Review of Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017) by Someone132 — 11 Aug 2017

The main problem with Valerian is that it's less of a sci-fi movie than it is a really dumb romantic comedy that just happens to have aliens and technology letting you exist and travel through several dimensions at once (used for an action scene early on, then NEVER becomes relevant later on, when it would've solved A LOT of problems.) Moreover, it's a romantic comedy whose lead characters are openly callous (ignoring allies getting killed as a direct result of their action in favour of more "flirty" chitchat) and are so unlikeable you totally do not care whether or not they get together.

Yet, this is all the plot is interested in: most of their shared dialogue is creepy "flirting", and very little screentime is devoted to addressing their supposed mission as opposed to them having to rescue each other from completely irrelevant doldrums that only exist to cram in more action scenes and give other characters a chance to pontificate on their supposed love and how they should be together. It's sickening, especially when practically all those side characters are a lot more interesting than these leads (with the exception of THREE Jar Jar clones that crop up way too often, especially for a film made a whole decade after Star Wars prequels concluced.) I suppose all of these flaws were probably present in the source material (1960's French comic book just called "Valerian and Laureline"), but that doesn't make it look any better on screen.

The "main plot" to do with their missions, or what there is of one, is also not great to say the least: it's something like a cross between Avatar and that Star Trek movie about whales, with a very pointedly "noble savage"-like race (though again, that might have looked fresh and topical when it came out and hippies were all the rage), and what now seems like parallels refugee crisis, but at the time was probably intended to mirror Algerian and Indochina wars France went through at the time, and likely nuclear testing as well. While it would've probably still looked silly, it might've been compelling if more screentime was devoted to developing these ideas, as opposed to all the reasoning being dumped in the 10 minutes close at the end.