Valerian Borrows,
Seeks In Moral Tales
Seeks In Moral Tales
Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets
France 2017 Directed by Luc Besson
UK cinema release print.
Valerian
And The City Of A Thousand Planets is based on the famous French comic
strip Valerian And Laureline and stars the always interesting Dane
DeHaan as Valerian and Cara Delevingne as Laureline. And there’s my first little problem with this movie right there... the strip
is called Valerian And Laureline because they are both equal
characters with Laureline often saving the day and rescuing her ‘male
headed’ partner. Her role is in no way diminished in this movie and they
are pretty much joint protagonists in this one so... why the heck has
the girl’s name been left out of the title? What the heck is going on
here?
So, anyway,
Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets is the latest movie from Luc
Besson and, when I first heard he was taking on this project it didn’t
set me to cheering, I have to admit. I used to love the films of Luc
Besson... I remember seeing Nikita five weeks in a row at the Lumiere
cinema, as it was in the day, in St. Martin’s Lane near Covent Garden
when I was studying for my degree... I would probably have gone more if it had played
longer than it did there. Nowadays however, I tend to see him more as a
bit of a hit and miss director. He gave us some of the best French movies going
but, somehow he lost his way and, for me, the first chinks in the armour
were when he made his other big sci-fi opus, The Fifth Element. That
could have been a really great movie but he made the mistake of having
this truly irritating character played by Chris Tucker which made the
movie practically unwatchable in places so... yeah... wasn’t too sure
about that and nowadays I prefer him as a producer than a director,
truth be told. Out of his more recent directing work, for every great
movie like Angel-A and The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec
(reviewed here), you also get good looking but ultimately vacant junk
like Lucy (reviewed here) so... I wasn’t holding my breath with this
one, to be sure.
As it
happens, Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets is a pretty good
sci-fi movie... and although it’s been shot in English, it does have a
very 1960s French feel to it... kinda like the movie version of
Barbarella but without the sex (to a certain extent... it’s a 12A over
here). It’s beautifully shot, well acted and really nice to look at. A
fun romp and one which I was hugely entertained by although, I have to
admit, I’m not too sure if I could ever sit through it again. I’ll get to
why in a minute.
The
film starts off fairly strongly with a montage of the history of a space
station, starting off in 1975 and working its way to the far future which uses a bunch of human/alien
handshake scenes to establish how the ‘City Of A Thousand Planets’ came
into being and all set to David Bowie’s awesome second version (the
version which became a hit) of Space Oddity. Now, I have to say that
this sequence kept me on the absolute edge of my seat... not because of
anything that happens but because of what I was expecting to happen. All
these alien handshakes at the start set me up to expect the good old
“Arghhh. It’s pointing its finger pistols at us... kill them first.” gag
which is a bit of an old one, to be fair but, no, nothing like this happens and so I
was teetering on my seat for no reason. This is followed by a
long introductory scene set on an alien planet called Mul which is
pretty cool and which, this time, did go exactly as I was expecting
because, in cinematic terms, why spend so long setting up an idyllic and
peaceful race of beautiful aliens without following it up quickly with disaster
striking with a bang at the end of the sequence? Without giving too much
away, when the bang comes a certain kind of ‘shockwave’ (I’m being
deliberately cryptic here because I don’t want to post any spoilers)
catapults Valerian and Laureline into the movie length adventure. And
that’s as much as I am giving away of the plot.
The
film is fun to watch and has some nice concepts. The two leads are both
excellent and the chemistry between them is good in that they work well
together. That being said, it does kind of highlight a big problem with
the film which, again, I’ll get to that in a minute. There are also some excellent
performances and a lot of cameos too by actors such as Clive Owen,
Rutger Haur, Rihanna and Ethan Hawke. The special effects all work well
and the movie has a really well written and complex score by Alexandre
Desplat. My understanding is that this is the score he had to leave Star Wars - Rogue One (reviewed here) for when he was required to 're-compose' for the version
incorporating all the re-shoots (I wonder if we’ll ever get to hear what
he did for that original cut sometime in the future). It’s a good, audio glue
for the film and, though it does get into the broad stroke, ‘comedy
scoring’ style for certain sequences, it’s still quite subtle in places,
despite this element and I have to say he does a really good job with
it here.
Okay, so let
me tell you why the film is probably not going to get me back for
another sitting and where I think it’s problem areas are.
Problem
area number one... although there are some nice but incredibly old,
seen-it-all-before, hard science fiction concepts in the movie, it never
once seems to have any kind of surprises up its sleeves. Even the main
‘twist villain’ (and I use the term loosely here) is easy to spot the
first time that the character comes on screen and, all the way through,
you are just left wondering when the heck the penny is going to drop for
the rest of the characters. So, while this film does have a certain
‘wow-factor’ in the beauty of its visual effects and the way some of the
shots are put together, there’s nothing really outstanding or ‘next
level’ in concept in the story. Maybe it’s because the comic has been
around for 50 years now (at time of me writing this, it was first
published in 1967) and so I’m pretty sure a lot of the things on show
here have been cribbed by many movie makers over the years. Like the
excellent John Carter movie (reviewed here), it’s probably been
plundered so all the unique things about it nowadays make it look like
it’s copying from other things. This film would have gone down really
well in the late 1960s or early 1970s though, I can tell you.
The
other thing is, as good as Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne are together
here and as emotive as the ‘beautiful aliens’ element of the story
is... it’s a surprisingly emotionless experience, to be honest. It’s not that I
didn’t care about the characters (well maybe not much at all but I was
at least on their side), it’s more like the direction is just so
clinical and spectacular that the director just forgot to put a huge
dollop of emotional warmth in it... or at least didn’t really highlight
it as much as it was needed here. So even with Desplat’s stunning score,
the movie really doesn’t match the emotional heights of something like,
say, the new version of Wonder Woman (which I reviewed here). Which
means I’m not invested enough in the characters as they are portrayed
here to really get into things with them again. So no repeat business from me on this one, I’m sad to say.
However,
I would recommend it as being an entertaining watch for the first time
around and if you want to make the most of the stunning photography,
then probably it’s something you should see at the cinema. An excellent
time filler for people who like science fiction (especially if they
liked Besson’s The Fifth Element) but I don’t think it will be
everyone’s cup of tea, truth be told. Definitely worth a ‘first look’
though... not to mention a first listen.
No comments:
Post a Comment