VALERIAN AND THE CITY OF A THOUSAND PLANETS
French fancy
released OUT NOW! 2017 | 12 | Blu-ray (4K/3d/standard)/ dVd/download Director luc Besson Cast dane deHaan, Cara delevingne, Clive Owen, rihanna
It’s said George Lucas plundered the look of French comic strip Valérian Et Laureline for Star Wars. Now Luc Besson steals it back, returning to the kind of exquisite SF blow-out he hasn’t touched since The Fifth Element.
Make no mistake. This is a beautifully imagined screen experience, crammed to the edge of overkill with inventive alien species and alluring, candy-bright dreamscapes. It’s part videogame, part high-end fashion shoot. Cast into this hyper-real universe are Cara Delevingne and Dane DeHaan as a pair of space cops. She’s sparky and watchable; he’s indie kid quirky but lacks the charisma of a leading man. Lost among the visuals, DeHaan is even eclipsed by his co-star’s eyebrows.
Besson’s love of the source material is obvious. But while Valerian is relentlessly inventive it’s also, ultimately, oddly boring. With no real gravity to the story, the whole frantic, fantastic edifice floats past you, a treat for the peepers but not the soul.
Extras Documentary “Citizens Of Imagination: Creating The Universe Of Valerian” is strung together from various featurettes. But it’s a decent Making Of regardless, with input from original comic strip creators Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières. The Blu-ray adds “Enhancement Pods” (14 bitesized behind-the-scenes bits) and “The Art Of A Thousand Planets”, a gallery showcasing a cruelly limited selection of the movie’s design work. Nick Setchfield
There were 188 visual effects shots in The Fifth Element. Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets has 2734.