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Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets was one of those movies you wish had worked. It's based on a long-running science fiction comic series with mythology and lore that could rival Star Wars, complete with a story that commentates on the human condition. It was directed by Luc Besson, the French-born director who gave us great classics like Leon: The Professional and The Fifth Element. This is a movie that, by all accounts, should have been a hit and launched a new franchise. Instead, it landed on its face with too much stuff and misguided casting choices.
Based on the French comic series Valerian and Laureline, created by Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières, the story follows a pair of special operatives tasked with safeguarding Alpha: a metropolis in the stars home to a thousand planets and millions of species. Our heroes Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and Laureline (Cara Delevingne) are tasked with solving a mystery of a missing commander in The Red Zone: an area believed to be flooded with radiation. Their search for the commander brings a mysterious alien race to their attention which may or may not be connected to the commander's disappearance. Our heroes must solve the mystery and rescue the commander before something terrible happens to all of Alpha.
Sidenote: if the original comics' title contained both characters' names, what is the point of removing the woman's name from the film's title?
The parts that worked (few though they were) worked well. The special effects were incredible, the premise was creative, the designs were fascinating, and the supporting characters were interesting and textured. Which is more than I can say for the two leads.
I stand by my original criticism of the film's lead actors, Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne; they were both too young for these roles. Setting aside any gripes against the accuracy of the source material, the characters as presented in the script did not call for younger actors. Valerian and Laureline, as presented in the script, gave the impression they were highly experienced soldiers with the scars to prove it. These roles called for actors who appeared more seasoned and battle-tested. A more ideal casting would have been Jeremy Renner and Charlize Theron, or perhaps Jean Reno and Marion Cotillard.
Instead, we got a 31-year-old who only knows how to play psychopaths and a 25-year-old who doesn't know how to emote. Both come off less like professional soldiers and more like 8th-graders somebody let onto the set.
Aside from the questionable casting choices, the writing is arguably the film's weakest point. The script attempts to cram years' worth of material into a single two-hour film. As such, everything in the story is either over-explained or denied proper development. Most of the dialogue spoken by almost every character is just exposition chock-full of the dreaded phrase, "as you know": the laziest and most despised combination of words in screenwriting. If the character already knows something, why are you telling them?
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets might have been better off as a Netflix series or even an anthology film in the spirit of Heavy Metal or Memories. While the movie is flawed and lacks enough weight in the right places, I continue to stand by my original statement that it's still a fascinating experience. It may not have been the end of fantastical cinema as I had feared it would be, nor was it the next big trend in science fiction as I had hoped, but it still has just enough charm to be a decent distraction in these troubling times.
If nothing else, it's at least a better science fiction movie with two attractive leads than 2016's Passengers.
Ladies & gentlemen, I am TheNorm; thank you all for reading.
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