara Delevingne, unfortunately, can't quite sell.
Speaking of Cara ... Valerian's biggest problem, the hollow center of the film, is its two main characters, Valerian and Laureline. Their relationship is contrived and lacks dimension, and Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne simply don't have much chemistry. They're the two characters with the lowest stakes in this story and are the least interesting ones to spend time with, which is obviously a huge detriment when they are the leads.
It's also tough to buy two such small, wispy actors as best of the best space cops Valerian and Laureline (the stars bear scant resemblance to their comic book counterparts). While both actors see plenty of action, even in mech suits that enhance their characters’ speed and strength, DeHaan and Delevingne hardly make for imposing combatants.
Valerian's romantic pursuit of Laureline plays out like a live-action version of a Pepe LePew cartoon, but it would require a more roguishly charming lead than DeHaan to pull off such an antiquated approach. All of which is to say that Valerian himself is often the weakest thing about Valerian the movie.
Faring much better is singer-actress Rihanna. Initially, her appearance feels like a wasted supporting role in a needless burlesque diversion, but then her character is revealed to be far more dimensional and moving than expected. Rihanna ends up being one of Valerian's most pleasant surprises, even if ultimately the subplot she's integral to only serves to kill the momentum of the primary storyline. Nevertheless, I felt more for her character than I ever did either of the two leads.
Clive Owen has a small but key role as the military commander Valerian and Laureline are charged with protecting (and who dresses like a cross between M. Bison and an Aer Lingus pilot), while Ethan Hawke has a brief turn as a sort of space pimp meets Kid Rock. Music legend Herbie Hancock also cameos as Valerian and Laureline’s chief commanding officer. Outside of Rihanna, though, none of these supporting performers ultimately register all that much.
Besson is known as an action auteur and Valerian features one particularly clever, inter-dimensional chase scene that evokes both virtual reality and open world games. It's set on a barren tourist trap of a planet on one side of reality and then a boisterous, marketplace planet on the other. Valerian never quite recaptures the inventiveness of this early action sequence.
Where Valerian pops most is in its visuals, creature designs, and world-building. This movie is chock full of visual details to behold in nearly every shot, whether it's showcasing a diverse array of alien species or immersing you in its vividly realized settings. While the film's wall-to-wall green screen effects can become exhausting, Valerian nevertheless takes the viewer on a wondrous journey to other realms.
Valerian's sheer variety of aliens -- underwater creatures, giant robots, shape-shifting blobs, kid-friendly critters -- is truly impressive, although some are certainly stronger designs than others. This diversity of aliens speaks to the film's Star Trek-like, hopeful vision of the future where relatively peaceful coexistence is possible. There's an optimism and idealism at the core of Valerian that's commendable and a welcome relief from what seems like an endless glut of dystopian visions of the future. However, this movie also shows the cost of one civilization's aggressive expansion and the ghosts created by such violence.
Valerian is like a sampler appetizer of different flavors of sci-fi, from pulpy serials (Flash Gordon) to the socially conscious (Trek and Avatar) to modern space operas (Star Wars and Guardians). But Jupiter Ascending was also like that and it proved a giant commercial flop. Valerian also faces the same challenge John Carter had, where it may seem derivative of the very films, like Star Wars, that its older source material may have helped inspire. Valerian is certainly a hugely expensive gamble, the rare big genre movie that isn't pre-sold IP. I wish I could be a bigger champion of it then but Luc Besson conjured more compelling visuals and set-pieces than he did characters and a story.
The Verdict
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets showcases plenty of cool creatures and ideas for sci-fi fans to savor, but if only the movie's central characters and their relationship were as exciting and interesting as all that impressive eye candy.
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