Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets: a movie I wished I'd had hallucinogens for

Yesterday I saw “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (3D)” and now I seem to be writing a review about it. I didn’t intend to write a review because I just wanted to space out and enjoy the tour of alien worlds (made spacier by a clam bake in my Buick in the parking lot) and not take notes, like I always do. But I read some reviews that didn’t do this movie justice—I loved it and I love the original French comic—so I’m going to review as much as I can remember.

The main criticism I’ve read of this film was that the main characters, spatio-temporal federation agents Valerian and Laureline, were too flat. While they had some bad lines to deliver and not a lot of room to develop as characters, they’re also based on a comic from the late 1960s/early 70s—so really, they stay true to their origins. And their depth as young agents with smoldering sexual tension isn’t the point of this movie; that’s immaterial really, when laid before the gorgeous, trippy, jaw dropping computer graphics. I hadn’t seen a 3D movie in years, and I’m glad it was this one. (Trivia: this was the most expensive film ever made in France, clocking in at 197 million EUR/$210m). Actually, the agents’ sexual tension and respective ripped abs serve as a good counterbalance to their bad lines.

Luc Besson, the writer and director of “The Fifth Element,” also wrote and directed “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets,” and somehow he didn’t overdo it. I was drawn in from the first shot, footage from the 1975 US/Soviet mission Apollo Soyuz Test Project, leading into a larger space station not so far off in time and a parade of bizarre-o aliens arriving. Soundtrack here: Space Oddity, a song I can’t not sing along to.

Then it’s on to a paradise planet populated by beings that are barely matter, mostly light. It's visual cotton candy: milky light beings greet each other by waving out mojo from their third eyes. They’re called Pearls, they draw energy from high-density pearls that their calm green sea offers freely. I wanted to be there. But their planet, Mul, is soon caught in the crossfire of a federation war and destroyed; only a handful of these opalescent, beautiful beings survive.

As the energy of the Pearls’ emperor’s dying daughter is released across the galaxy, her soul chooses Valerian to connect with. But 30 years transpired between her death and her soul reaching Valerian (or his jumping around in space-time synched these events). This movie assumes you’ve read at least one of the Valerian and Laureline comic books and know how the pair came to be together (but if you haven’t, you can still keep up). The original French sci-fi comic series was written by Pierre Christin and illustrated by Jean-Claude Meziers, and they’re good fun—a very energetic comic, ahead of its time. Here's a panel:

The first Valerian and Laureline comic book, “The Empire of a Thousand Planets” (1967), offers the location for the action of this movie, but the plot is loosely based on the sixth comic in the series, “Ambassador of the Shadows”. Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and Laureline (Cara Delevinge) dock at space station Alpha, home to many thousands of aliens, from humanoid to giant sea monsterkind. Watching the brilliant costumes, fiery makeup, and glorious CGI actually massaged my optic nerves.

Valerian and Laureline have to bodyguard a wanker federation commander (Clive Owen)—who was responsible for the destruction of Mul—as he crashes around the situation room and tries to cover up what’s happening in the “red zone” in Alpha. Here I’ll stop summarizing the plot, which featured lines like: “This is going to be fun,” and “A soldier always chooses death over humiliation! Annihilate them!”

But who goes to a summer blockbuster for good dialogue? Not me, I was there for visual art, escapism, and air conditioning. I wasn’t disappointed. Ethan Hawke makes an entertaining cameo as a pimp in the bordello sector, but he’s far outshined by his main attraction, Rihanna, who plays a shape-shifter called Bubble. Rihanna gets to be a nurse, schoolgirl, cat woman, Nefertiti, and cute CGI octopus-type alien—a lot of excellent costume changes. Her alien body is a nod to the Fifth Element’s blue alien opera singer, but also totally different.

Need more reasons to see this movie in 3D in the theater? Here they are: giant underwater bog monsters with trippy jellyfish riding on their backs; hundreds of spaceships big and small zooming around the exterior of spaceport Alpha; little golden data minding beings crawling over floating libraries of information; a soundtrack that includes David Bowie, Bob Marley, Pharrell Williams, and The BeeGees.

Out of four stars, I’d give this movie three and a half. The CGI artists blew my mind for two straight hours and the costume and set designers were just as talented. Luc Besson’s cinematic vision was complete, I could just roll with it. But I can’t give “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets” four full stars because, while the lead actors held the plot together and delivered some verbal A-bombs with dignity, a lot of the supporting actors seemed to be dialing it in, or maybe just looking at the wrong part of the sound stage. Plus there was a little more yelling and scrambling for cover in the last desperate shootouts than I felt like enduring, though I guess it wouldn’t be truly epic without hurling a few meaningless extras around like sock puppets. This film is totes worth the trip: see this stunning movie in the theater, and sprinkle hallucinogens on your popcorn.