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Every summer movie season needs at least one out-of-left-field entry that is so cheerfully bonkers it stands as a living rebuke to an industry that churns out noisy and soulless garbage like “ Transformers: The Last Knight .” This year, that film is “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets,” a deliriously entertaining film that finds writer/director Luc Besson swinging for the fences in his efforts to make a weirdo sci-fi epic for the ages and coming up with a virtual home run derby. It's a film filled with humor, charm, excitement and so many memorable images that many viewers will find themselves struggling to keep from blinking so as not to miss any of the eye-popping delights crammed into each overstuffed frame.

The film is inspired by Valerian and Laureline , a French comic book series created by Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mezieres that is said, especially among European comic book buffs, to have influenced the look of any number of films over the years, including “ Star Wars .” The comics also helped to instill an interest in the genre in a ten-year-old Besson, who would eventually go on to employ Mezieres to help design the look of his own elaborate sci-fi epic, “ The Fifth Element .” Besson may be one of the leading players on the international moviemaking scene, but while watching “Valerian,” he has reverted, in the best possible way, to the mindset of a kid helplessly enthralled by the wild plotting, bizarre alien worlds and breathless derring-do on display—albeit a kid who has been able to marshal together armies of cutting-edge visual technicians and a near-$200 million budget (the largest in French film history) to bring it all to life exactly as it played in his head.

Set in the 28th century, the film centers on Valerian ( Dane DeHaan ) and Laureline ( Cara Delevingne ), a pair of special operatives fighting crime throughout the universe. As the story begins, the two are sent off to Big Market, a virtual-reality bazaar whose hordes of vendors can only be seen and approached after donning special equipment, to confiscate an ultra-rare and powerful Mül Converter, an adorable creature capable of reproducing anything that it eats. The cocky Valerian soon finds himself being pursued by any number of creatures while the far more cool and collected Laureline is charged with saving his bacon, presumably not for the first time. 

The twist this time is that, due to a technological malfunction, Valerian is also trapped between two different levels of reality with most of his body in the real world while his arm is stuck in the virtual universe. This may not make a lot of sense in the explanation but the end result on the screen is a hilarious and exciting thing of crackpot beauty that is just one high point of a film filled with them.

After securing the Mül Converter, Valerian and Laureline report to Alpha, a massive floating city that began centuries earlier as the International Space Station and has expanded over the years to serve as a home away from home for aliens from throughout the universe to live together in harmony. Now Alpha’s very existence is being threatened from within, and Valerian and Laureline are charged with getting to the bottom of things before it is too late. The two uncover evidence of a massive government conspiracy to cover up a ghastly mistake. As they try to unravel the scheme before all is lost, the two are separated and have a series of adventures involving a wild collection of creatures, the most memorable of which is a shape-shifting “glampod” played by pop princess Rihanna, who turns up to help Valerian rescue Laureline. 

Besson has long been one of the most stylish filmmakers, but he outdoes himself here. There is not a scene in the film that does not contain a visual worth savoring, whether it is an unusual creature, an extravagant costume or just a throwaway oddity lurking in a corner. (This is one of the rare recent films in which the 3-D option is clearly the way to go.)  At the same time, though, Besson is using his visual skills as a way of telling the story instead of merely serving up bits of gourmet eye candy. Take the extended early sequence set on a bucolic distant planet whose sleek and iridescent inhabitants go about their business before being interrupted by a cataclysmic event. The scene is an initial grabber because of the absolutely gorgeous design of the planet and its inhabitants. But as it goes on, we quickly get a sense of who they are in relation to each other and how their world functions without a single word of dialogue to explain any of it.

Some will complain that the screenplay is little more than a series of action sequences linked together by a story that doesn’t make any sense and absurdly clunky dialogue. While some of the criticisms are valid—there are times when the dialogue sounds as if it underwent one pass too many through translation software programmed by George Lucas —Besson’s narrative is more ambitious than usual this time around and, for all the silliness on display, ultimately touches on real-world concerns such as political corruption and the international refugee crisis in ways that lend real emotional weight to the proceedings. At the same time, “Valerian” is unusually optimistic in its depiction of the future from the charming prologue showing the evolution of Alpha to the sight of its inhabitants living together in peace. At a time when virtually every futuristic film envisions some form of dystopian nightmare, the sunnier take shown here is refreshing.

The only weak element to “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets,” ironically enough, is Valerian himself. Throughout his career, Besson has never shown much interest in telling stories based around conventionally masculine heroes. Most of his films have centered on tough and resourceful female characters, and when guys have been front-and-center, Besson has subverted their macho natures in some way (such as dressing Bruce Willis in Jean-Paul Gaultier in “The Fifth Element”). Here, Valerian should be brave, bold and resourceful, but as inhabited by DeHaan, he comes across more like a callow kid struggling to emulate the effortless cool of Han Solo. Besson is clearly more interested in the character of Laureline, and viewers will be, too, thanks to Delevingne's performance. She is funny, convincing in the fight scenes, charismatic as hell, and capable of taking an absurdly melodramatic speech like her climactic oratory on the importance of love and making it work. Thanks to films like “ Wonder Woman ” and the recent “Star Wars” entries, we are in a new age of exemplary female heroes at the multiplex, and Laureline is fully deserving of a place among them.

“Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets” is an utter delight and one of the most gorgeous fantasies to hit the screen in recent memory—the kind of film that can take moviegoers logy from the usual array of craptaculars and render them giddy with its pure fun. The question, of course, is whether viewers will be willing to give its weirdo charms a chance. But if you want to come away from a film feeling dazzled instead of simply dazed, this is an absolute must. Besides, it is almost certainly going to become a cult favorite in a few years, so why not get in on the ground floor while you can?

Peter Sobczynski

A moderately insightful critic, full-on Swiftie and all-around  bon vivant , Peter Sobczynski, in addition to his work at this site, is also a contributor to The Spool and can be heard weekly discussing new Blu-Ray releases on the Movie Madness podcast on the Now Playing network.

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Film Credits

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017)

Rated PG-13 for sci-fi violence and action, suggestive material and brief language.

137 minutes

Dane DeHaan as Valerian

Cara Delevingne as Laureline

Clive Owen as Commander Arün Filitt

Rihanna as Bubble

Ethan Hawke as Jolly the Pimp

Kris Wu as Sergeant Neza

John Goodman as Igon Siruss (voice)

Aymeline Valade as Haban-Limaï

Elizabeth Debicki as Haban Limaï (voice)

Julien Bleitrach as Martapurai #2

Writer (comic book)

• Pierre Christin
• Jean-Claude Méziéres

Cinematographer

• Thierry Arbogast
• Alexandre Desplat

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Film Review: ‘Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets’

'Lucy' director Luc Besson returns to the realm of sci-fi, serving up an expansive, expensive adventure whose creativity outweighs its more uneven elements.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

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A long time ago in our very own galaxy, Luc Besson dreamed of directing a movie version of “Valérian and Laureline,” a sexy French comic book series featuring a pair of futuristic crime fighters who travel through space and time to uphold the law. Although scholars consider the pulp source material to have been an influence on George Lucas’ original “Star Wars” movie, the equation clearly works the other way around in Besson’s hands, as “ Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets ” finds the director doing his best “Star Wars” impression.

It’s a bold goal in a marketplace that hasn’t traditionally been very welcoming to “Star Wars” imitators, but Besson is one of the few living directors with both the ambition and the ability to establish his own rival universe. At a time when “Star Wars” itself has gone corporate (granted, the tight control has yielded some of the series’ best entries), “Valerian” manages to be both cutting-edge and delightfully old-school — the kind of wild, endlessly creative thrill ride that only the director of “Lucy” and “The Fifth Element” could deliver, constructed as an episodic series of missions, scrapes and near-misses featuring a mind-blowing array of environments and stunning computer-generated alien characters.

Too bad Valerian himself is such a dud. Written as a kind of cocky intergalactic lothario, Valerian ought to be as sexy and charismatic as a young Han Solo, though “Chronicle” star Dane DeHaan — so good in brooding-emo mode — seems incapable of playing the kind of aloof insouciance that made Harrison Ford so irresistible. Despite holding the rank of major, Valerian looks like an overgrown kid, overcompensating via an unconvincingly gruff faux Keanu Reeves accent (with the questionable dye job to match).

Fortunately, his co-star is cool enough for the both of them: As played by British fashion model Cara Delevingne (downright wooden in last summer’s “Suicide Squad,” but a revelation here: sassy, sarcastic and spontaneous), Laureline holds true to one of Besson’s core beliefs — that nothing’s sexier than an assertive, empowered leading lady. Sure, she needs rescuing at times, but more often than not, she’s the one getting Valerian out of trouble. She’s just a sergeant, but every bit as capable as her commanding officer, and the film is considerably more fun when following her character.

The chemistry between the two may be odd, but they make a good team, constantly trying to prove themselves to one another while each pretending not to care. In their first scene together, Valerian asks Laureline to marry him — a strangely old-fashioned demand, given the 28th-century setting, that plays like a 1950s ploy to seduce the virginal preacher’s daughter. And yet, in so many ways, she seems worldlier than he does, right down to the film’s climactic monologue, in which Laureline lectures Valerian on the meaning of love.

Most of the time, he’s too busy following orders to question what his superiors are asking, but such blind obedience has its bounds, since the plot of “Valerian” concerns a vast military coverup for a cataclysm Besson depicts in the film’s opening minutes: the near-annihilation of a seemingly primitive, yet peaceful species known as Pearls. Tall, slender and scantily dressed, like “Avatar’s” Na’vi, with bald heads and iridescent opaline skin, the Pearl are the most elegant and expressive of the movie’s many computer-generated aliens. Their long limbs give them a graceful, supermodel gait, while their faces are nuanced enough to convey even subtle emotions — testament to just how sophisticated performance capture technology has become, even in someone other than Andy Serkis’ hands.

Such innovations make it possible for Besson to build upon the multiculturalism of the “Star Wars” series in a big way, taking the intermingling of species in the classic cantina scene and expanding it to a vast city named Alpha, where a seemingly infinite number of aliens happily stick to their roles (like a pre-equal-opportunity Zootopia), while humans of all colors run the show (including Herbie Hancock as the city’s Minister of Defense). No doubt, there are dark and sordid “Blade Runner”-esque corners to this hyper-modern megalopolis, but Besson never lingers long enough for us to play more than fly-by tourist as he follows Valerian and Laureline through these various realms.

Generally speaking, Besson works at a fast clip, using dynamic framing and tight editing to convey loads of visual information on the go. The movie is designed to propel us from one cliffhanger to the next, and it’s remarkably effective at doing so without providing a clear notion of what the duo’s mission is supposed to be. Early on, they’re sent to Big Market, a massive virtual-reality bazaar where Valerian manages to retrieve an adorable, ultra-rare creature known as a Mül Converter, which can make copies of anything it ingests (except itself, apparently), from a Jabba the Hutt-like black marketeer voiced by John Goodman.

The movie kicks in during the Big Market sequence, which is where audiences first feel like we’re discovering a truly visionary new environment for the first time — though Besson manages to sustain that effect throughout the film’s time on Alpha. There we meet Commander Arun Filitt (Clive Owen), the four-star general who’s been using Valerian to help fulfill his own dastardly agenda, and discover a world of eye-popping costumes. Besson’s script may occasionally leave something to be desired, but one can hardly fault the way his characters are dressed, as costume designer Olivier Bériot gives us a sample of the future of fashion (so avant garde that it could take decades for sci-fi to catch up).

In one case — that of a glampod named Bubble (played by Rihanna, when in human form) — a shape-shifting alien actually functions as a kind of elaborate costume, wrapping herself around Valerian so he can infiltrate the dangerous gourmands who plan to eat his darling Laureline. In a nifty trick, Bubble can remove her hat and change outfits entirely, making for the galaxy’s sexiest exotic dance routine.

Even Besson, who convinced the world that Milla Jovovich could act (in “The Fifth Element”), can’t salvage Rihanna’s awkward line readings — unless that’s the effect this sophisticated, Shakespeare-trained glampod is going for. But that’s a small hiccup considering what the director gets from Delevingne: She doesn’t just save Alpha; she saves the movie as well. And though audiences may not be clamoring for a “Valerian” sequel after this, another “Laureline” adventure would be most welcome.

Reviewed at Regal L.A. Live, July 7, 2017. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 137 MIN.

• Production: (France) An STX Entertainment (in U.S.), EuropaCorp (in France) release and presentation of a Valerian SAS, TF1 Films Prod. co-production, with the participation of OCS, TF1, in association with Fundamental Films, BNP Paribas, Orange Studio, Universum Film GmbH, Novo Pictures, River Road Entertainment, Belga Films. Producers: Luc Besson, Virginie Besson-Silla.
• Crew: Director: Luc Besson. Screenplay: Besson, based on the comic book series “Valerian and Laureline” by Pierre Christin, Jean-Claude Mézières. Camera (color, widescreen, 3D): Thierry Arbogast. Editor: Julien Rey. Music: Alexandre Desplat.
• With: Dane DeHaan, Cara Delevingne, Clive Owen, Rihanna, Ethan Hawke, Herbie Hancock, Kris Wu, Rutger Hauer, Sasha Luss, Aymeline Valade.

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‘Valerian’ Reviews Range From ‘Mind-Meltingly Beautiful’ to ‘Dramatically Clunky’

Critics are confounded by Luc Besson’s wild sci-fi epic, and reactions are as vast as the universe itself

STX/EuropaCorp’s “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets” has completely confounded movie critics, who have had a wide range of opinions about the dense sci-fi fantasy created by cult hit director Luc Besson.

With early reviews still coming in, “Valerian” currently has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 73 percent, with critics’ opinions varying wildly depending on what element of the film they’re discussing. Most seem to agree that the movie’s visuals are fiercely, unapologetically original, with some even saying they exceed those of James Gunn’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” films.

But others criticize the film’s wild tonal shifts and relentlessly fast-paced plot, which they say some moviegoers will find alienating. What’s more, Dave Schilling of Birth.Movies.Death. says that Besson’s film doesn’t seem to care if you can’t keep up with it.

“‘Valerian’ is like getting slapped in the ass with a bedazzled lawn gnome. It’s either your thing or it isn’t, but you will remember it forever,” he writes. “As Hollywood wrings its hands over a perceived ‘ franchise fatigue’  and audiences beg for fresh ideas, ‘Valerian’ offers that breath of fresh air people are craving.”

Schilling adds: “But what film fans and critics are really asking for usually isn’t something actively strange, it’s an old idea with a new coat of paint or a film like ‘Baby Driver’ that taps into warm and fuzzy feelings of nostalgia and breathless teen romance. The only thing ‘Valerian’ taps into is the boundless imagination of Luc Besson and the stories he was obsessed with as a child.”

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“Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets” hits theaters July 21. For more of the wide range of opinions the space epic has spawned, check out more of the reviews here:

Alonso Duralde, TheWrap

“‘Valerian’ might well represent the apotheosis of Besson’s singularly loony brand of filmmaking. It’s bonkers and gorgeous and confusing and thrilling and tiring and overflowing with ideas. This is the kind of movie that soars beyond adjectives like ‘good’ or ‘bad’: It’s sincere but overstuffed, visually gorgeous but dramatically clunky, and it represents a singular vision while simultaneously featuring two wildly miscast actors in the lead roles.”

Bilge Ebiri, Village Voice

“‘Valerian’ is at times so mind-meltingly beautiful and strange that I’m still not sure I didn’t just dream it all. My favorite bit involves the mundanely named Big Market, a cluttered, multilevel, Möbius-inspired mall city of a million shops — think Istanbul’s Covered Bazaar meets the Death Star — that exists in another dimension, so that you have to enter it via special glasses and gloves.”

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger

“‘Valerian’ isn’t a children’s film, exactly. But it’s certainly a childish one, full of ridiculous alien creatures, hammy human performances and characters as deep as strip of celluloid. It’s like “Barbarella” without the ’60s camp and zipless sex. And what fun is that?”

Susana Polo, Polygon

“Often, ‘Valerian’ seems to treat itself as an excuse to show as many wild things to the audience as quickly as possible. And as long as it is showing you those wild things — and they are just as wild and creative and wondrous as any fan of ‘The Fifth Element,’ ‘Star Wars’ or ‘Doctor Who’ could ask for — Valerian succeeds.

It’s when ‘Valerian’ stops to explain anything, or when it pauses to give the relationship between its leads any screen time, that its interstellar flight starts to feel the inexorable pull of gravity. And beyond a certain point, Valerian traps itself in the stale atmosphere of its underwritten dialogue and its director’s love of some adventure fiction cliches better left to gather dust.”

David Ehrlich, IndieWire

“‘Valerian’ imagines a multi-cultural future where diversity has assumed extraterrestrial dimensions, where life is so varied and fractured that entire species can be wiped away without anyone asking questions. Besson presents a future in which people are the least interesting things in the universe, and yet the world still revolves around us. A white dude is still pulling the strings of power. Equality is still hard because erasure is still easier. There are 394 million stories on the City of a Thousand Planets, and Valerian’s might be the only one we’ve seen before. Still, any excuse to visit this place is one worth taking.”

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets Is a One-of-a-Kind Space Odyssey

Luc Besson’s new sci-fi epic is a visual sensation that deserves to be seen on the biggest screen possible.

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is a film that refuses to let a single action sequence play out simply. Its director, Luc Besson, has long excelled at set pieces with a twist—think of the backwards car chase in his last feature, Lucy. But for his newest project, he’s painting on a far grander canvas: A tense showdown at an alien bazaar unfolds in two different dimensions that exist in the same space. In a chase scene, the movie’s hero has to blast straight through dozens of walls in a space station to have any hope of catching his quarry. A high-dive rescue mission gets complicated by the presence of aliens fishing for humans with giant poles.

In an era of expensive, paint-by-numbers blockbusters, Besson’s latest, and biggest, film is a day-glo delight, a true original that deserves to be remembered despite—or perhaps partly because of—its various silly excesses. The movie is based on the landmark French comic series Valérian and Laureline , a ’60s pop sci-fi classic about two “spatio-temporal agents” who travel the galaxy together fighting crime. To do this widely beloved work justice, Besson has aimed as high as possible, delivering a $200 million-plus epic that hardly lets a minute go by without lobbing some new bit of visual trickery at the viewer.

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Valerian is the rare film I’d actually recommend trying to see in 3-D; the effects, while plentiful, are rendered with gorgeous clarity. Like a lot of Besson’s work, it’ll probably largely be dismissed as a stylish mess upon release, eventually becoming a cult classic one can imagine captivating midnight theater-goers for decades to come. But Valerian is animated by the same humanist impulses that have driven all of Besson’s best movies—from Léon: The Professional to The Fifth Element —and it has much more to offer than just dizzying spectacle.

Valerian opens with a wonderful montage charting the creation of the massive interstellar city of the film’s title, Alpha—a conglomeration of space stations and hundreds of alien races that has slowly grown over the centuries. But the story is also concerned with an unnamed paradise planet, populated by big-eyed, gem-farming aliens, that was destroyed in a mysterious cataclysm. That Armageddon event is somehow tied to strange goings-on at Alpha, and it’s up to the space-soldiers Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and Laureline (Cara Delevingne) to investigate.

The dastardly plot at the center of it all is straightforward enough. But Besson (who also wrote the script) layers in absurd side stories and complicated pieces of world-building, much of it surely straight from the comics, to keep the film’s hefty 137-minute running time from feeling slack. After the early mission at the multi-dimensional bazaar, both Valerian and Laureline get to indulge in their own solo missions and interact with various wacky supporting characters (the most important of whom is Bubble, a shape-shifting alien played by Rihanna) before finally solving the main puzzle of the doomed beach planet.

The convoluted plotting and manic visuals are easy enough to get on board with, especially if you’re fond of space operas like Star Wars ( Valerian especially reminded me of George Lucas’s prequels, except it knows how to have fun) or the Wachowskis’ Jupiter Ascending . But, as with those movies, the dialogue is at times overly expositional, and attempts at humor or romance can be remote and clunky—Besson’s skill as a writer has never been his banter, which this film has plenty of, especially when it’s introducing the dynamic between Valerian and Laureline.

But stick with it through its awkward early moments, and Valerian will yield deeper insights into Besson’s overall artistic philosophy. DeHaan’s deadpan work quickly grew on me once I understood the arc he was going for: a hard-bitten soldier becoming more comfortable with disobeying orders in the name of the greater good. I hadn’t bought the hype on Delevingne as a movie star before now—her biggest roles were in the young-adult drama Paper Towns and the train wreck that was Suicide Squad —but she’s magnetic here, perfectly embodying Besson’s conception of heroism (which tends to be more open-hearted than the wise-cracking, aloof version typical of Hollywood movies).

Valerian is the kind of science-fiction film that doesn’t get made enough anymore. It’s unafraid to embrace the expansive potential of its genre, to make each new location, costume, and alien creature feel like the wildest version of itself. Besson’s ambitions remain as limitless as they were in his first go-round at the genre, 20 years ago, and they may doom Valerian to “intriguing curio” status rather than out-of-the-box sensation. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Valerian deserves to be seen by as many people as possible, a cinema experience that takes advantage of every moment it has with you.

Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets Review

It's no secret that major studio blockbusters can be stunted by the environment in which they are created. Big budgets mean that there are a lot of important people looking over shoulders and generating notes, making sure that their money isn't being improperly utilized, and it can have the end effect of manufacturing bland, safe features that are meant to appeal to everyone. Watching Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets , however, it becomes extremely clear that writer/director Luc Besson was given the opportunity to make exactly the film he wanted. And while that doesn't automatically generate perfect results, it does let it be one of the most gonzo, bombastic, and beautiful sci-fi features we've seen in recent years.

Having been a life-long fan of the Valerian and Laureline comics on which it's based, Luc Besson has carried the new movie as a passion project for decades (with new context, his beloved 1997 feature The Fifth Element feels like it was a training session). You can tell that he was waiting until the time was perfect to move forward, and from an effects stand-point he absolutely nailed it. There are segments of Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets that essentially transport you to a different world with each new scene, and each one is more stunning than the last, brought to life with a blend of spectacular digital and practical artistry. It not only enhances everything incredible about the film, including the larger themes and expansive world-building, but also does its part to strengthen weak spots,such as the narrative flow and the chemistry between the two leads.

Opening with a century-spanning montage that deserves to go down as an all-timer in the science-fiction genre, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets begins hundreds of years in the future, where we catch up with interstellar agents Valerian ( Dane DeHaan ) and Laureline (Cara Delevingne) as they execute a dangerous mission to disrupt a black market deal in a desert planet's virtual marketplace (what feels like one of 10,000 fantastic concepts that find their way into the film). After losing some friends and making a few new enemies, they find themselves on their way back to Alpha -- an enormous space station that grows larger and larger as new alien species discover it and dock their own installations. It's here that the two heroes are provided a new task from their commander ( Clive Owen ), sent to investigate a growing threat at the heart of Alpha -- but as they dig deeper, they discover that not everything is quite as it seems, and the stories they've been told about what's going on are not entirely true.

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is a film made up of big swings, and while a lot of them are great, it does take its toll on the storytelling, and some elements just don't work as they really should. A perfect example of this is the relationship between Valerian and Laureline, as Luc Besson does the cinematic equivalent of picking you up and dropping you into the deep end of the pool with the duo. The movie is impressively aggressive in getting across the former's love of the latter, and the latter's rejection of the former, which immediately puts the audience on an odd footing with them minutes after their introduction. Because there isn't really any context provided of their history together outside of being loyal partners, you're left throughout the movie never getting fully comfortable with them as a couple -- and the chemistry between Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne doesn't fully bridge the gap.

This same kind of messy ambition is also very present in Valerian 's storytelling, as it finds itself trying to do so much in its second act that it winds up as a notable distraction from the primary narrative thrust. The movie never feels necessarily bloated, but it is certainly long (sporting a 137 minute runtime), and a significant part of that are the two consecutive rescue missions playing out in the middle. A part of you as a movie-goer is thankful, as both mini-plots allow the exploration of parts of Alpha that obviously you'd otherwise not see. The other part of you is acutely aware that this is what happens when a 50-page comic inspires a full-length feature. It's never great when you have to take a mental moment in the middle of a blockbuster to remember what the characters are trying to do, but in this case at least it's not devastating.

Of course, what you are truly meant to take away from Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is a banquet of weird creativity and ridiculousness, and it's served up as an exciting blockbuster feast (best enjoyed, by the by, in 3D). Luc Besson had decades of comics from Valerian and Laureline creators Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières to adapt and employ, and both the creature and production design is legitimately special. Each new idea, from mind-expanding jellyfish, to consciousness that can travel the cosmos, is smile-inducing, and it's amazing to see the surprisingly small, heavily-disguised performances from talent like Ethan Hawke , Rihanna , Elizabeth Debicki and John Goodman -- which serve to make the universe feel wonderfully huge.

The summer isn't quite over, but Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is certainly the frontrunner to be named the spectacle of the summer, and while many franchises have disappointed, this is a movie that ends with you wanting to see much more from the universe it introduces. It's visually stunning, beautifully prescient in its humanist themes (alien-ist too, I suppose?), and while its reach doesn't match its grasp in some respects, you're still left respecting the hell out of the reach alone.

Eric Eisenberg is the Assistant Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. After graduating Boston University and earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism, he took a part-time job as a staff writer for CinemaBlend, and after six months was offered the opportunity to move to Los Angeles and take on a newly created West Coast Editor position. Over a decade later, he's continuing to advance his interests and expertise. In addition to conducting filmmaker interviews and contributing to the news and feature content of the site, Eric also oversees the Movie Reviews section, writes the the weekend box office report (published Sundays), and is the site's resident Stephen King expert. He has two King-related columns.

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Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets Review

A visually stunning, but hollow romp..

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets showcases plenty of cool creatures and ideas for sci-fi fans to savor, but if only the movie's central characters and their relationship were as exciting and interesting as all that impressive eye candy.

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‘Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets’ review

‘valerian and the city of a thousand planets’ looks lovely, but makes no sense.

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is a case study in what to avoid when trying to establish a sci-fi universe. At first glance, the comic-inspired sci-fi action flick from Lucy director Luc Besson seems to channel his 20-year-old cinematic high-point, The Fifth Element — A shoot first, ask questions later action movie set in a vibrant and enchanting vision of the future. When I took on the task of writing our Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets review, I had hoped I’d be evangelizing the second coming of that classic film. Instead, I found an almost inscrutable movie baked in a hollow, sometimes flashy, world.

The movie follows the eponymous hero Valerian, a major in the universal human military, and his partner (and love interest), Sergeant Laureline, as they investigate a mystery that threatens to destroy Alpha, an enormous space station that plays home to millions of species from across the universe. The threat serves as an entry point for the duo to discover and unravel a massive cover-up spanning space (and time).

The movie goes out of its way to keep the story and the action separated

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It also isn’t that important. The mystery on Alpha station is the primary conflict of the movie, but it mostly serves as an ancillary support system for Valerian and Laureline’s aimless wandering. The duo chase conspirators and go on rescue missions to save each other from random alien threats. Their investigation takes long, winding turns across Alpha — facilitating chase scenes in spaceships and submarines, gunfights, and a sequence where Valerian kills off an entire room of gray brutish creatures with a sword. None of their meandering moves the plot along.

Instead of integrating the mystery into these scenes, many of the movie’s action sequences are punctuated by short conversations in Alpha’s human military headquarters, far away, where secondary characters, who you’d normally deem unimportant, discuss how they’re solving the plot’s core problem, step-by-step. The movie seems to go out of its way to keep the story and the action separated: At one point, key information is literally delivered by omniscient duck-billed information brokers, rather than worked into Valerian and Laureline’s story.

Valerian, played by Amazing Spider-Man 2 ’s Dane DeHaan , is technically the star, but he and Laureline ( Suicide Squad ’s Cara Delevigne ) are propped up early on as a sloppy, but effective space cop duo and love affair rolled into one. They have a flirty rapport, punctuated by brief moments of earnest emotion, but neither of these dynamics feel especially genuine. Valerian sounds equally boring whether he’s trying to act earnest and romantic, or witty and charming. Laureline, armed with charming quips and wide-eyed surprise, keeps the “chemistry” between the two of them alive at times, but never gets the opportunity to make her character feel like more than a foil for her co-star.

Valerian ’s coolest designs don’t get the time and attention they deserve

The problem is not exclusive to DeHaan and Delevigne. Despite the film’s strong supporting cast, which includes Clive Owen, Ethan Hawke, Rihanna, and John Goodman (in voiceover), every character in this movie sounds like they’re talking at you, the viewer, rather than to whomever they’re supposed to be speaking.

Even if its characters are no fun to listen to, Valerian is very pleasant to look at. Every pore of the movie is filled with creative, highly stylized costumes, creatures, and buildings. Though much of it seems deliberately tame — there are few, if any, intelligent aliens that don’t walk and talk like a human being, for example — there is a steady stream of interesting designs to observe.

Unfortunately, many of  Valerian ’s coolest designs — the underwater alien farmers, walking goldfish bowls, and peacock-human hybrids of Alpha Station — don’t get the time and attention they deserve. A city of a thousand planets is too big to show in its entirety, of course, but instead of weaving these wondrous elements into the film’s most important scenes, Besson uses them as exposition and window dressing.

When Valerian and Laureline arrive at Alpha Station, their ship’s AI simply parades out a few alien species in rapid succession with brief explanations, like a visual encyclopedia. Normally, this kind of sequence would be a way to convey important information you’ll need later in the movie, but none of the alien info makes an appearance later in the film. The explanation is merely an excuse to jam more concept art on screen.

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets shows flashes of the fun, excitement, and infatuating creativity you’d hope to see in a modern space opera. (Without giving it away, the film’s first 5-10 minutes, which provide an abridged montage of Alpha Station’s origin, using the film’s interesting art and design to great effect.) Despite these glimpses of compelling lore, most of Valerian feels like a series of concepts, connected by an extremely bare-bones action tale. From afar, its best ideas look as if they’ve been drawn from an imagination running wild — but get closer and there’s no aspect of this movie that really stands out.

If you’d like to see a better movie this weekend, DT recommends ‘Dunkirk’ review , Spider-Man: Homecoming , and War for the Planet of the Apes .

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Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets review – a sci-fi plot full of black holes

I t’s hard to fault the elegant opening sequence of Luc Besson’s striking sci-fi epic : the use of David Bowie’s Space Oddity, which plays out in its glorious entirety; a sucker punch of an aspect ratio shift; and a neat repeating motif of handshakes between nations, and later, species. It all combines to explain the genesis of Alpha, the titular space city, with economy and wit. It’s a pity that the smooth assurance of this prelude evaporates once the film proper begins. It’s a movie that always seems to be frantically paddling to keep from being submerged by its own ambition.

But what ambition. Besson goes one better than the sprawling technotropolis he imagined for The Fifth Element . Here, he creates a black market shopping mall that exists on multiple dimensions, a race of iridescent glitter people who waft around a realm that looks like an ocean-themed beachfront cocktail bar and a red light district in which the basest urges in the universe are gratified. It looks arresting, an eye-searing assault of neon and overstuffed special effects.

But given the sheer complexity of the worlds in which the story plays out, it’s not surprising that we lose the thread of the action once in a while. The writing simply isn’t strong enough to compete with the visual impact.

Our guides through the narrative are Major Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and his fellow agent Sergeant Laureline (Cara Delevingne). Along with saving Alpha, the pair are juggling a will-they-won’t-they romantic subplot. They look great in their figure-hugging, rubberised battle suits, but two entirely different life forms in two entirely different dimensions would have more natural chemistry than they do. It’s not so much the performances that are at fault as the dialogue. Flirty lines crash and burn like crippled satellites. An underpowered villain and the absence of an underlying theme don’t help. Besson might have been aiming for an astral fantasy in the vein of Avatar , but he ended up with something closer to the workmanlike galactic ripping yarn of John Carter .

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First ‘Valerian’ Reactions Praise the Spectacle, Creatures, and World-Building

Is Luc Besson's latest a return to 'Fifth Element' form?

Getting an original movie made these days is hard enough, let alone one with a massive budget and complicated visual effects. But that’s essentially what filmmaker Luc Besson has done with Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets , which is based on an old French comic book (so not 100% original, but how many moviegoers have actually heard of Valerian before?). The movie takes place in the 28th century, where a duo of special operatives—Valerian ( Dane DeHaan ) and Laureline ( Cara Delevingne )—are tasked with maintaining order throughout the human territories. They’re given their toughest assignment yet: traveling to the city of Alpha and unmasking a menace that threatens the entire universe.

The first reactions to the film landed on social media last night, and for the most part they're pretty positive. Anticipation for this one has been high for some looking to see Besson return to The Fifth Element territory after dabbling in more grounded action fare like Lucy recently. Everyone seems to be ecstatic about the visual effects and creature designs, but when it comes to the performances and story it’s a bit more mixed.

Check out the Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets reactions below. The film also stars Clive Owen , Rihanna , Ethan Hawke , John Goodman , Herbie Hancock , and Kris Wu and opens in theaters on July 21st.

Here’s the official synopsis for  Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets :

In the 28th century, Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and Laureline (Cara Delevingne) are a team of special operatives charged with maintaining order throughout the human territories. Under assignment from the Minister of Defense, the two embark on a mission to the astonishing city of Alpha—an ever-expanding metropolis where species from all over the universe have converged over centuries to share knowledge, intelligence and cultures with each other. There is a mystery at the center of Alpha, a dark force which threatens the peaceful existence of the City of a Thousand Planets, and Valerian and Laureline must race to identify the marauding menace and safeguard not just Alpha, but the future of the universe.

The best critics' slams of 'Valerian': 'It really is THAT bad'

It's not that movie critics hate Valerian , the eye-popping sci-fi adventure starring Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne, which, as of Friday, was pulling in a just-fine 57% on Rotten Tomatoes . 

Critics just seem baffled by the Luc Besson film, which USA TODAY called one of the summer's riskiest Hollywood gambles "with no big-name actors, a hefty $180 million budget and out-there source material that's little known to U.S. audiences."

From the looks of the internet's harshest reviews,  Valerian  "is really that bad."  Read a sampling below.

The New York Times

"To say that Valerian  is a science-fiction epic doesn’t quite do it justice. Imagine crushing a DVD of The Phantom Menace  into a fine powder, tossing in some Adderall and Ecstasy and a pinch of cayenne pepper and snorting the resulting mixture while wearing a virtual reality helmet in a Las Vegas karaoke bar. Actually, that sounds like too much fun, but you get the idea."

The Hollywood Reporter

"The Razzies don't need to wait until the end of the year to anoint a winner for 2017. The Golden Turkey Awards should be republished with a new cover. Euro-trash is back, while sci-fi will need to lick its wounds for a while.

"Dane DeHaan, who has starred in two of the most egregiously bloated misfires of the year with A Cure for Wellness and now this, should do a couple of indie films, while Cara Delevingne needs to learn there is more to acting than smirking and eye-rolling. Rihanna should pretend this never happened. And the Hollywood studio chiefs can breathe easy that, this time, at least, they'll escape blame for making a giant summer franchise picture that nobody wants to see since this one's a French import."

Vanity Fair

"Most glaring of all is an unbearably clunky stretch of the film involving Rihanna as a shapeshifting and bizarrely (not in the good way) wisecracking burlesque performer, and a horde of slobbering and stupid aliens who are, rather uncomfortably, clad in tribal garb that looks a bit too much like stuff that’s worn here on Earth by non-white people. It’s an ugly portion of the movie, in many senses, while Besson’s whopping $180 million budget runs thin and the narrative slows to a crawl."

Rolling Stone

"Dane DeHaan stars as Major Valerian, a special-ops agent assigned to maintain order in the universe, or at least in the human territories. It's a big job for this sylph-like manchild and despite numerous feats of derring-do, never once does he seem remotely up to the task. DeHaan  can  act: Check him out in  Chronicle, The Place Beyond the Pines  and  Kill Your Darlings.  But here, he's mostly asked to joke and flirt until stuntmen take over for the dangerous stuff. 

"But if it's hard to root for Valerian, it's even harder to muster up interest in his partner, Sergeant Laureline. As played by model Cara Delevingne with a smirk that just won't quit, Laureline is way ballsier than Valerian, who still looks in need of a mother's love. She can pose and preen like an expert in her space gear – and those eyebrows! – but there's no there there. In place of characters, we get attitudes. Sorry, that just doesn't cut it."

"Too bad Valerian himself is such a dud. Written as a kind of cocky intergalactic lothario, Valerian ought to be as sexy and charismatic as a young Han Solo, though Chronicle  star Dane DeHaan — so good in brooding-emo mode — seems incapable of playing the kind of aloof insouciance that made Harrison Ford so irresistible. Despite holding the rank of major, Valerian looks like an overgrown kid, overcompensating via an unconvincingly gruff faux Keanu Reeves accent (with the questionable dye job to match)."

"The cameo to end all cameos comes from Rihanna as a burlesque performer — complete with stripper pole — an appearance every bit as gratuitous as that sounds, bringing the movie to a grinding halt. 

"Not that there's really much momentum to stop. While the look is vibrant and the design imaginative, Besson undermines the action with the cheeky tone, which isn't clever or funny but does manage to rob the film of any semblance of jeopardy. The result is an exercise that simultaneously calls attention to how much the producers spent translating this vision to the screen and what a colossal waste that feels like."

Rihanna, Cara Delevingne smolder at the 'Valerian' premiere

Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets Review

21 Jul 2017

Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets

Luc Besson’s latest is something he’s been itching to make for more than 20 years. It’s based on comic strips that fired his imagination as a petit garçon (the Star Wars -influencing Valérian And Laureline , by Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières). It’s enabled him to let loose with digital techniques he wished he'd had back on The Fifth Element . And he’s made it on his own terms, free of any studio interference, despite the production’s whopping $180 million budget. In short, Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets is the most ambitious and colossally risky cinematic endeavour since James Cameron made Avatar .

The result is a breathless, boundless candy-neon pinball-machine theme-park freak-out so lacking in any sense of creative restraint that it makes most other space operas look shabby and timid. If you thought Jupiter Ascending was visually conservative and insufficiently bewildering, or that The Force Awakens would have been improved by a five-minute sequence in which Rihanna pole-dances as a shapeshifting prostitute, then Valerian is the movie for you. With jellyfish that eat memories, aquatic monsters the size of cathedrals and a bazaar so bizarre its exists simultaneously in different dimensions, it’s like Guardians Of The Galaxy might have turned out if James Gunn were a being made of pure mescaline.

So on one level, you have to applaud Besson. This is world-building where not even the sky is the limit and every frame is stuffed with mad-genius invention. It’s the oil on canvas to The Fifth Element ’s doodle on a beer mat. But what’s missing is… well… everything else. Story. Character. Coherence. A sense of pace, even.

Every frame is stuffed with mad-genius invention.

At two-and-a-quarter hours long, Valerian is a marathon run at a sprint. It's exhausting. During those rare, nano-moments where oh-so-pretty leads Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne slow down to talk and flirt, they communicate only in leaden cliché-ese. “My heart will belong to you and no-one else,” blahs Valerian; “You’re scared of commitment,” Laureline drones in response. Besson may be able to marshal the mighty forces of VFX to artfully craft any weirdo monster or spaceship his distended subconscious can squirt out, but he can't create any chemistry between these two. DeHaan, a damn fine actor who's best employed as the wan, moody outsider, is desperately miscast as the supposedly suave, jet-booted hero. Delevingne is given little more to do than pout, glower and punch Clive Owen repeatedly. There’s no sense of depth or history to this couple, no reason to care for either their mission or their ersatz romance.

As for the plot they have to propel, once you strip away all the shiny, greeble-covered cladding, it’s flimsier than a bottle rocket attempting re-entry. There’s a cute alien critter our heroes have to rescue from a place. Then they take it to another place, where aliens who look like supermodels want the cute critter back. That’s pretty much it, and yet somehow you still feel befuddled. Might be something to do with all those bubblegum-firing guns and phosphorescent butterflies and fat-bottomed frog monsters, and that bit where Delevingne wears the galaxy's biggest hat.

The sad truth is, once the giddy novelty of riding dodgems in Besson’s psychedelic space-carnival wanes, it all becomes quite grating (and watching it in eye-sandblasting 3D really doesn’t help). Almost enough to make you want to grab the nearest memory-eating jellyfish.

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Screen Rant

Is the accountant worth watching breaking down the ben affleck movie's reviews & rotten tomatoes scores.

The Accountant is one of the most popular films streaming on Netflix despite stirring controversy and dividing critics upon its initial 2016 release.

• The Accountant, starring Ben Affleck, is a divisive film with a 52% critical score but a 76% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.
• Critics are conflicted about the plot and portrayal of autism, but audiences praise Affleck's performance and original concept.
• Fans of Ben Affleck and mystery thrillers will find The Accountant intriguing, especially with a sequel on the horizon in 2025.

Ben Aflleck's 2016 movie The Accountant is currently trending on Netflix despite not receiving the greatest reviews. The action-crime conspiracy thriller stars the Academy Award-winning writer/director ( Good Will Hunting , Argo ) as Christian Wolff, a highly intelligent freelance accountant who also happens to be a math genius. Based on the premise alone, The Accountant appears to be a compelling and unique take on the action-thriller genre. However, by the end of The Accountant , critics were largely divided about the overall impact and quality of the Gavin O'Connor ( Warrior , The Way Back ) film .

The Accountant features an all-star cast led by Affleck, Oscar nominee Anna Kendrick ( Up in the Air ), Emmy nominee Jon Bernthal ( The Bear ), and Oscar winner J.K. Simmons ( Whiplash ). With The Accountant 2 confirmed to be directed by O'Connor and written by original screenwriter Bill Dubuque (creator of Ozark ) , The Accountant is a must-watch for people excited about the sequel's potential. The Accountant 2 began filming in March 2024 and is expected to be released sometime in 2025. Bernthal, Simmons, and Cynthia Addai-Robinson ( The Rings of Power ) are all confirmed to reprise their roles in The Accountant sequel.

The Accountant is available to stream exclusively on Netflix.

The Accountant Has A 52% Score From Critics On Rotten Tomatoes

The movie's rotten tomatoes audience score is 76%.

Audiences generally are not as concerned about the "messy" narrative as critics are and celebrate the original and intellectual concept of The Accountant.

The Accountant has received much more praise from audiences than it did from film critics upon its initial release. The action film earned a 76% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes while receiving just a 52% critical score upon its initial release. By comparison, The Accountant received nearly identical feedback on IMDb, with a user-generated IMDb rating of 7.3 and a Metascore of only 51 out of 100 . Many viewers applauded the film for combining some of the "genius" elements from Affleck's Oscar-winning film Good Will Hunting and combining it with a bonafide action concept such as John Wick or Kingsman .

Critics of The Accountant , on the other hand, are mostly conflicted about the convoluted plot despite a great performance from Affleck. Audiences generally are not as concerned about the "messy" narrative as critics are and celebrate the original and intellectual concept of The Accountant , which is also paired effectively with heavy doses of intense thrills and action. The star of the production is undoubtedly Affleck, whose performance proves how capable he is as the lead protagonist, even in a complex and nuanced character. The Accountant , however, did draw some controversy around Affleck's portrayal of a man with autism .

Ben Affleck's $155M Movie Sequel Just Got A Lot More Exciting

The accountant's reviews criticize its autism portrayal & thriller plot, but praise ben affleck's performance, ben affleck shines in the main role despite a convoluted plot.

Some critics were initially excited by the prospect of a sequel to The Accountant that could tie up the loose ends of the original film.

Both critics and audiences mostly agree that Affleck delivers one of the best performances of his career in The Accountant , which likely has a lot to do with the modern interest surrounding a sequel to The Accountant some 8 years after the original's release. Critic Donald Clarke of Irish Times said of The Accountant , " The dubious composition of Affleck's character leaves a foul taste in the mout h." Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times said The Accountant "i s so entertaining it's hard not to wonder if Warner Bros. has a sequel in the works. Wouldn't be a bad idea. "

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone expertly sums up the most pervasive criticism of The Accountant , " Affleck plays a math wiz whose position on the autism spectrum allegedly makes him a perfect assassin. That notion is offensive on so many levels, especially in the service of such low-grade crime fiction, that it's painful to watch. " Outside of this glaring critique, some critics were dissatisfied with The Accountant's unfulfilled plotlines and predictable twists . On the other hand, some critics such as Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian were excited by the prospect of a sequel that could tie up the loose ends of the original film.

Ben Affleck's Upcoming Sequel To $155M Movie Is Very Surprising Given A 41-Year Career Trend

The accountant is worth watching for fans of ben affleck & mystery thriller movies, the movie is also worth a watch ahead of the accountant 2.

Audiences have called The Accountant original and compelling, while critics are split on the film's overall impact and quality.

If the simultaneous praise and controversy surrounding Affleck's performance is not enough to pique a viewer's interest, then the announcement of The Accountant sequel should reaffirm the integrity of the film's concept. Audiences have called The Accountant original and compelling, while critics are split on the film's overall impact and quality. For those who are generally interested in action thrillers such as the Bourne movies, the Equalizer films, and the John Wick franchise , The Accountant is certainly within that wheelhouse. Fans of Affleck will also likely enjoy his performance in The Accountant and can determine any offenses or criticisms themselves.

The Accountant

Ben Affleck stars as Christian Wolff in the action thriller The Accountant, directed by Gavin O’Connor. A mathematical genius who connects more with his work than others, Christian freelances as a CPA for various criminal organizations to get by. However, when Christian starts to attract the unwanted attention of a Treasury agent, he attempts to go straight with a high-profile client – but his impeccable analytical skills uncover a financial discrepancy that dangerous people intend to keep hidden.