Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

I don't really know how to start on Valerian because even if I had heard that the movie was good when it came out, I don't really have much of a connection or interest in this property. Apparently it's based off of a french comic book series that started in the 60s that looks like its in the vein of Flash Gordon (if I'm wrong about that feel free to call me out on that), but there wasn't really anything about this film that sparked any interest in going to see it in the theaters.

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets takes place in the 28th century. There is a really cool montage in the opening credits of the International Space Station being added onto by different nations and later alien races. This eventually creates the space traveling city of Alpha. If you've ever played Mass Effect, just think of The Citadel and you're good. That provides our setting. The main characters of the story are two space cops by the name of Valerian (played by Dane DeHaan) and Laureline (played by Cara Delevingne).

The main plot of the story follows these two as they acquire a little creature tied to an ancient alien race as well as their mission to rescue the representative of the human race on this space city (played by Clive Owen) when he is captured. However, the story takes a lot of weird twists and turns and you can tell that the main purpose of the movie is not so much to tell a really cohesive story, but rather to show off the gorgeous CGI landscape and CGI characters.

And don't get me wrong, I think the visuals in this movie are actually pretty good. I think the only minor regret of not seeing this movie in the theaters is that this is a very expansive and visually beautiful movie and it probably would be cool to see on a big screen. However, I can't say that regret is really salient because the story is so convoluted and detoured by smaller side quests that these two go on.

The biggest take away I took from this movie was that this story would actually be really interesting as a mini series or full on television show. The story is so fragmented. At the beginning they spend a good amount of time on this planet that has a giant virtual reality world that is a real world... somewhere and the physics of that don't always compute, but then they go to Alpha, and that districts that you could spend an entire episode or two on. I think you would definitely have to change the two leads (don't worry I'll get to that) and you would have a really interesting set up for a television show where the limits to what they could do are really only writers imaginations.

And especially with the creatures and aliens that are shown in this movie, there's really no limit to the challenges that these two could face.

Like I said, the opening montage of all these people and aliens forming together to create the station of Alpha really opens up a whole world that I'm sure was explored in the comic series. I don't want to knock it until I've read it but if certain elements of the movie is any indication of wide universe this comic series created, I totally understand why people wanted to bring this to the big screen.

But the movie just has too many issues and gets distracted too much to really create a cohesive story. It's also blundered by its two main actors.

I always feel the need to put the disclaimer before I trash a performance and note that, these two people are probably great people, I have nothing against them personally, I'm sure they've done a lot of hard work to get where they are today... However...

Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne were really, REALLY not the right choices for this film. I can't speak to if they fit into the characters set up from the comic, but just in their performance, they were bland, looked uninterested, and just aren't strong enough actors to head up the epic that this movie toted itself to be.

I really only know Dane Dehaan from The Amazing Spider-man 2 and he was fine in that movie. I have not seen Chronicle, I've heard he's good in that. But here he always looks tired, he looks like a teenager instead of a war wary Major, and all his character traits are told to us, not shown.

And Cara Delevingne. Oh boy. I thought that her performance in Suicide Squad was just an outlier and maybe there's some talent there, but at this moment and in this movie, there is not. We're hearing a lot of stories about people coming from different forms of art like the Rock and wrestling to acting and working really hard to get to a point where they're entertaining, but Cara is still in that process. She used to be a model and don't get me wrong, she is VERY attractive, but she can't act. She looked bored a lot, she couldn't hold an emotion, and everything about the performance just seemed wrong.

Now to be somewhat fair to these two, their parts weren't written that well to begin with. I've mentioned how the story gets detoured by multiple side quests and "world building" tours but the bigger issue is that their relationship and a lot of the movie is explained in exposition and not a whole lot is shown to a point to get to me care too much about the world I'm in.

For example, when we first meet Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne's characters, they're on their ship. We get a vague understanding that they have a romantic relationship but she's not convinced he's serious because he's had a past of sleeping around. We figure that out because Delevingne's character tells us exactly what kind of person DeHaan's character is. We sort of see it later when he goes to a strip club... sorta (don't worry I'll talk about that in a second). But the information comes from her telling us that, not seeing it in action. Show don't tell movie.

But more importantly, the main pitch of this movie from the trailers was that you will be going into an expansive and visually beautiful world. You'll see aliens, you'll see good environments, its gonna be awesome. And while we do see it, the only real exposure to it is when they're flying into Alpha for the first time (their home) and they get an overview from their ship. The ship explains that Alpha has all these different species and environments and we never really get to explore them except when its very briefly.

The movie feels more like a visual and audio encyclopedia rather than an adventure because we get exposition from side characters telling us about the history and habits of environments and creatures we see rather than us figuring it out as these two go along on their adventure where they are already aware that their environment is different.

As I said, this would be a phenomenal television show as you would be able to explore different parts of the world and experience them rather than Dane DeHaan literally running through every environment really quickly in what is a really cool montage, but does nothing for the progression of the story.

And then there's Rihanna.

Rihanna adds absolutely nothing to this plot. She has two contributions to the film. 1. She does a "stripping" dance (this movie is PG-13 so its not nearly as exciting as you think it is) that literally stops the movie dead in its tracks, and 2. She is Rihanna, it's another big name to add to the credits (and now that I'm thinking about it, she's also one of the only persons of color in the movie besides Herbie Hancock).

The movie could have been done without her, I don't know why she's in the movie.

Overall, this movie is just strange. I think there is a lot of potential in a film like this and I'm always for something that just goes out of its way to be weird and different, but it needs to make sense. It also needs to have good performances and writing behind it and Valerian didn't have either. Yes it was visually pretty but it's been a couple days since I've watched it and it really hasn't had the impression that I think it was going for. Like I said, I'd be all for a television show on this, but I imagine the production costs would be way too high. I don't know if we'll see any form of Valerian adaptations in the future.

But what did you think? Did you like this film? What did you like about? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

Thanks, and see you next time!