Visually Stunning Crap

Luc Besson makes weird films. I can’t really think of a better way to put it than to say that, quite frequently, the director plays around in the theater of the weird. He’s made visually interesting, and very oddball, films such as The Fifth Element and Lucy really showcase just how far out of the normal the director can go. Despite having a long filmography including action hits like Léon: The Professional (a film many people like but I find to be problematic and creepy as hell) and The Femme Nikita, I feel like his sci-fi really shows that “visionary” aspect of the director’s works.

In fairness, we do need to note that the director also has a reported history of inappropriate behavior towards female colleagues on his films. He was brought up on charges of rape in 2018 and though those charges were dropped, many other women (most of whom wished to remain anonymous) came out and nots his sexually charged, inappropriate behavior on the films directed by Besson that they worked on. You can also see weird gender dynamics in his films, with the director’s eye clearly lusting after the female characters (of all ages, which is part of what makes Léon: The Professional with its 12-year-old star, Natalie Portman, so creepy), to the point that it’s just a trope of his whole filmography.

All of those dynamics are at play in the director’s 2017 sci-fi film Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. He certainly has a lusty eye for his female stars, especially lead actress Cara Delevingne. There are many scenes with scantily clad women prancing around, and one entire sequence of an enslaved female character forced to dance sexily for one of our heroes. But then the film presents large, visually stunning sequences that would put any other sci-fi film to shame and you wish the director could keep his eye on the prize and actually focus on the cool parts.

But then, none of this is actually what brings the film down. No, the simple fact is that Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is an overly long movie that, despite its many visually interesting ideas, can’t actually figure out how to tell an interesting, enjoyable movie. Bad casting doesn’t help this, and actually drags the film down even further. All of these issues play together, making for a film that should be an absolute treat for the eyes, and in fact is in places, if only it could actually tell an interesting, coherent story about lead characters we could actually like. It can’t and the film suffers for it.

The film opens in the past, showing us the history ot Alpha, the first long-term mega space base put in orbit around Earth. Each country of the world brings their own part of the base up, and there’s a meeting of colleagues as they shake hands and become part of a world congress. But then the first alien pod arrives from out in the depths of space, and suddenly what was an Earth colony in space becomes an intergalactic conglomeration. Hundreds of years fly by as more and more species join this intergalactic congress, until the space base becomes so big it has to launch out into space, traveling among the stars as the central hub of galactic politics.

We then cut ahead to Mül, a planet of peaceful ocean-dwellers who spend their days on the sands, collecting pearls and respecting nature. Their world is destroyed, though, when two factions end up in a war above their planet and Mül is caught in the blast radius. The people of Mül are thought lost, but a wave of energy is sent across space and time until it hits Valerian (Dane DeHaan) a captain in the United Human Federation. He, along with his co-pilot Laureline Delevingne, are set on a mission to pick up the last Mül converter, a piece of living tech being sold on the black market. But this then sends them on a quest that threatens Alpha, and might just reveal the very truth about what truly happened to Mül.

The great thing about Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is that it is visually stunning. When it comes to the big set pieces, from an early sequence taking place between two dimension at a open air market, to a chase at the market as Valerian falls through multiple floors and worlds, and then to another chase through multiple biomes of Alpha, the film doesn’t lack for expansive, interesting things for the viewer to enjoy. These moments are great, and they show a different sci-fi perspective than we normally get in big budget Hollywood films.

Hell, there’s an entire sequence early in the film, set on Mül, that I absolutely loved. We get to see the people of the world enjoy their lives, living and working and being one with the elements and the sequence is told almost entirely in their own language without any subtitles. It’s a beautiful sequence that also trusts the audience to understand what’s going on without having to stop, explain, and halt the movie. The visuals help the story, the story works on its own terms, and everything comes together in such a way that I started to question why this film is so hated and was such a giant Box Office Bomb.

And then the heroes were introduced and I suddenly understood. This film is at its worst when it actually focuses on its title character, Valerian. First, the film can’t trust us to understand that he’s a good captain and a trusted member of the Federation who, also, happens to be a cocky jerk that thinks too highly of himself. No, instead it has to actually have the characters explain all of that to us in long sections of expository dialogue. The first fifteen minutes of the film are great, and then the next fifteen minutes are an absolute, unbearable slog as the film wastes all its good will on terribly written dialogue for shitty characters.

Valerian is awful. He’s a womanizing asshole that is also too cocky for his own good. I’m not sure the character could entirely be redeemed if he were played by anyone other than Dane DeHaan, but it absolutely wouldn’t hurt. The actor is completely miscast in this role. He doesn’t have the right attitude, the right bearing, the right look, and he has absolutely none of the kind of charisma needed to play this character. Valerian should be like Han Solo or Indiana Jones, a Harrison Ford type full of cool bravado and just enough “aw shucks” charm to make you like him. DeHaan plays him like a slimy, wormy guy who just so happens to be the best captain around… and he knows it.

I feel bad for Cara Delevingne because, while I hate DeHaan’s Valerian, at least has a character to try (and fail) to play. Delevingne, though, is saddled with a character who is simply there to be a love interest and prize for Valerian to win. Her major story involves Valerian proposing to her as soon as we first meet these characters, her hating him and then, for no reason we can tell (because Valerian learns nothing and never acts like a better person), her falling in love with him. I’m not saying Delevingne is bad in the role, just that there’s no role for her to play. She goes from “I hate him” to “I love him”, and she plays those beats, but that’s not really much to go on.

And, while we’re being picky, the whole story is lacking. The movie is concerned with the mystery of what happened to Mül, but it’s pretty obvious from the second the Commander of Alpha, Arün Filitt (Clive Owen), is introduced that he’s the bad guy and he destroyed Mül. I’d call it a spoiler but the obvious twist is presented with no grace or subtlety, to the point where you expect Flitt to twirl his mustache, look at the camera, and laugh maniacally before tying Mül to the railroad tracks. Every part of the plot is that obvious, that basic, following all the expected sci-fi tropes start to finish. There isn’t a story, it’s just scenes from a hat arranged in chronological order.

And this is to say nothing about a thirty minute diversion halfway into the film that sees Valerian team up with an enslaved, love-doll alien, Bubbles (Rihanna, doing her best to make any part of this film work), all so he can rescue a captured Laureline, only for this whole sequence to end up as padding that didn’t need to be in the film, could be excised, and nothing about the film would change. Like… what is even going on in this film at this point where it has to pad out its own runtime just… because?

I really wish Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets were a better film. If it had a better cast, a better story, and a lot of editing, it might have actually been able to rise up to its stunning visuals and incredible world building. But the core of this film is broken and I don’t think there’s any real way to save it. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is a great looking bad movie, but it’s a bad movie all the same.