Movie Reaction: Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

Formula: Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones * John Carter * Jupiter Ascending

No movie in 2017 has interested me more in the months leading up to it than Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. It's not that I'm a fan of the series. In fact, I'd never heard of it before this movie. What intrigues me is the movies that this looks like from different angles. First, it reminds me of The Adventures of Tintin. Like Tintin, Valerian and Laureline is a popular European series that no one in the U.S. really knows about, which makes it a tough sell here. The huge budget* for a classic but unproven SciFi property sure reminds me of John Carter. Then there's The Lone Ranger, which was a similar case of a director cashing in his clout on a pet project to honor his childhood. I only saw Valerian because of what I call my "Lone Ranger Rule", which is if a movie advertises as hard as The Lone Ranger (which Valerian certainly did), then I might as well see it. I even get flashes of Jupiter Ascending with the look of the film and the fact that director Luc Besson, like the Wachowskis, is remembered as having more box office success than he really has had**. The one thing that all these films have in common is that they didn't do that well in the U.S. Tintin is the only one without the box office flop smell on it. It's also surprising to see a movie with such a big price tag being distributed by a small distributor like STX Entertainment***. That's because this was an independently financed film via Luc Besson's company, EuropaCorp, which has recouped most of the cost of the film already through foreign distribution deals. I don't know if this film will be a success or a failure or even what success or failure will look like. And, that's probably for the best, because there's no way that I can talk about this film that doesn't end up sounding like a backhanded compliment.

*The budget is estimated to be between $150-200 million which make it the most expensive French production ever.

**In the U.S., only Lucy made over $100 million. The Fifth Element is the next highest at $63 million. Even if you include movies Besson only wrote or produced, you can only add the Taken movies to the list is big successes. Granted, he's had more European success.

***STX is a new company who has made a big splash quickly. Currently, their biggest success was last year's Bad Moms with $113 million. To give some perspective, Bad Mom's is the only film (out of 120) since The Butler in 2013 to make over $100 million in the box office that didn't come from one of the big 6 studios or Lionsgate.

Valerian takes place a few hundred years in the future. Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and Laureline (Cara Delevingne) are special operatives working for, I guess you'd call it the united human government. In the future, space travel is commonplace and all sorts of species live together in relative harmony. After a security mission goes awry, Valerian and Laureline have to travel through Alpha, the city of a thousand planets, in order to restore order (or something like that)*. Really, I shouldn't get more into the plot than that. The movie handles explaining the world a lot better than I could in a paragraph and describing the stakes is a little convoluted. What I can say is that I think this movie has more of an audience who would like it than the desperate advertising campaign would suggest.

*It's surprising how much of this movie felt like Attack of the Clones if you just followed Obi-Wan.

That's because Besson brings to life a fully realized fantasy world of the future. I don't know how much of it is Besson bringing the pages of the source material to life and how much of it is Besson's invention. This feels like it's from the same director as The Fifth Element though. Having seen the movie, I totally understand why it was so expensive. The movie is packed with visual effects from beginning to end that fill the screen. It sounds like a lot to handle, but it's really not. No more than something like the busy streets of Zootopia  being too much to handle. This really is a live-action cartoon in a lot of ways. It's fun, which is something that isn't the focus enough in big budget movies like this. There's some world-building and genuine stakes, but mostly the story is an excuse to move from one entertaining location to another. <Here comes the backhanded compliment> The movie is imaginative without being inventive. It's like someone watched all the major SciFi movies in the last 50 years, pulled what they liked from each, and mixed it all together into a really entertaining world with a lot of clever detail. None of it feels new, but it is well done. The irony is that the original comic series likely inspired a lot of the movies that this then pulls from. That's another way that the movie is similar to John Carter. It's a victim of its own influence.

I'm very torn about DeHaan and Delevingne in the lead roles, mostly because of a decision the movie makes that I like a lot in theory. Rather than making this an origin story of the Valerian and Laureline team, when the film begins, they are a team with a long history together already. That's great. Their banter and rapport is clearly intended to be a selling point of the series, so their familiarty is good. However, the movie badly needs some sort of character to be introduced to the leads with new eyes as a sort of POV character for the audience. There's a lot to explain in this universe and about their relationship. Without a way to introduce all this, the movie opts to do a lot of showing rather than telling. We are told that Valerian is a lothario, but there's really no evidence of it. He spends the whole movie asking Laureline to marry him. I have no idea if that's supposed to be a new development or an ongoing conversation with them. How come they haven't hooked up yet? Is she just his latest "conquest" or does he pine for her between other companions? Is he just now revealing this to her? I have nothing but questions about this aspect of their relationship, and it becomes a problem. Beyond that major sticking point, DaHaan and Delevingne handle themselves well. Delevingne especially is having a lot of fun. She realizes that she's a character in a pulpy SciFi world, so everything she does has a light touch. I wouldn't call it a star-making performance, but I do feel a lot better about her odds of having a bigger film career than other model-turned-actresses like Kate Upton or Brooklyn Decker. DeHaan tries to be a little more serious and I have a hard time buying it. Except for being a little ballsy, I'm not sure I believe that he's an elite sercurity officer. Perhaps with a little more levity, I could ignore it more easily.

The rest of the cast is fine. I'd like to say that Clive Owen is too big of a name for the generic role he has, but his recent filmography says otherwise. Rihanna isn't great other than a nice dance routine. I've apparently seen all of her film roles. Her role in Battleship was pretty generic. This is the End was just a cameo playing herself. I don't even remember her in Annie. Her voice acting though in Home was quite solid. Based on just that, I can't say whether my issue with her in Valerian is that she's not very good or her character is just weirder than she can pull off. That's the thing about this movie. You can't go halfway with it. That's why Ethan Hawke is quite enjoyable in his small role. He has a big character and he plays him big. Herbie Hancock is limited to what's essentially an angry black police captain role, but his plays it right and it works.

I ended up liking Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets more than I expected. I won't say it's great. I'm not even sure I can commit to calling it good. Fine is about as high as I'm willing to go. One word that does apply is 'earnest'. Luc Besson's heart was in this movie. The people who worked on this film did a good job. I like the look, the casting, the world, and to some extent, the story. Most of my issues are with the details and the execution, which build up to a lot. I would happily see a sequel if one is made. If you a fan of poppy SciFi movies, you may be pleasantly surprised by it.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend