[rating=8.00]
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is one of the most insane, unrestrained, nonsensical thing I have ever seen in my life. It’s also huge, bold, beautiful, brilliant, unrelentingly fun, and I loved every batshit moment of it.
There will be plenty of people who won’t feel the same way, and they’ll probably be right. Valerian certainly suffers through its share of problems; some will complain about the script, others might decry often stiff performances from the film’s leads, Dane DeHaan (A Cure for Wellness) and Cara Delevingne (Suicide Squad). Admittedly, those might be insurmountable problems that many won’t be to look past.
Those who can, however, will be taken deep into a world of brilliantly realized B-movie madness, where innovation and creativity reign supreme and where silliness is an inherent part of the charm. This is a film for those who snuck out of their beds in the wee hours to watch the late night creature features on their local TV stations, the ones who dream of aliens and monsters, and the ones who never saw a ray gun they didn’t want to shoot.
For those few, Valerian is the wildest of rides that grabs you from the jump off and grips you tightly throughout its two-hour-and-seventeen-minute runtime. You’ll be transfixed, transported, and awed. Director Luc Besson (The Fifth Element, Lucy) has brought new life to the popular French comic book series from Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mezieres. Like the series itself, the film is a work of unadulterated imagination and wonder, filled with adventure and excitement.
This is a world and milieu Besson knows well; his previous entry into this kind of science fiction, 1997’s The Fifth Element, was heavily influenced by the comic series in both aesthetic and action. It would be tempting to call Valerian the former’s spiritual sequel, except in hindsight it’s more Valerian’s spiritual forebear. Indeed, this has been a long dreamed of project for the director, and it’s now more clear than ever that The Fifth Element was a sort of dry run for what he’s done here.
What’s also clear is how utterly impossible a film of this scope would have been in the era of The Fifth Element. As remarkably well as the effects of that film have stood the test of time, Valerian takes Besson’s “everything and the kitchen sink” style to new extremes that he would have been incapable of achieving two decades ago. Scenes and set pieces change at a wild rate, creating a visual feast of color and glory that begs for multiple viewings.
Besson mostly manages to keep his wild ride together, no matter how weird or strange things promise to get, and they get pretty weird and strange. At its heart, Valerian is a political mystery, one that finds Valerian (DeHaan) and his partner Laureline (Delevingne) accidentally searching for the truth about an event three decades in the past. Centered around the City of a Thousand Planets (a crazy evolved International Space Station released from Earth’s orbit that has become a hub of commerce and universal cooperation), the case involves intrigue, betrayal, lies, and subterfuge.
In other words, typical pulp fare. The Valerian comics are so infused with modern sci-fi that, at times, you do get the feeling that you’ve seen it before. Of course, that’s only because the comics have influenced and inspired countless movies and adventure stories over the decades. Even Star Wars is indebted to the narrative and visual aesthetic of the Valerian series, so what you’re seeing is the deep-seated soul of science fiction playing out on the big screen for the first time.
For his part, Besson visualizes the world as only he can. Though some of the narrative beats are familiar, as are some of the characters and sets, albeit in a more generalized way, Besson has accomplished creating something that manages to look at these now standard tropes in exciting new ways. The film pops off the screen even without 3D glasses, totally immersing you in the dazzling world he’s brought to life.
In short, Valerian is everything a summer movie should be. You’ll be hard pressed to find more fun at the box office this season than you will with Valerian. For those of you with an eye to the stars and daydreams of aliens, Besson has delivered cinematic perfection that deserves space in your heart right around where you keep The Fifth Element. For the now adult former teens who fell in love that movie two decades ago, you’ve got something new to share with your kids, which will no doubt fill them with the same awe that movie did with you so long ago. What a strange and lovely feeling.
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is now playing in theaters everywhere.
