VALERIAN
Luc Besson is back, bringing a classic French comic strip to the screen in VALERIAN AND THE CITY OF A THOUSAND PLANETS, Europe’s biggest sci-fi film ever. Nick Setchfield sets the controls for the inside of his head
The director of The Fifth
Element is back in outer space. We open hailing frequencies to Monsieur Luc Besson.
LUC BESSON FELL IN LOVE AT THE AGE OF 10, WITH A girl and a universe. neither were real. “at the time you have to remember that there is no internet,” he tells SFX, remembering the impact of Valerian And Laureline, the dazzlesome french comic strip that he’s bringing to the screen after a lifetime of infatuation. “we don’t have a tv. My stepfather doesn’t like music so we don’t have music. the magazine i had every tuesday was the only gate, the only door, to another world.” the creation of Jean-claude Mézières and Pierre christin, Valerian And Laureline debuted in anthology magazine Pilote, recounting the adventures of a pair of spatio-temporal agents. an intricately imagined, cosmos-straddling space opera, it was a weekly dose of head fuel for the kid who would one day become the visionary helmer of The Fifth Element and Lucy. “i wait seven days to get two more pages. i would come back home, finish my homework, clean my table, open the magazine very carefully and then drink in the entire thing. laureline, she’s gorgeous. i fall in love. and they were buddies, a boy and a girl, who travel through time and space. it’s just wonderful. You get totally addicted to it, then wait a week to get two more pages.”
They are buddies who travel through time and space. It’s just wonderful. You get addicted to it
Besson may have struggled with that killer seven-day wait but it’s taken an eternity to wrestle the strip’s sprawling universe into movie form. at first the director felt daunted by the sheer, mind-melting scale of it all. it was, he thought, completely unfilmable. “Jean-claude Mézières worked on The Fifth
Element,” Besson recalls. “he was the one who said to me, ‘why are you doing this stupid Fifth
Element thing? why don’t you do Valerian? You told me you like it!’ and i said, ‘Jean-claude, i love it, but we cannot make it. You have like three characters and 2000 aliens. it’s too big. it’s impossible.’
“a few years later i read it again, and i said, ‘okay, maybe one day the techniques will be there. let’s see if we can make a script.’ and then Avatar makes everything possible, because James cameron arrived with this new generation of technology. today, imagination is the only limit. You can do whatever you want now. so now you can make Valerian.” Avatar told him to dream bigger, dream harder. “i took my first script and i literally threw it in the garbage,” Besson shares. But when SFX asks if he feels caught in a creative arms race, chasing the freshest, flashiest visuals, Besson stresses there’s nothing but solidarity between himself and his brothers-in-blockbusters. “Jim [cameron] invited me on the set of Avatar. he gave me advice on this film. he’s a sweetheart. steven [spielberg] invited me on the set of Jurassic Park. he shared everything. i’ve had dinner with Peter Jackson a few times. these guys are not fighting at all. it’s the reverse. they appreciate it. they say, ‘oh my god, there is a new guy who has some guts – welcome to the club!’ in reality there is no competition, because the films are so unique.”
City of stars
central to the movie’s ambition is the titular city of a thousand planets. Known as alpha, it’s the cornerstone of the universe, a cosmic metropolis facing a dire threat to its centuries of peace and prosperity. this exponentially expanding hub has 17 million inhabitants, drawn from across the stars. Besson was determined to nail down this world, to know it in granular detail, even if only a fraction of that information ended up on screen. fat production bibles dissected alpha’s extra-terrestrial specimens.
“there are almost 100 aliens and we have 10 pages per alien, where they’re coming from, what they eat, how they reproduce, what their specialities are, the address where they live. You can go on the internet to a map of the sky and you will see where they live, because it’s a real address. we did 15 pages of the life of every
character, where valerian and laureline were born, the parents, the military school, everything. when we started rehearsals i gave the actors all these pages and said, ‘here’s the bible of the space station, here are all the aliens, and here is your life. now you have to learn everything and i’m going to ask you questions next week!’ and i did.
“they felt like they were at school,” Besson continues. “‘oh my god, i have to learn something!’ i said, ‘You’re cops. You have to know your background. You’re going to meet some aliens during the film and i want you to know who you’re going to meet, because if you meet someone friendly, you’re going to smile, but if this guy’s a fucker you’re going to put your hands on your gun, ready to go. i don’t want me as a director to tell you. You need to know who you’re dealing with.”
Boning up in the name of intergalactic lawkeeping were The Amazing Spider-Man 2’s Dane Dehaan and British fashion model and actress cara Delevingne, cast as valerian and
When it comes to European sci-fi, it’s in our DNA to be more lyric or more colourful
laureline. But how do you go about casting characters that have been in your head for almost 50 years?
“first of all you have to know your characters very well,” Besson offers. “i know valerian and laureline by heart, since i’m 10 years old. when i see an actor or an actress i can tell you if they’re close or not, just physically. You don’t even need to meet the people, you see their pictures, and you know whether it works or not.
“when i met Dane, we sat down at the table, and just his voice was great. he has blue eyes and he smiled at me, and i knew he was the one after 10 seconds. i knew. and i started to fear – oh my god, if he doesn’t like it, i’m in the shit because i won’t be able to get his face out of my head now. cara has less experience and i spent more time with her, just to make sure she was real. there are so many things said about her that you get lost. You say, ‘who is this girl, exactly? are you real? Do you really want to do this job?’ i was amazed by her, in fact. she’s misunderstood. You watch the film and you say, ‘okay, she’s an actress, no question.’”
Besson didn’t just need to honour his own imagination. he wanted to respect the founding imaginations of Mézières and christin, too. “i want them to be happy,” he tells SFX. “i want them to endorse the thing. so i was very careful to be loyal to the
characters. valerian is really valerian, the way they think of him, and laureline too. i didn’t betray the characters at all. and they were super-happy with the script and the shooting. they know it’s an adaptation but they feel respected.”
frENCH kiss
Just like its source material, Valerian And The
City Of A Thousand Planets is ultimately, says Besson, a profoundly european slice of sci-fi.
“Most of the time when you watch the Marvel and Dc movies, it’s almost propaganda, showing how america is great again. there’s always a superman or a super-Bat, a supersomething, who’s going to help make america great. Because the country is amazing and young. europe is really old, so we start with all the great writers and painters. even in the 12th, 13th or 14th centuries you can see painters with crazy ideas. and then you have Dali, Picasso coming in with cubism, all these guys. when it comes to sci-fi, it’s in our Dna to be more lyric or more colourful. Maybe that’s the difference. we don’t try to rule the world [laughs]. we want to explore it.”
Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets is out on 2 August.