Valerian.and.the.city.of.a.thousand.planets.201... Online

In 2017, French director Luc Besson released Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets , a film that represented a lifelong dream. Based on the seminal French comic series Valérian and Laureline by Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières—a series that directly inspired Star Wars —Besson poured over $200 million of his own fortune into creating a visually unhinged, original sci-fi universe. The result is one of modern cinema’s most fascinating paradoxes: a film of breathtaking imaginative scope that is simultaneously hollow at its core. Valerian succeeds as a museum of futuristic art but fails as a compelling narrative, offering a crucial lesson about the difference between world-building and storytelling.

Ultimately, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets serves as a cautionary tale about the limits of CGI. Critics and audiences often blame the film’s box office failure on poor marketing or the rise of superhero fatigue, but the reality is simpler: the audience did not connect with the protagonist. In science fiction, the alien worlds are only as interesting as the human (or humanoid) eyes through which we see them. The Fifth Element worked because Bruce Willis’s weary, blue-collar Korben Dallas grounded the insanity. Star Wars worked because Luke Skywalker wanted to get off his rock to find adventure. Valerian, by contrast, is already at the top of his game; he has no arc, no vulnerability, and no charm. Valerian.and.The.City.of.A.Thousand.Planets.201...

However, the moment the film asks the audience to listen and care, it collapses. The central problem is the casting and characterization of the titular hero, Major Valerian (Dane DeHaan). Designed as a swaggering, cocky space cowboy in the vein of Han Solo, DeHaan instead delivers a performance that is unintentionally petulant and uncharismatic. His Valerian is less a daring agent and more a spoiled teenager who has read a book about seduction. The narrative repeatedly halts for him to aggressively proposition his partner, Laureline (Cara Delevingne), who, in a saner script, would have filed a sexual harassment complaint with the galactic federation. The chemistry between the leads is non-existent; Delevingne’s Laureline appears perpetually exhausted by her partner’s advances, which makes the film’s insistence that they are a romantic duo feel deeply uncomfortable rather than endearing. In 2017, French director Luc Besson released Valerian

This character failure is compounded by a plot that is distractingly derivative. The central conflict involves the genocide of a peaceful, ethereal race (the Pearls) by a greedy human commander, forcing Valerian to choose between military orders and morality. While earnest, this is a recycled trope from Avatar , Dances with Wolves , and countless other colonial guilt narratives. The film tries to juggle this heavy subject matter with goofy comedic interludes (Rihanna’s memorable but pointless shape-shifting burlesque routine) and bureaucratic satire. The tonal whiplash is severe. One moment, the film is meditating on ecological destruction; the next, it features a comedy relief character who can only say his own name like a sci-fi Pikachu. Besson, the director of the tightly-plotted The Fifth Element , seems to have forgotten how to balance tone. Valerian succeeds as a museum of futuristic art