Director Luc Besson
Starring Dane DeHaan, Cara Delevingne, Clive Owen
Rated M
Score 4.5/6

A dark force threatens Alpha, a vast metropolis and home to species from a thousand planets. Special operatives Valerian and Laureline must race to identify the marauding menace and safeguard not just Alpha, but the future of the universe.

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, is based on the French Comic book series Valérian et Laureline and was created by Pierre Christin Jean-Claude Mézières and was first published in 1967. For those of you who might interested Besson independently crowd-sourced and personally funded Valerian. With a production budget of around $180 million, it is both the most expensive non-American and independent film ever made. Though Valerian went on to be a flop at the box office it will be interesting to see if this will be given a sequel.

Visually Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is a visually amazing movie the only Besson movie that could come close to be compared to Valerian is The Fifth Element. This is an interesting movie and is certainly worth watching. I thought that the whole concept of the Alpha station as a possible future of the International space station was very interesting. Comparisons could easily between this and television shows such as Star Trek Deep Space 9 and Babylon 5.
There was an interesting cast including a few people that I wouldn’t have expected to see in a science fiction movie such as Clive Owen and Rhianna (it was good to see her cast in a movie that did not have such a tenuous link to its source material). Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne seemed to work well opposite each other as Valerian and Laureline , some of the conversations the two characters had made me believe that the though Dehaan’s portrayal came across as being a little odd given that he sounded exactly like Keanu Reeves’ Johnny Utah from Point Break. I also enjoyed Ethan Hawk’s performance as Jolly the Pimp.