Valerian: And The City Of A Thousand Planets

Against all odds, Luc Besson has become a divisive, polarising director. A peerless early run has, in recent times, turned to unpredictability.

After the lacklustre Lucy (a same-old idea that had some great scenes ruined by pseudo-intellectual wankery) follows the childishly titled Valerian: And The City Of A Thousand Planets (it sounds like a mid-noughties Disney film.)

Based on rather illustrious source material (a run of comics that influenced Star Wars, amongst other sci-fi) and a personal passion project for Besson which he has sole writing and direction credit on, this should be a triumph, especially with the budget afforded to a pretty unique Director, and a pretty unique space opera.

Unfortunately… it isn’t. Quite. Space opera has had a mixed ride recently, huge franchises have performed exceedingly well at the box office and pleased fans (Avatar, Star Wars, Guardians Of The Galaxy) which has led to other studios weighing in with lesser projects like the rather awful Jupiter Ascending and other attempted fan pleasing remakes/reboots like Ghost In The Shell and the upcoming Blade Runner: 2049.

Valerian has a pretty straightforward story, which is to its credit, but, bafflingly, is rather difficult to put into words. There’s a space station which is made up of ships from millions of different species (hence the subtitle) and a conspiracy involving a race of aliens and two ‘government’ agents (the titular Valerian and Laureline.)

Visually, it’s pretty damn wonderful. A mix of cyber-punk and Fifth Element-esque day-glo colour, you get the sense Besson has thrown in all the CGI he wanted to put into that particular movie but wasn’t able to. Originality to, in its species and environments, is strong and the pace is good.

What lets it down is the human aspect, the meat and potatoes of the film. Clive Owen doesn’t convince as the ‘villain’ of the piece and is introduced far too late and Ethan Hawke is totally wasted in a five-minute cameo but it’s Dane DeHaan who disappoints the most. A fantastic actor, no doubt, but clearly not suited to lighter, hero character fare his Valerian doesn’t ever get us rooting for him, Han Solo he ain’t.

Faring a lot better is the much spoken of Rihanna, who plays a shape-shifting alien stripper (whether those four words sound appealing to you is a pretty fair deduction as to whether you should see this film) and Cara Delevigne who, whilst not given the best lines to go on, does provide the beating heart of the film.

There’s just so many silly plot details; one clever move leads to a clunker elsewhere. There are slap-your-head plot holes which even just a thorough run through or extra pair of eyes surely would have fixed. There are moments where characters contradict themselves so suddenly you want to scream at the screen. The ‘twist’ isn’t quite as earned as it feels it is, especially across a plus-two hour runtime.

Valerian is another contentious Luc Besson movie; a lot of good ideas wasted in an unfathomable mess of a plot. So close yet so far.

3 stars ***