No one does big, beautiful, and weird sci-fi epics quite like filmmaker Luc Besson. He set the bar for modern, stunning-yet-kitschy futuristic fantasy cinema with The Fifth Element in 1997, and now he returns to the realm of the strange and unusual two decades later with Valerian and the City of A Thousand Planets, which truly feels unlike any other movie you’ll catch on the big screen at your local multiplexes for the rest of the summer movie season.
The film is also probably the biggest gamble being taken by a studio this entire year, but I do hope it’s one that eventually pays off for STX and Besson, because I want to see more audacious films like Valerian make it to theaters in the future.
Based on the successful comic series of a similar name, Valerian and the City of A Thousand Planets kicks off with a montage set to David Bowie’s “Space Oddity,” where we see those living on space station Alpha greeting the new residents who have arrived in order to build an expansive connected “planet” and become part of Alpha’s interstellar community. It’s an environment meant to bring communities from all over the galaxy together in an effort to share information and leave peacefully, but soon an invading force threatens Alpha’s peaceful existence and threatens the lives of the thousands of species that call the intergalactic community their home. That’s when Agents Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and Laureline (Cara Delevingne) are brought in on the case, and the duo find themselves mixed up in a conspiracy that’s bigger than they ever could have imagined.
As mentioned earlier this year in my review for A Cure for Wellness, I’m something of a big fan of DeHaan’s, and I think his somewhat “detachedness” works really well in the favor of Valerian, as it not only plays nicely against Delevingne’s “accepts no BS” attitude, but also reflects Besson’s own “European cool” aesthetic in regards to both the characters and the world-building he does here. There’s also a cavalcade of other familiar faces (and voices), including Clive Owen, Herbie Hancock, John Goodman, Ethan Hawke, and Rihanna, who becomes Valerian’s biggest surprise as a shape-shifting alien named Bubble who I thought was the most interesting character that Besson presents throughout the entire movie (and there are a lot of really fascinating creatures—and regular ol’ humans, too)—that I was immediately drawn towards, so that’s saying something.
While parts of the story do feel a bit bloated for the film’s two-plus hour runtime, I really didn’t mind at all while watching Valerian because Besson creates such stunning environments and captivating characters in nearly every single frame. I just wanted to continue to get lost in all of the different worlds that he visually presents throughout his latest directorial effort, and spend forever just poring over all the details infused into his futuristic actioner.
I can’t say definitively how fans will react to Besson’s adaptation of Valerian and Laureline, but I do know that his film has made me rather interested in going back and checking out Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières’ comic book series now. We don’t get nearly as many big and bold movies like Valerian and the City of A Thousand Planets as I would like (and I admittedly have a penchant for oddball cinema, so my tastes may differ from yours), so I would recommend to anyone interested in seeing Valerian to do it on the biggest screen possible, as Besson’s bold vision truly is deserving of that kind of larger-than-life presentation.
Movie Score: 4/5
Heather A. Wixson was born and raised in the Chicago suburbs, until she followed her dreams and moved to Los Angeles in 2009. A 14-year veteran in the world of horror entertainment journalism, Wixson fell in love with genre films at a very early age, and has spent more than a decade as a writer and supporter of preserving the history of horror and science fiction cinema. Throughout her career, Wixson has contributed to several notable websites, including Fangoria, Dread Central, Terror Tube, and FEARnet, and she currently serves as the Managing Editor for Daily Dead, which has been her home since 2013. She's also written for both Fangoria Magazine & ReMind Magazine, and her latest book project, Monsters, Makeup & Effects: Volume One will be released on October 20, 2021.
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