While the leads struggle, the supporting cast soars. Clive Owen delivers a delightfully slimy performance as Commander Arun Filitt, the human leader with a dark secret. Ethan Hawke steals his entire scene as Jolly the Pimp, a flamboyant, frog-like alien running a shape-shifting cabaret club (featuring a memorable cameo by Rihanna as Bubble, a polymorphic entertainer). Rihanna’s dance sequence, where she shifts through ten different forms in two minutes, is genuinely breathtaking—a silent film-era performance within a CGI blockbuster.
The story follows two spatio-temporal agents, Valerian and Laureline, who are tasked with maintaining order throughout the universe. They are sent on a mission to the intergalactic city of Alpha, a massive space station known as the "City of a Thousand Planets."
Key Story Beats:
The narrative follows Major Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and Sergeant Laureline (Cara Delevingne), two operatives of the human government. They are a classic bickering-couple duo: Valerian is a charming but cocky womanizer desperate to marry Laureline, while Laureline is pragmatic, sharp, and perpetually annoyed by his advances.
The plot kicks off when a mysterious dark energy begins destroying sectors of Alpha. Valerian is sent on a retrieval mission to a forbidden zone to recover a rare creature—a converter that can replicate anything it eats. Meanwhile, Laureline uncovers a conspiracy involving missing ambassadors and a forgotten war crime. The duo eventually discovers that the threat to Alpha comes from the Pearls of Mul, a peaceful race that was nearly exterminated by a human commander years earlier. The “evil” ravaging Alpha is actually the Pearls trying to retrieve a last living converter to revive their homeworld.
It is a classic “the hunters become the protectors” arc, but Besson uses it to critique militarism and colonialism. The villains aren't aliens; they are human generals covering up a massacre.
Before Star Wars, before Dune, there was Valérian and Laureline. Created by Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières in 1967, the comic series ran for over four decades, influencing virtually every sci-fi creator who came after it. George Lucas has openly cited Mézières’s designs—specifically the bustling city-planets and worn-down spaceports—as direct inspirations for the Star Wars universe.
Luc Besson, a lifelong fan of the comics, spent nearly a decade trying to bring Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets to life. He famously stated that he wrote the script for The Fifth Element (1997) as a "warm-up" for Valerian, designing his earlier hit with similar hyper-stylized aesthetics. However, technology had to catch up. Besson waited until he believed CGI could render the kaleidoscopic universe of the comics faithfully without compromise. The result is a film that cost a staggering $180 million (making it the most expensive independent film ever made at the time) and features nearly 2,700 special effects shots.
If you are searching for Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets – Experience, the keyword here is visual fidelity. Besson, working with cinematographer Thierry Arbogast, created an aesthetic that feels like a living comic book.
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is not a perfect film. It is a flawed masterpiece of production design. If you watch it expecting Star Wars logic, you will be frustrated. But if you watch it as a sensory art piece — a gallery of impossible creatures, vibrant planets, and the boundless optimism of 1970s sci-fi — it is an unforgettable ride. Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets - E...
Verdict: Turn off your critical brain, turn your HDR brightness to maximum, and dive into Alpha. Just don't expect the romance to work.
Did you mean a different "E" (e.g., Ending, Evolution, or Extinction)? Let me know and I can tailor the write-up further!
Released in 2017 and directed by Luc Besson, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
is a divisive space opera that represents a significant "deep paper" case study in modern cinema for its extreme contrast between technical ambition and narrative execution. Core Thesis of Critical Analysis
Critics often describe the film as a visual masterpiece shackled by a weak script. The "deep paper" perspective on this film typically explores the following themes: Deep Focus: Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
Title: The Magnificent Failure: Why Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets Deserves a Second Look
Introduction: A Universe Built on Joy
In the summer of 2017, Luc Besson delivered Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, a film that arguably stands as the most expensive independent movie ever made. Funded by European equity and fueled by a lifetime of adoration for the French comic series Valérian and Laureline, Besson crafted a visual spectacle that was audacious in its scope and colorful in its execution. Yet, upon release, the film became a cautionary tale of blockbuster economics. It flopped at the American box office, Critics carped about the casting, and the narrative was dismissed as derivative.
However, time has a way of smoothing the edges of box office failures. Years later, removed from the hype cycle and the financial context, Valerian emerges not as a catastrophe, but as a fascinating artifact of pure, unadulterated imagination. It is a "magnificent failure"—a film that reaches for the stars, grasps them firmly in its visual design, but stumbles in the chemistry of its human elements. While the leads struggle, the supporting cast soars
The Visual Masterpiece: World-Building as Art
If Valerian succeeds at nothing else, it succeeds as a feat of world-building. In an era dominated by the desaturated palettes of the DC Extended Universe or the cookie-cutter aesthetics of greenscreen backlots, Besson turned Alpha (the city of the title) into a riot of color and creativity.
The opening montage alone—a wordless sequence set to David Bowie’s "Space Oddity," depicting the construction of a space station and the gradual handshake of humanity with alien species—is a masterclass in visual storytelling. It establishes a tone of utopian optimism that is refreshingly absent from modern dystopias.
The film’s pièce de résistance is the "Big Market" sequence. Here, Besson visualizes a concept that could only exist in cinema: a dimensional marketplace where tourists in a barren desert wear virtual reality headsets to shop in a bustling, futuristic bazaar existing in another dimension. The interplay between the tactile desert reality and the digital overlay creates a heist sequence that is innovative, confusing, and utterly exhilarating. It represents the peak of the film’s ambition: using CGI not just to blow things up, but to bend the rules of physics and perception.
The Mül Converters and the Weight of History
The film’s emotional core rests on the shoulders of the Mül, a pearlescent alien species whose destruction drives the plot. The prologue depicting their demise is visually stunning and unexpectedly heartbreaking, lending the film a moral weight that contrasts sharply with the breezy, quipping leads.
This backstory ties into the film’s deeper meta-narrative. Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières’ original comic, upon which the film is based, began in 1967. It is widely acknowledged that Star Wars borrowed heavily from the aesthetic of Valérian and Laureline. When Valerian the movie was released, critics called it a Star Wars rip-off, ignoring the irony that the progenitor was being accused of imitating the imitator. The film’s design—specifically the design of the Pearls and the spaceship—is a reclaiming of a sci-fi visual language that originated in French bande dessinée.
The Casting Conundrum: Where the Cracks Show
The elephant in the room, and the primary reason the film failed to connect with a broad audience, is the central pairing. Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne are talented performers, but they were miscast in roles that required the swashbuckling charm of a Han Solo or the wry competence of a Princess Leia. Did you mean a different "E" (e
DeHaan’s Valerian is pitched as a roguish lothario, but his performance feels overly youthful and intense, lacking the easy swagger the script demands. Delevingne’s Laureline is arguably the more compelling character—smarter, sharper, and more capable—but the chemistry between the two feels fraternal rather than romantic. Their bickering, meant to evoke classic screwball comedies, often comes across as petulant.
This disconnect creates a vacuum in the center of the film. The audience is asked to care deeply about their romance, yet the most magnetic presence in the movie is not the leads, but Rihanna, playing a shapeshifting entertainer named Bubble. Her performance, tragic and visually kinetic, highlights what the main duo lacked: genuine pathos.
A Legacy of Ambition
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is a flawed gem. It is a film that prioritizes the quantity of its planets over the depth of its protagonists. The plot meanders, the dialogue clunks, and the tone shifts jarringly between childish farce (the alien duck creatures) and colonialist allegory.
Yet, it is precisely these idiosyncrasies that make it worth a deep write-up. In a cinematic landscape dominated by franchises owned by corporations and steered by focus groups, Valerian is a singular vision. It is the work of a director spending a fortune to paint his dream on the biggest canvas possible. It is messy, excessive, and beautiful.
To watch Valerian is to witness a filmmaker who loves the medium of science fiction with a childlike intensity. It is a reminder that cinema should be about showing us things we have never seen before. For all its narrative shortcomings, Valerian shows us a thousand things we have never seen, and for that, it deserves to be remembered not as a flop, but as a beautiful, expensive, and utterly unique mistake.
No discussion of Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is complete without addressing the film's critics’ primary complaint: the leads. Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne are both talented actors, but their chemistry is often described as "sibling-like" rather than romantic. Valerian is supposed to be a Han Solo-esque rogue; DeHaan plays him as nervous and intense. Laureline is meant to be a fierce equal; Delevingne often looks bored.
Critics argued that the film needed older, more seasoned actors (some suggested a young Bruce Willis and Milla Jovovich, reprising their Fifth Element vibe). The age gap (DeHaan was 30, Delevingne 24) isn’t the issue; it is the energy. Besson’s dialogue—fast, quirky, and European—works best when delivered with a wink. DeHaan does not wink; he broods.
However, in recent years, viewers watching the film on streaming services have warmed to the pair. Removed from the hype and high expectations, the awkwardness becomes endearing. They feel like two coworkers forced to save the universe, which, narratively, they are.