Patreon Exclusive: Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets Movie Review

I'm thankful I didn't waste my money on this movie. After watching your review all what I thought would happen was confirmed.

Wow, I hadn't heard that one. Agree a story about the aliens introduced in the first scene meeting humans would make a good story.

DanikaXIX

The dickishness of Besson doesn't end there, I recently read him and Kathryn Bigelow had a court battle when he STOLE her story for Joan of Arc after he decided not to fund her original project. But that aside, I think the whole thing was very miscast and just not enough to do with the interesting aliens they introduced. I didn't mind the CGI at all for whatever reason, maybe because it did have vibrant colors and the world felt lived it... just we didn't get to see much of it.

Thought waiting 20 years for another 5th element might have been worth it. Not so much. Ouch Besson!

Luc Besson sucks at making SI-FI but you should definitely watch Le GRAND BLEU, NIKKITA and SUBWAY too, even just for Eric Serra music!

The visuals and the whole design of Alpha plus Rihanna's character in that were pretty much the only things I liked about it. It really sucked how they had Clive Owen playing as a ruthless asshole, I like Clive Owen.

I'm a sucker for campy movies and even though I agree with a lot of the criticism, I enjoyed the movie so much!

Mazzy

The actors were definitely dry with zero chemistry, but they also had terrible dialogue written for them. I'm not entirely convinced that better actors could have pulled it off, either. I rolled my eyes so many times at the words coming out of their mouths. I actually think this movie might have worked better if Besson had just focused on the city as the main character--it was the most well-developed and interesting part of the whole film. We could have just had a fun adventure with simple characters who were more like set dressing to the city as a whole instead of seeing a half-assed effort at character and relationship development.

Beatlejuice64

I normally don't watch your reviews til after the movie, but I don't really care about Valerian (Metabarons on the other hand...), and I enjoyed your review much more than I will probably enjoy Valerian. I love thoughtful dialogue and criticism! I also HATE when I ask for someone's opinion on a movie, and they shrug and just say "it was okay," or "good"/"bad." I'm like "really? You didn't have a single complex thought for the whole movie? WHAT about it was good or bad?" XD

I drink Valerian tea to help myself sleep. Just putting that out there...

I am very slightly bummed. I was really hoping this would turn out to be a good adaptation, but it seems to have turned out to be all style and no substance.

Chris Crowther

Man...that breaks my heart. I like Besson's movies but I love the Valerian graphic novels. On the upside, the graphic novels are still great. It's just Besson that is sucking.

Lol When T talks I just think Robot. I liked the movie but it wasn't perfect. Didn't know the source material. It was visually eye candy but the plot and love story wasn't that strong.