Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

The story opens in 1975 when American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts shake hands after joining their capsules in space.  As the years go by, the International Space Station grows bigger and more hands are shaken.  Some centuries later, Alpha - the hodge-podge space station composed of a vast number of extraterrestrials - has grown so massive that it threatens earth with its gravity; it is pushed out of Earth's orbit to become an independent city soaring through space.  Four hundred years later on the planet Mul, the native bluish aliens with scintillating skin live idyllic lives on tropical beaches until alien craft come crashing down upon them.  One vessel proves so massive that it creates a shockwave that decimates the alien community, only a handful survive in a wrecked ship they were exploring.

 

Elsewhere in the universe, Valerian (Dane DeHaan) awakens to a vision of the blue aliens' destruction.  Before he ponders it, Laureline (Cara Delevingne) arrives.  They are en route to a mission.  They seek to recover a stolen item at a transdimensional bazaar.  Successful, they head to Alpha, which has grown even more massive.  The commander (Clive Owen) tells them that an unknown menace has taken over a part of Alpha and that all efforts to investigate have failed - no one returns.  The commander has called a meeting of the Alpha Council; Valerian and Laureline are to be his bodyguards.  During the meeting, the blue aliens attack, subdue everyone, and carry away the commander.  And then commences a series of rescues and captures before the climatic reveal.

 

Dane and Cara have no chemistry.  At one point, Laureline has an exchange with some random mercenary and there was vastly more chemistry with him than with her romantic lead.  Valerian is introduced as a legendary womanizer but has all the charm of an awkward teen on his first date.  His response to being rebuffed by Laureline is to ask for her hand in marriage.  Ugh.  He is also made out to be the most successful agent around but he comes off amateurish.  I've liked Dane DeHaan in other movies but he is horribly miscast in this role.  Tom Cruise from Top Gun, Bruce Campbell from Brisco County Jr., or Burt Reynolds from Smokey and the Bandit is how the character should have been played.  That playful, smartass cockiness combined with easy charm is beyond Dane DeHaan.  Entirely unsuited to the role.

 

Cara Delevingne is beautiful but not particularly attractive.  Her idea of flirting with Valerian is to insult him.  She is almost universally hostile or disapproving, a constant scold.  That may have worked for Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia but it doesn't work here.  Also, her character has been altered.  In the comic, Laureline is a redheaded peasant from 11th century France whereas she is here painted as a modern well-educated woman.  Why is Valerian so desperate to win over such an unappealing woman?  On the other hand, it is clear why she is rebuffing him.

 

Too much of the movie is a sidetrack adventure.  When the commander is taken, Valerian goes in pursuit but crashes and contact is lost.  In order to find him, Laureline must escape custody, confer with a trio of aliens who tell her to get a particular oracle-like jellyfish - which proves to be an adventure itself - which reveals Valerian's location.  No sooner does she rescue him than she is abducted by some aliens and he must now rescue her.  This requires that he find a shape-shifting alien (Rihanna) who will help him infiltrate the stronghold and save Laureline.  Sigh.  All the while, the main plot of the movie sits on the sidelines, forgotten.

 

The heart of the movie is the bluish aliens who survived on the wreck.  It has been thirty years since their planet was destroyed as collateral damage in a space battle between humans and some unnamed aliens.  In those thirty years, these pre-industrial beachcombers managed to cull the vast knowledge base of Alpha to become the most formidable force around.  Uh huh.  That's some pretty amazing technical progress.

 

The movie also has some political messages.  Humanity is to blame for the plight of the bluish aliens and any efforts to redress that would 'ruin the economy.'  The bluish aliens lived at one with nature until humans ruined it.  We have met the enemy and they are us.  Wonderful.

 

The action scenes are often very cool but drag on too long.  There was one epic space battle, the one around the planet Mul, that had no point because there are no characters.  What do I care if that fighter zipped between those two destroyers and fired its missile?  Do we know the pilot?  Do we know the characters on the ship that was hit by the missile?  There is no reason to show any of this because there is no emotional attachment for the audience.  Sure, it looks great but so what?

 

Mediocre and disappointing.  Like George Lucas with The Phantom Menace, Luc Besson allowed special effects to blind him from storytelling and acting.  The love story between Valerian and Laureline had that same blandness of Princess Amidala and Anikin Skywalker.  Half of this film should have been left on the cutting room floor and the rest should have had reshoots.  Skip this one.

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.

 

Valerian: The City of Shifting Waters

 

The City of Shifting Waters: Valerian and Laureline are playing a game of 3D Chess (nod to Star Trek) when word arrives that Xombul has escaped and traveled to New York City, circa 1986.  The chief technocrat explains that 1986 is the year the old world collapsed and a 400 year dark age followed.  Oddly enough, the entire era is off-limits to time travelers but, as Xombul has gone there, Valerian is dispatched.  Laureline will be held in reserve.  Valerian arrives to find New York City partially submerged, all the streets having become water ways for a gang of looters.  No sooner has he found a sign that may lead him to Xombul than he is captured by looters and forced into slave labor.  Several days pass before Laureline arrives and helps him escape.  However, they will need reinforcements to face Xombul and his robots.  Valerian returns to the looter leader, Sun Rae, and convinces him to join forces.  Even with the aid of the looters, they are overcome and captured.  Put on a hovercraft, they escape the city as a tsunami topples the skyscrapers.

 

This proved to be just part one of a two part story.  It was unexpected to see a return of Xombul since he had been turned into a bird and put in a bird cage at the conclusion of the last story.  The idea of a 400 year window where time travel is banned is nonsensical.  The whole point is to protect the timeline but they have no clue what happened in this period?  Silly.  The only thing that was known was that an atomic bomb detonated at the North Pole and caused global warming, the ice caps melting, cities flooding, and constant earthquakes.  For a story written in 1970, it sounds like it might have been a source for Al Gore's Earth in the Balance (1992).

Earth in Flames: The hovercraft takes them all the way to the Rocky Mountains (years before Kevin Costner's Waterworld) before they transfer to a helicopter and arrive at a mountain fortress near Yellowstone.  Sun Rae the looter is amenable to joining Xombul's plot to rebuild the world with Xombul as dictator but Valerian is not.  Xombul knows how to fix that.  He uses a shrinking ray to make Laureline only a few inches tall with plans to keep her in his pocket and always have Valerian on a short leash.  Though Laureline is shrunken, the plan is foiled when an enslaved scientist turns on Xombul.  The story continues with a constant back and forth as Xombul or Valerian has the upperhand before the story concludes at a space station orbiting Earth.

 

The funniest thing about this story was Mr. Schroeder the scientist.  He is obviously Jerry Lewis as the Nutty Professor.  Because Valerian is a French comic series and the French regard Lewis so highly, this was hilarious.  As written, he is far beyond genius and would likely hold his own with a scientist of the 28th century.  High praise indeed to Jerry Lewis.

 

This two-part epic was better than Bad Dreams though it also has the time travel nonsense.  Flooded NYC made for a great setting (3 decades before A.I. Artificial Intelligence).  The action is plentiful.  I am surprised this hasn't been adapted to the big screen before now.

Valerian: Bad Dreams

With the movie Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets coming to theaters soon, I bought the "groundbreaking graphic novel" upon which it is based.  The graphic novel includes three Valerian stories: Bad Dreams (1967), The City of Shifting Waters (1970), and The Empire of a Thousand Planets (1971).

 

The story opens in the 28th Century where humanity rules a galactic empire but only a handful of people have jobs.  Among the employed are the Technocrats who rule the empire and protect space-time from tampering.  The top space-time agent is Valerian.  Xombal, a rebellious technocrat of the First Circle, has traveled back to 11th Century France for reasons unknown and Valerian is sent to capture him.  While there, he encounters Laureline, a peasant girl who lives in a 'haunted' forest.  She helps him track down Xombul and discover that he is practicing sorcery which he plans to bring back to the 28th century so he can rule the galactic empire.  With his sorcery, he has changed peasants into ogres, a local sorcerer into a dragon, and Laureline into a unicorn!  Of course, Valerian stops Xombul just in the nick of time but Laureline knows too much about the future to be left in 11th Century France.  She is recruited as Valerian's partner.

 

Overall, the story is ludicrous and kind of campy.  The inclusion of sorcery and a supposedly historical French sorcerer from whom Xombul is able to learn magic is really out of place for a sci-fi series.  It was also weird that Valerian always arrived after Xombal.  Why not arrive a week early and be ready for him?  Of course, time travel always presents a basket of nonsense and paradoxes.  The future looks rather bleak since most of humanity spends their time 'dreaming,' basically wasting their lives in the equivalent of a Star Trek holodeck.  This is the civilization that our hero is sworn to protect?

 

Silly as it was, it was fun.  This is just the sort of thing that would have thrilled me when I was in prime comic-reading age.