Valerian: The Empire of a Thousand Planets

Syrte is the capital of the Empire of a Thousand Planets but it is in decline.  Poverty is rising, once great cities are falling into ruins, and knowledge is fading.  Piloting the XB982 (great name!), Valerian and Laureline have been dispatched to make contact and determine if trade relations should be established.  No sooner have they arrived on the multicultural capital planet than they run afoul of the Enlightened, an inscrutable priestly order of seers and healers who wield immense power and wealth.  Barely escaping from a fortified Enlightened Temple, Valerian and Laureline make an alliance with an unusually well-informed merchant named Elmir.  The wealth of the merchants has suffered over the decades as the Enlightened have risen in wealth and power.  Elmir has discovered the secret base of the Enlightened on a distant asteroid and wants Valerian to lead the attack.  The ragtag merchant guild fleet sets out from scores of planets to rendezvous but, en route, they are attacked by a superior Enlightened fleet.  Even so, the Enlightened are no match for the XB982, that can jump through time.  Utterly defeated, the Enlightened reveal that they are the crew of a long-lost colony ship from Earth, granted virtual immortality at the cost of physical mutation.  Bitter at their fate, they hoped to take over Syrte and then use the resources to take revenge on Earth.  However, seeing their defeat by a single ship demonstrated the folly of the plan and they instead commit suicide.

 

This proved to be a departure from previous adventures.  There is no time travel except for the tiny time jumps during the space battle.  This is the first time that aliens are seen and they are plentiful!  There are some interesting visual similarities to Star Wars.  The Enlightened are disfigured and thus wear bulky helmets like Darth Vader.  Valerian is briefly encased in a strange block of material that is surprisingly similar to Han Solo encased in carbonite.

 

Having watched the previews of the upcoming movie, I don't see a lot of parallels beyond the title.  Also, the title characters don't seem quite right.  Obviously, I have only read a tiny portion of the vast material on Valerian but he seems more like a Bruce Campbell than a Dane DeHaan.  Campbell can do cocky with light-hearted banter in his sleep, which is how I see Valerian.  DeHaan looks like he's about to start weeping and probably will if confronted by light-hearted banter.  He looks too boyish.  I've only seen Cara Delevingne in Suicide Squad which doesn't provide much of a basis to judge.  However, Laureline is a redhead and Cara clearly is not.  That may be fine.  After all, Wolverine is only 5 foot 3 in the comic but the 6 foot 2 Hugh Jackman knocked it out of the park in the role.