On 5 October 2022, I watched Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, a dazzling if not overly deep sci fi/space opera movie.
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets was directed, co-produced (with his wife), and written by Luc Besson, released in 2017 by EuropaCorp, and loosely based upon the very popular French science fiction graphic novel series Valérian and Laureline, written by Pierre Christin and illustrated by Jean-Claude Mézières (but especially upon the second and sixth novels in this series, entitled Empire of a Thousand Planets and Ambassador of the Shadows respectively). It contains a very complex, involved plot set in the 28th Century and for much of its lengthy action aboard an immense space station named Alpha that has become a huge city populated by countless species from innumerable planets. (Two hundred different alien species are physically delineated within the movie.)
Its principal characters are a pair of interstellar governmental human agents – Major Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and Sgt Laureline (Cara Delevingne), who are both professional and romantic partners, and have been given the highly dangerous task of procuring for safe-keeping the very last surviving specimen of an amazing little creature called a converter. This cute but highly productive little beastie can swallow anything and defaecate countless replicates of it, but most especially high-energy pearls from its idyllic but now-decimated home planet Mül, where a peaceful semi-aquatic, low-technology humanoid race known as the Pearls once lived.
A few Pearls survived a huge enemy spacecraft crashing into Mül, whose explosion is what decimated it, and they have been wandering through Space ever since seeking to acquire the knowledge to recreate Mül, but they need the last surviving converter in order to accomplish this. So too, however, do many different warring factions, not least Valerian and Laureline's own ruthless commander, Arün Filitt (Clive Owen), who unbeknownst to them (and everyone else) secretly gave the order to destroy the enemy spacecraft even though he knew the devastating effect that this would have upon Mül and its inhabitants the Pearls.
A sizeable chunk of this movie is set in Big Market – an enormous market situated within an alternate reality, which can only be viewed by visitors and tourists when wearing special helmets. Even so, its inhabitants can still kill, as Valerian and Laureline swiftly discover when seeking the converter amid Big Market's labyrinthine layout. Visually, this is by far the most spectacular portion of what is already a visually arresting movie, although Rihanna (yes indeed!) playing a shape-shifting tentacular blue alien entertainer named Bubble comes a close second. (Click here to watch her jaw-dropping pole-and-hoop dance, and you'll definitely see what I mean!)
There are also cameo appearances by the likes of Ethan Hawke as Bubble's protector/pimp Jolly, Herbie Hancock as the Defence Minister, Rutger Hauer as the President of the World State Federation, plus John Goodman voicing the galaxy's most wanted criminal (namely, pirate captain extraordinaire Igon Siruss).
The movie is over 130 mins long, but I was captivated throughout by it, except for one persistent irritation, in the shape of Delevingne's character. Laureline is supposed to be sassy, smart, and shrewd, more than capable of keeping her somewhat arrogant superior and love interest Valerian on his toes. However, this is overplayed, to the extent that she soon becomes more shrew than shrewd, and you find yourself cheering for Valerian even at his most obnoxious, which, to be fair, is nowhere near obnoxious enough to deserve the waspish tongue-lashing he constantly receives from Laureline.
Never mind, there are plenty of awesome extraterrestrial monsters to enjoy, from memory-sucking jellyfishes and a trio of exasperating information brokers that resemble the unexpected outcome of an inebriated confrontation between a small elephant and a large fruit bat, to gigantic underwater desmostylianesque aliens and other entities that totally defy description. There are also all manner of subtle homages and references to Besson's previous sci fi movie, The Fifth Element, to spot along the way.
All in all, I found Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets to be very enjoyable –often baffling, frequently exasperating, but never dull or uneventful, that's for sure.
And if you'd like to pay a brief visit alongside Valerian and Laureline to Alpha, the titular City of a Thousand Planets, be sure to click here and here to view a couple of official trailers for this dynamic movie on YouTube.
To view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.
I am a longterm fan of the comic book series this is based upon, and yeah the title characters came across as a bit more annoying and more overtly zany than they ever were in the comics
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