By Jonathan Klotz
| Published
It’s easy to forget that for every sci-fi blockbuster like The Fifth Element and Interstellar, far more films flop and become punchlines, and yet, sometimes, all it takes for a flop to become a hit is the passage of time. The Star Wars prequels, once hated, are now considered classics; John Carter is a lost masterpiece, and Star Trek: Nemesis is still horrible because not everything gets redeemed, but by now, it’s safe to say that Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is a bonafide sci-fi cult classic. Though it played in front of empty theaters in 2017, the film has been a consistent top performer on streaming, making another multi-day appearance in the Max top ten.
Break Free Of Monochromatic Sci-Fi
Valerian is a very different type of sci-fi movie that fully embraces the wild and wonderful side of the future, bringing to life Alpha, a massive city filled with thousands of different species and with easy to different dimensions spread throughout space and time. Valerian (Dane DeHaan, most well known now as the annoying Military Officer Kenneth Nichols in Oppenheimer) and Lauraline (Cara Delevingne) are partners in the United Human Federation police when they get caught up in a conspiracy around the eradication of the plant, Mul. Along the way, there are betrayals, John Goodman voicing the galaxy’s most wanted criminal, and in the best casting of all time, Rutger Hauer as the President.
Valerian and Lauraline’s adventure takes them through exotic locations that manage to look gorgeous and awe-inspiring, proving that sci-fi doesn’t have to be confined to a spaceship or a facsimile of Earth and can instead be truly alien. If there’s one thing the movie does right and has contributed to its recent success, it’s that director Luc Besson, the same mad genius behind The Fifth Element, understood how to make a visual spectacle. Then again, while the visuals are imaginative and unlike anything from the last decade, the film was still a flop at the box office, and the complete lack of chemistry between Dane and Cara is a large reason why.
Miscast Leads
Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne have both given great performances, but together, the pair have less chemistry than Channing Tatum and Mila Kunis did in Jupiter Ascending, another sci-fi flop that’s waiting its turn to be re-evaluated. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets succeeds in spite of the two leads on the sheer power of the visual spectacle, and you don’t even have to wait long, the opening sequence explaining how Alpha came to be does a fantastic job at establishing the right tone and explaining the high-concept setting.
Luc Besson was the perfect director for the job of adapting the French comic Valerian and Laureline, thanks to his past work on the high-concept films The Fifth Element and Lucy. Both of those films embrace the strange side of sci-fi, especially the final act of Lucy, but neither one compares to the bombast of firefight miles above the surface of an alien world on top of energy platforms or the frequent shots that show the true scale and wonder of Alpha. Stay for the visionary spectacle and cringe through the dialogue.
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is now streaming on Max.
