1 Year 100 Reviews — Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
LOST IN TRANSLATION
Luc Besson is probably best known for directing The Fifth Element as well as Lucy, the infamous 2014 Scarlett Johansson movie about unlocking 100% of the brain. He also has a lot of screen writing credits that should impress. His movies are often much more focused on style rather than substance, often leading to lackluster dialogue and confusing logic leaps. In that regard, the many shortcomings and many great moments of Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets should come as to now surprise. It is another example of a movie whose weak writing hampers what would otherwise be an impressive and stunning visual treat that’s perfect for a summer blockbuster.

I know that Valerian is based off a highly-influential French Sci-Fi comic that basically inspired tons of other franchises (e. g. Star Wars), but that is the extent of my familiarity with the source material. So, I don’t know if Valerian’s many problems are due to Besson’s writing or if he just tried too hard to be faithful to the original comics. I imagine many things from the comics simply didn’t translate properly to the big screen. It is a French director adapting a French comic into an English movie for American audiences, after all. A better writer would have made the necessary changes to fix all this, but Besson is not known for being a competent writer.
The plot is one bumpy, disjointed ride. It feels like several acts stitched together rather a cohesive narrative. The transition from one sequence to another is so clunky that I half-expected chaptered title cards to pop up. Again, this sounds like the kind of pacing one would expect from a serial comic, but it does not work in a movie format.
What exacerbates the pacing problem further is that there are several times where the plot comes to a grinding halt so that we can waste a lot of time watching some pointless set piece. Besson has done this kind of thing in the past, but in a competent way. Take the Fifth Element: the Opera scene is kind of a pointless moment if it were on its own. Instead, Besson intertwines the action going on backstage with the opera and creates a wonderful, memorable sequence that is both cool and furthers the plot. In Valerian, we end up spending 10 minutes watching Rhianna pole dance as part of a sequence that actually has no bearing on the plot as a whole.
Actually, let’s get into that sequence, because it is a perfect cross section that shows everything right and wrong with this movie.
So, there is a part where Valerian’s partner, Laureline, gets captured. For starters, how she got kidnapped makes no sense. Not only is it well-established that she is an extremely talented spec ops agent, but she is also shown as being very adept at combat. Yet somehow, while wearing super armor that can punch through steel, she is captured by aliens who wield fishing rods and a wicker cage. Then Valerian decides he needs to sneak in undetected in order to save her and avoid an international incident. After spending 15 minutes finding a shape-shifter to disguise him, he just ends up murdering everyone anyway. After this entirely pointless damsel-in-distress rescue sequence, nothing is gained or lost (except 30 minutes of my life).
While the sequence is entirely pointless, it does have a lot of really cool moments in it. Rhianna’s shape-shifting burlesque show was really cool, the fight against the alien captors was fun, and it gave ample opportunity to have some really creative creatures and costumes show up. It’s just that all this style needs substance (i. e. a discernable point) or else the whole thing ends up being vapid and inane.
But! Even all that could be forgiven if the main characters where even slightly likeable. Again, probably should chalk it up to the source material, but Valerian and Laureline are so cliché! Nothing about them is original, unique, or even all that interesting. Their character arcs and personalities are so generic at this point that it became entirely predictable. The moment Clive Owen showed up I knew exactly what his role in the plot would be without him saying a single word. The actors are all great, just the material is garbage. Though, I don’t totally get the casting of the two leads because they completely lack anything resembling chemistry. A Styrofoam cup has more flavor than their relationship. There is just no charisma to them at all and the whole movie suffers for it.
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets actually reminds me of the Star Wars prequels in a lot of ways. I mean A LOT a lot of ways. Pretty much every problem the prequels had this movie has, save for bad acting. The cast are all very talented and give the best performance that kind of writing can possibly offer. Sure, the two leads lack any chemistry, but their emotional journey is believable. Sure, there are lots of really cool CG effects and interesting places to visit, but without any purpose it all falls flat. I guess I liked it well enough, but there is nothing here that will go by terribly missed. Go watch Dunkirk if you have nothing else better to do.