“Valerian – The city of a thousand planets“ will run in full on VOX today, March 30, 2023 from 8:15 p.m and I highly recommend tuning in if you like imaginatively designed space goggles.
French star director Luc Besson’s ambitious sci-fi adventure (“The Fifth Element”, “Leon – The Professional”) is one of those movies that really pisses me off that it flopped so much at the box office. And if you missed the TV broadcast, prefer to watch without commercials or in the original English, the film is also currently available as a subscription to the WOW streaming service.
With a budget of around 177 million dollars, ‘Valerian’ is the most expensive French film production of all time (and you can tell by the visually stunning epic). Unfortunately, the mammoth project was only able to raise $225 million. Because the often equally high marketing costs have to be added to the production budget, the ambitious comic book adaptation is a big flop. So there will probably never be a sequel.
Most critics didn’t think the space adventure was particularly good either. Noisy only 47 percent of the trade press gave ‘Valerian’ a fairly positive assessment. Often criticized for the supposedly silly plot and lack of chemistry between Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne. But why was “Valerian” still one of the movie highlights of 2017 for me?
That’s why “Valerian” on Prime Video is great sci-fi fun
Along with Dune and Blade Runner, Valerian is one of the most visually stunning sci-fi films of recent years. Whether it’s about foreign alien races, special costumes or extensive superwide shots of sunny beach planets: this film is a feast for the eyes and worth seeing for that alone. It is not only the technical quality of the visual effects, but also the design that inspires me so much.
The sci-fi adventure is bright and colorful, a stark contrast to the rather dark and desaturated Marvel and DC blockbusters that have dominated cinema for years. In places it’s quite reminiscent of Avatar’s colorful planet Pandora, which is why Valerian is also a good way to pass the time until the streaming launch of Avatar 2: The Way Of Water, which comes out on April 4.
Yes, the plot may have some weird twists, but the setting is still cool. Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and Laureline (Cara Delevingne) are space agents who bring a small but powerful alien to Alpha, the city of a thousand planets. It is actually a kind of New York in space, a cultural potpourri of all kinds of alien species.
Only that all beings live here really peacefully together and use their individual abilities for the common good. But something is not right, a virus seems to infiltrate the city and then Laureline is kidnapped by an evil dictator.
A unique duo
What happens next isn’t really that important. What matters is who it happens to. The two stars, Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne, received a lot of criticism, but for me are one of the big plus points of this movie.
As with the look of the film, it’s the difference between the two that fascinates me the most. Valerian and Laureline: To me, that’s Han Solo and Leia Organa as runway models. On the one hand, the two always look like they’re taking part in a fashion show, but on the other hand, they have such a dry, cool demeanor, as if the fate of the universe is passing them by at the speed of light.
The love story between the two may not seem particularly real. But the two are just so crazy that I find it quite believable if there’s a spark between the two. At times, the duo seems as groovy as an old married couple who know each other inside out, yet fresh romantic feelings arise between the two. A unique constellation that I would have loved to see again. Unfortunately, nothing comes of that, because “Valerian” just flopped too hard for that.
If you are one of the many who have not seen the sci-fi blockbuster in the cinema, you should seize the opportunity and watch it on TV, for example.