Valerian is Almost a Worthy Spiritual Successor to Fifth Element

I remember hearing a lot about Valerian flopping and it wasn't supposed to be good. I don't go to the movie theater the first weekend a movie comes out and this movie did so poorly at the box office it was hard to find it the second weekend, which is surprising since I live in a major US city. It came to Redbox this week, so I rented it. It's a solid movie, some of the stuff I heard like the two leads being miscast is true to some extent. It doesn't ruin the movie, just holds it back. Going by the dialogue and story, it seems like Valerian supposed to be more of the Tom Cruise type... not a skinny 20 something who looks soft, but he's a good enough actor so it's not too bad.

The special effects (on a technical and artistic level) are some of the best I've ever seen. One of the reasons I haven't seen Justice League is because it looked too CG, green screen, and cheap in the trailers and I'm a fan of DCEU movies besides Suicide Squad. Also the alien design beats everyone else by a mile. I like GOTG, but they're largely just painting people green, blue, gold, or adding antennas to them. It was nice to see some original designs and not everyone in the universe having two arms and two legs.

The story and mystery of what's going on is pretty interesting too. I liked that aliens are a major part of the plot. In Star Wars it seems like aliens are secondary characters at best and it's really about humans fighting humans. Some of the humor was weird to me, I'm wondering if that didn't sometimes land because of cultural differences, since this is really a French movie. I like Fifth Element a lot, with all it quirks and flaws, and this is almost a worthy spiritual successor, I wish some of the characters were weirder, which Rhianna (who I usually don't like) added, but she wasn't in the movie enough, so it almost feels like Fifth Element without Chris Tucker and if Dane DeHaan was Bruce Willis' character. I'd definitely like to see more of this world in sequels but that's doubtful due to how it performed. I'd much rather watch this again than Avatar and that's obviously one of the most successful movies ever.

I'd like get clarification on something at the end: so the pearl aliens recreated their planet and their ship pretty much has a teleporter/stargate to their newly reformed planet? Seems like they would've shown a space shot of their planting coming back because at first it came across as they have a portion of their planet in their ship, maybe not the whole planet.

I was interested in this when I saw previews for it. I will check it out this weekend.

@deathstriker: In style definately, but it is kinda boring and the main characters are not very charismatic, almost all of the side characters were much more interesting. I'm not sure if it's something I would pin on the actors or the just the actual writing.

But you definitely hit the nail on the head about the effects I'd be surprised if it didn't win a technical oscar next year.

The opening sequence was pretty phenomenal as well.

For the most part, we had a pretty good time in the theater upon release. Casting ain't perfect and it feels like a series of side missions at times, but the world was neat and I thought the story was solid enough.

I was incredibly disappointed by Valerian. Visually it’s ok, I wouldn’t even say amazing since CGI has come a long way. Narratively though it’s such a boring mess. There is no heart or genuine humor in an iota of Valerian. The acting is stiff, the writing is worse, and the casting is perplexing at best.

As is the case with all Luc Besson films he is a visual director and his storytelling is mediocre at best. The visual style he brings to the table is where things shine and Valerian was his best visual film to date.

The story is passable despite Cara Delevigne being a boring deadpan character (bad writing mostly) and Dane DeHann playing the most milquetoast asshole man you've ever met. The movie opens with some of the best sci fi visuals you have ever seen. The pacing mostly keeps your eyes full as you move through some of the craziest visual delights. I highly recommend checking it out. Just ride the boring exposition scenes until the next cool thing shows up and don't worry too much about the story... It wasn't worth worrying about in Fifth Element and Valerian is no exception.

The Fifth Element is one of my all-time favorites. I was sooo disappointed with Valerian. Maybe my hopes were too high, I dunno.
The interplay between the leads is horrible, even though I like the characters on their own more than most people seem to.
Rihanna's whole arc (and her character) is head shakingly bad in every way and the dance scene, while well made in regards to effects, is the city of a thousand cringes for me personally.

Ethan Hawke's character is bad, Clive Owen's arc is predictable and boring. The humor is off 9 times out of 10 and I had a hard time appreciating the musical score.

I loved the special effects - the dessert big market scene is probably the best thing in the movie (except from the guide), and there are some genuinely cool moments scattered throughout the movie.

I just watched it yesterday. Any time the two "stars" are alone on screen it is cringe worthy. And I don't blame it entirely on them as the love story was written horribly and was completely unbelievable. This movie was 10/10 for about 10 minutes until the holographic beach scene started.

If you want to watch a good tale of Valerian and Laureline, the French anime is on CrunchyRoll.com where you can watch it for free. The story and the way V&L interact is 100 times better in the cartoon than in this movie. Wish they had just adapted the cartoon to a movie instead of what we got.

I had no idea this movie was so poorly received in the US. I saw it a couple of months ago and really liked it as did most people in the theater. It was fun and adventurous which is what I wanted from it. I very much like both lead actors too. My only gripe with the film is that they have two very heavy handed 'love transcends all' moments that were super cringey and awfully written, making them come across extremely forced and disjointed. If you take those two moments out, I don't have a lot of bad to say about the film. Really enjoyed it and actually watched it twice.

Could you explain why you think it was possibly racist/antisemitic, I didn't get that vibe at all so I'm curious. I didn't like their relationship for the most part, it almost felt like sexual harassment since she really shows no interest in him for most of the movie. They didn't have a relationship full of hostile/flirty banter like Han Solo and Leia - it was more like he kept hitting on his subordinate and she didn't like him back. I do blame the writing for that since they should've shown her smiling, blushing or whatever to communicate some interest in him.

The movie definitely has some flaws, but so does Fifth Element, but it is lacking Fifth Elment'c charm... probably due to the writing and casting most of all. I like ambitious movies, since whether they fail or succeed at least they tried. I think some of the problems here could've been easily fixed, but I do get the feeling that they tried and it was original.

I have a question related to this topic, I just looked up the reception for the film and the wikipedia entry said it had a 180 million budget, so it would need 400 million to break even. How does that work? I only know the business term of breaking even, which means not making any money, but also not losing any. This the wiki entry omit to list marketing costs or something else or?

I thought Valarian was inoffensively bad. It’s very bad though, the writing is just bland and predictable paint by numbers.

Easily the worst movie I’ve seen all year in what’s been an amazing year for movies.

I’m going to go see Justice League today though because I just can’t help myself... something tells me that’ll beat out Valarian for my top spot.

@zevvion: I could be wrong, but I have heard that if a movie doesn't make double its cost then it's considered a flop. Also they don't include marcketing budgets in the development costs. So the movie cost more than 180 million dollars in total.

I enjoyed it from a visual standpoint. The movie is absolutely gorgeous from both a technical and artistic standpoint. I won't say I hated everything else, but it was just...kind of bland. I actually thought Cara Delevigne was okay as a counterpart to Valerian, and arguably the stronger character of the two. DeHaan sucked, though. He did his best Corbin Dallas impersonation and it just didn't come across as fun nor believable in any capacity. On top the odd casting, the entire last act of the story completely fizzles out and wastes what excitement it had built before then. The entire Rihanna part was both cringe-worthy and needless and could have cut 15 minutes off the running time and maybe preserved some sense of pacing. Also, one of my biggest gripes was how flat the action scenes were, mostly due to the terrible sound mixing. Gunshots or hits were barely audible and lacked any sort of punch.

I wanted to love this movie so bad. Besson made some of my favorite movies in the 90s, and is responsible for some of the best action movies of the last 15 years or so. While I think some of it is inventive and fun, there is just too much holding it back.

@memu: I’m not even sure it was supposed to be written as a love story. They seem a lot more like brother and sister than a couple. Man each time I think of this movie I get bummed out. The moment it finished the first thing that came to mind was “wow what an expensive piece of shit”

I enjoyed it, for about the first half and then it kind of just lost steam.

It's visually amazing, just lacking in strong leads and a more coherent story.

@deathstriker: I saw it with my brother in the theater, and I thought it was visually stunning. The dialogue was mostly bad, although there were some funny lines. I felt that the romance and final bit of character conflict wasn't really earned, but aside from that the movie actually did some pretty cool stuff. It took some tropes common to science fiction ("The military is corrupt and evil!" AND "The unknown alien race is the enemy!") and turned them on their heads in a thoughtful way. I didn't love the actors in it, but they didn't turn out as bad as I expected. It is unfortunate that Laureline has some pretty awesome scenes early on and then gets damseled and put in a dress for the final act of the movie.

I bought the first collection of comics on Comixology, and oh boy are they rough to get through.

I absolutely LOVED the interdimensional bazaar. Everything from the design, to the concept, to the scenes showing what's going on there and what's going on in the real world.

I'm gonna buy it. I think if you're a fan of sci-fi space opera pulp, it's worth a rent.

@dudeglove: Yeah I think that the writer of the article is stretching a bit on the antisemitic angle.

The trio of bird looking aliens supposedly representing Jews never crossed my mind and seems like a stretch to me even in hindsight. Really, someone thinking the aliens with big noses and who want to be paid MUST be Jews seems to say way more about the person thinking that than the movie itself IMO.

I just took it out of my library I will watch it tonight.

I think this movie is terrible. The leads have little chemistry, the city feels tiny compared to how it's set up, the visuals mean very little when the screen is so clustered with stuff you can't tell what you're looking at, the movie doesn't follow it's own rules, and the writing is terrible. There are a few scenes that set up some interesting ideas, but the movie never pays it off in a satisfying or even logical way--looking at the VR market scene. This was the first movie I walked out of in forever. But I'm glad you liked it. The guys on a movie podcast I listen to liked and I was figuratively pulling my hair out while listening to them.

This movie is so terrible and the characters are so unlike able "you know what we need a Rihana lapdance" is something a director yelled during the making of this movie. That fucking De Haan guy is shush a smug bastard in that movie his only goal is to get laid no i am not kidding. everytime i see that guy i wanna blow my brains out ! holly shit is that dude unlike able. If you like this movie you A never seen a movie B have a bad opinion about movies do your self a favor and watch Starship troopers instead ! Also i had to turn this movie of just so i didn't puke in my couch what a waste of fucking money this piece of shit is ! How am i supposed to believe that de Haan guy is supposed to be a player when the dude's got the charisma of a damped rag and looks like a mash up of Jake Lloyed and adult Haley Joel Osment. FUCK this movie makes me so mad :D i rather watch Grown ups 2 twice then this piece of shit !

@zevvion: I think that other part went to marketing the movie.

If someone wants to criticize the acting or casting I get that, but calling the movie racist and sexist seems completely baseless. That's coming from someone who doesn't like how the "wild, savage" Klingon are often black actors or black looking in Star Trek. The trio of aliens had big noses and liked to haggle so they MUST be a representation of Jews? That makes no sense. I see zero correlation between them and Jews, you're not really explaining how there is one. I think their romance was bad, since it was completely one sided, but I don't recall the movie being sexist or putting down her at all. I was actually surprised and impressed that a chunk of the movie is her looking for him to save his life after he crashes, which she does. They save each others life in the movie. The movie is flawed, but being racist and sexist is definitely not one of those issues. As far as Besson's other work, I'd rather watch this over Lucy, Taken, The Family, and some of his other movies.

Pros - great visuals, very Luc Besson art direction. Killer costumes, CGI, and practical effects. Actually pretty cool Plot.

Cons - terrible dialogue and simplistic characters that are hard to care about. Amazing how important that is.

I got around to watching ist and while ist not as energetic as Fifth Element there is not much out there that even comes close as Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.

I like Luc Besson's world view and how he visualizes his worlds as multicultural, multiracial, and vibrant. Luc loves his visual grandeur, and this scales that up beyond Fifth Element. But the story is frustratingly flat and occasionally paces its storytelling poorly. Its a film that glides below the high levels it could soar and likely needed to have one or two less wrinkle in the story. I'll say it the part where Valerian is infiltrating encampment of aliens who want to eat Laureline, needed to go. Stunt casting the beautiful Rihanna as Bubbles needed to go. I mean the whole character of Bubbles needed to be dropped because the character adds nothing and her death is not sad because we are not given the time to care. Also, Ethan Hawke playing Denis Hopper by way of Captain Jack Sparrow by Johnny Depp was pointless...another failed stunt casting.

Cara Delevingne carries off her role of Laureline well, and if you don't think she was acting, watch the highlight reels she's a goof ball and she carries of teh assured swagger of agent like that is her natural state - a pro. I think Luc bet on Dane DeHaan having the wherewith all to pull off a ladies man, but could not carry off the role. Clive Owen does okay, he played the role given well, but he lacks the spark that Gary Oldman brought to Fifth Element. Sam Spruell plays General Okto-Bar well, although he needed better lines as the straight man Byron James (blond goatee General Munro).

Yet, with all of the above said; I liked the movie in some many parts. It was fun! Cara Delevingne, as Laureline, is beautiful/stunning to watch on screen - the camera loves her. The world is Luc Besson at his best with spectacle and showing things that usually only underwater documentaries can show of creatures of light, color, and texture. The special effects are well done given how many there were to realize the film's worlds.

I was so hyped for the movie, told my friends “no, Valerian is the movie to see this year”

It was the first movie where I almost fell asleep in the theater, visually amazing but so unbelievably boring with just lifeless acting, Rihanna as the alien was the only thing that brought some energy and charisma to that movie

Call me crazy...no go ahead.

I want a Luc Besson HBO miniseries tv show that brings episodic science fiction to the tv screen. I think Star Trek is just stale, not matter how much they try to freshen it up, I think the world of Star Trek is creaking under it own weight. Trek has 50 years of baggage that ist simply cannot get out from under. I want Mr Besson's multicultural, multiracial, and vibrant worlds to be on TV; so, I want every single weird fashion model from all over the globe with even an ounce of acting skill to be an extra on the show.

@deathstriker: I wonder if people make up such falsehoods for attention, but maybe that because I'm salty after being suckered into reading through the linked review and then looking up associated pictures...