Review of Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017) by Mark S — 16 Aug 2017

Valerian and the Pearl Shitting Fantastic Beast, or Valerian and the Albino Avatar People or Valerian the Phantom Menace would have all made suitable titles for Luc Besson's latest sci-fi movie, however he settled on Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.

This film has made headlines for being an independent movie but costing $200 million dollars and it's evident that only a fraction of that went on casting. Dane DeHane plays Valerian, who is supposed to be a womanising rogue in the same vein as Han Solo, however what we get is DeHane channelling Keanu Reeves and if it was possible, a less charismatic Keanu Reeves. Not for one minute do you buy him as a leading man and has the screen presence of a wet flannel. He teams up with Cara Delevingne and even I was surprised that she wasn't the worst actor in the film and makes up for her horrendous performance in last year's Suicide Squad. The pair are suppose to have some sort of relationship but you wouldn't know it as they have zero chemistry together which is partly down to the script but also the dire casting of DeHane and I feel that had Besson had gone for Will Smith or either of the Chris P's (Pine or Pratt) it would have had a better time film. As well as DeHane and Delevigne, you have Clive Owen, hamming it up as a pantomime villain, chewing the scenery with every over-pronounced syllable, as well as singer Rihanna who was quite good as an alien shapeshifting exotic dancer unfortunately her role is quite pointless and did nothing to move the plot along.

The source material this came from has said to have inspired the likes of Avatar, Star Wars and Besson's other sci-fi, The Fifth Element. However, because we've already familiar with these properties the film now seems derivative and you'll spend most of the film going, "that's from Star Wars, that's from Avatar, that's from etc..." There's also a reference to Besson's other film Taken in there so Valerian not only reminds you of better films but terrible ones as well which is some achievement.

Like Avatar, and Star Wars (particularly the prequels), Besson decides to go down the CGI route of world building which is both effective but also distracting in equal measure. Besson allows his imagination to run free and he creates an ambitious world of aliens and creatures but the colour is so saturated that the CGI looks very dated and this film could easily have been released alongside George Lucas' first Star Wars prequel and it wouldn't have looked out of place.

Now we've covered the acting, the CGI, what about the story? Well there isn't much of one and at over two hours long there's only enough plot to cover half of that and the film grinds to a holt part way through to introduce an inconsequential subplot involving Rhianna as a shape shifting alien and some cannibal aliens.

However, it's not all bad, Besson introducing some interesting ideas and concepts, for example in one of the opening scenes Besson shows us a world whereby with the use of a head set you are launched from a desolate dessert landscape into a vibrant and bustling marketplace and our two main protagonists have to retrieve one of the aforementioned pearl shitting fantastic beasts, leading to some fairly entertaining sequences.

I guess Besson should be applauded for trying to be ambitious but it fails on so many levels that this will go down as a disaster and I can't see it recouping its massive budget. Had Sesson spent more time on the script and better casting this could have been a hit, however what we get is a kind of Guardians of the Galaxy minus the charisma.