Review of Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017) by Sean L — 13 Nov 2017

Luc Besson delivers a spiritual successor to The Fifth Element that's equally colorful if not half as deep. Visually rich and mesmerizing on the surface, it easily outreaches Avatar as a sci-fi fan's wet dream; a slick, breathing conceptual powerhouse to rival the cover artwork on so many pulpy, classic paperbacks.

The art direction is a smooth continuation of Besson's earlier work, drawing heavily from European design and comic book artwork to set a scene that feels at once futuristically familiar and unsettlingly exotic.

Designs for the various species of alien life are similarly remarkable and unrestrained, as are the wildly different habitats that have developed to house them aboard one massive, utilitarian space station.

The opening scene, set inside a cross-dimensional bazaar, is a wonderful mishmash of creative world building and original twists on action movie tropes. But then it gets to the meat of the plot and...

suddenly we're dealing with just another dopey laserbeam run-n-gun with a heavy, heavy emphasis on stale human characters and an over-reliance on CG. Forgive the constant comparisons, but it becomes The Fifth Element without Bruce Willis, Chris Tucker, Milla Jovovich, Gary Oldman or the blue girl singing opera to connect with the audience.

Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne, wooden and flat with next to no chemistry between them, simply don't compare and the picture flails aimlessly without a firm leading presence. It's got humor in small doses and artistic vision in large ones, but without an equal narrative jab to match its creative haymakers, it falls quite short.