BEFORE: I have something of a rocky relationship with this film already, and I've never even seen it. Obviously I avoided it when it was in movie theaters in 2017, because it looked kind of stupid. Maybe it was the trailer, maybe a TV ad, something just seemed kind of hokey and off? When that happens, I've found it better to avoid a film and wait for some reviews or for somebody I trust to be talking about it. I think it was on Netflix for a bit, but now I'm not sure - I certainly avoided it again if it came on premium cable. But it's funny how my attitude can change when I realize a certain film is needed to make a critical connection, so my chain will get me to the end of the year.
So I set out to watch this one - like, how bad could it really be, in the end? It's certainly worth two hours of my time if THIS is the thing that will connect my chains, and without it, I'm stuck. So I'd been planning to watch the Academy screener, when the time came around. Then came the pandemic shutdown, and though I grabbed 6 or 7 screeners to get me through the first month of the lockdown, I figured that by September (when this film was planned, before the last chain turn-around) the pandemic would surely be over, and I'd be back in that studio and could just grab the screener to borrow. Great plan, except I still haven't been back to that studio, and now I don't know if I'll ever be going back there.
No worries, I'll just check to see which streaming services are currently showing this - hmm, that's odd, not on Netflix but Google says it's on Hulu. No problem, but then when I signed on to Hulu, it wasn't there. It must have recently been taken down from there, and Google's search engine just hasn't updated yet. Sure, I could watch it on iTunes, but that's $3.99 I'd rather not spend - what if the movie totally sucks, what if I was right about this film all along? I noticed two nights ago that while I was watching another movie on cable, this was airing on Syfy Channel - ah, there you go, that explains why it disappeared from the other streaming services, maybe. I couldn't record it on my DVR because it was already half over - so I ended up watching it on Syfy.com, unfortunately with ad breaks, but hey, I saved $3.99 that way. Free is better, that way if the movie's terrible I won't have buyer's remorse.
John Goodman carries over from "Matinee" - Wait, what? What the hell is he doing in this sci-fi movie? Apparently he provides the voice of some character, probably a CGI one. Or so I've been led to believe by the credits on IMDB.
THE PLOT: 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.
AFTER: This film opens with a montage of astronauts from different countries meeting each other in space, linking up spaceships or meeting up at the International Space Station. The next (il-)logical step is first contact with an alien race, and then a succession of alien races, with a succession of Earth's representatives shaking hands with progressively weirder alien species, welcoming each to some kind of Earth-based Federation of Planets. It's a nice thought, and I hope someday it comes true, or something like it does, but I'm not optimistic about it. Because we're human, and you just know we're going to screw that up. Right? People say that when they make a mistake - "Well, I'm only human!" To be human is to be able to fail, to fall short in some manner because of the limitations of being human, having needs or emotions or weaknesses.
First of all, if we do meet an alien race, what are the chances that they won't want to eat us, we won't want to eat them, one race doesn't get poisoned by what the other race breathes out, or one race gets some weird invisible virus from shaking hands with the other one? What if one race is very big and the other one is tiny by comparison? Or they see or hear by different methods, and are unable to communicate? You see an opportunity for universal peace, but all I see are the new races we're going to develop prejudices against, because again, we're only human.
But let's follow the logic this film presents, as each alien race is welcomed into the fold, they're given a new section of the space station, sort of like an alien embassy in orbit around Earth, and eventually after a few hundred years, the size and scope of that ever-increasing space station becomes a threat to the safety of the planet itself. See, I told you we'd screw this up somehow. So it's decided that the space station should be sent off on its own, to explore the galaxy and find go be self-sufficient somewhere else - because that's sure to end well, right? I suppose this does help solve the overpopulation problem on Earth, it takes a few million people out of the equation. And I guess it was always our destiny to explore the stars, I just didn't see it going down like this. NITPICK POINT: If the space station is so big, and has such a great mass, how the heck does it reach escape velocity? Seems impossible, but hey, it's the future so they must have worked something out.
After a slight detour in the story, where we see a bunch of spaceships falling on an alien world and killing a lot of aliens, we catch up with Major Valerian and Sergeant Laureline, who are tasked with tracking down a criminal named Igon Siruss (he's the one who sounds like John Goodman) and taking some kind of energy converter from him. But first off, it's a little unclear whether that alien race really died, or if that was just a dream that Valerian had. Don't worry, the plot will circle back to that later - much later. Valerian and Laureline have this sort of will-they or won't-they relationship in addition to their military partnership, and I guess that was supposed to be cute or something, but I just found it annoying.
They team up with some other soldiers and track Igon down in the middle of some place called Big Market, which is a giant, multi-layered shopping mall in another dimension. This is where the film started to go off the rails for me, because, well, why is this in another dimension, why can't it just be a large mall in real space? And are the shoppers really visiting another dimension, because this seems more like a virtual reality simulation - how are they transported, and how do they come back with merchandise from the other dimension? Is this really the most efficient shopping method in the future? How are they moving around a 3-D space in the other dimension, while they're moving around a 2-D space in the real world? Wouldn't the shoppers just keep bumping into each other? Valerian at one point falls "down" several levels in the other dimension, but what happened to his body in the 2-D space?
This was all very confusing and made no sense, but it made me realize that the science wasn't important here, what seemed to be more important was the visuals, the look of the scene. In that sense, it started to remind me of "The Fifth Element", a film that looked great, but had a story that I just couldn't understand, or even remember. Then I paused the film and checked the IMDB page - yup, the director here is Luc Besson, who also directed "The Fifth Element". That explained a lot, suddenly I didn't expect much of anything to make sense, because that director is known for putting visuals first, above all else.
After a number of technical problems with their weaponry and the dimensional matter converter, they manage to escape, only Igon sends this giant alien beast after them that kills all the soldiers - but thankfully Valerian and Laureline survive, or I guess we wouldn't have the rest of the movie. They bring this matter converter (which is a small alien creature that poops out copies of whatever you feed it) to Alpha, aka the City of a Thousand Planets, aka that space station that was forced to leave Earth a few hundred years before, only it's grown much bigger since then. Thankfully Valerian and Laureline watch a video that explains everything about the space station/city, which is weird because they must have been there before, so why would they need to learn about it again?
They report to the Commander, who informs them that the station is in trouble, there's a section of the city that is filled with deadly radiation, nobody knows what's causing it, and troops sent to this part of the city have not returned. Then during a summit to dismiss the crisis, there's an alien attack and the summit is invaded, everyone gets covered in some kind of stasis goo and the Commander is kidnapped. Valerian races through the space station to try and prevent the aliens from flying away in their ship, but he's too late. Following after them in his ship only leads to him crashing in the toxic zone, outside of radio communications. Of course.
NITPICK POINT: In order to catch up with the aliens, Valerian dons a protective suit and goes crashing through walls, depending on his suit and thrusters to carry him through a number of different alien environments - some that look like oceans, some that are rocky terrain, and so on. But doesn't crashing though all of these walls end up endangering the different environments? If there's an undersea section of Alpha city, wouldn't poking a Valerian-shaped hole in the wall cause the water to leak out? What about different gases or creatures in each environment, wouldn't barreling through 10 different worlds in a straight line like this cause all kinds of cross-contamination or other damage to the different parts of the city? Is there a system in place to plug up all the holes in the walls that he made, just to be on the safe side? This is why a giant city made up of a thousand different sections representing different worlds would be a terrible idea.
It's around this time I really found my mind wandering, because the storyline was doing a fair amount of wandering itself. Laureline finds a way to track Valerian down, but it involves three weird aliens who instruct her to go fishing with another weird dude to catch a telepathic jellyfish, which she wears on her head to communicate with the unconscious Valerian, just to figure out where he is. Why is everything so damn weird and complicated in the future? Then when she does find him, she gets kidnapped by some other weird aliens, and Valerian has to track down a shape-shifter in a strip club just to rescue HER. Does anybody remember what the original mission was at this point? Finding the Commander, solving the mystery of the toxic zone on the space station?
NITPICK POINT: Similar to the last N.P. - Valerian rescues Laureline from those weird primitive aliens (Boulan Bathor?) and kills a bunch of them in the process. How is that legal? There they were, these weird aliens doing their weird alien rituals, and a human comes in and just slaughters a bunch of them, how is that OK? Who decided that humans would be in charge, anyway? How arrogant of us in the future to think that human lives matter more than alien lives, and there are no repercussions from killing a bunch of aliens. Alien lives matter, right?
Anyway, eventually they learn who's been invading Alpha, and it's got a lot to do with that vision/dream that Valerian had way back at the start of the film. Bottom line, there was a planet with an alien race on it, and humans acted like total dicks. Then someone tried to cover up his mistake, which of course made things worse. Then even when given the chance to come clean and admit his wrongdoing, this politician couldn't do that, his ego won't allow it. Wait a second, all this is starting to feel a bit familiar. Let's see, politician makes a mistake, people die, he won't admit it, he blames everybody else, and when finally called on the carpet for his crime, says "It is what it is..." Yeah, that checks out. I guess nothing changes, even in the future.
I also have bad news for feminism - even 500 years from now, according to this film, not much has changed. Notice that the male lead is a major, and the female lead is a sergeant? And all the generals in the film are male, too. What, a woman can't be a general? She's always going to have a lower rank than the men? And the name of the comic book this film is based on is "Valerian and Laureline" - but where's Laureline's name in the title of this movie? How come the CITY gets to be in the title, but not her? I thought they were equal partners, but I guess he's more equal than she is? This is not a good sign for their will-they or won't-they relationship. Cut him loose, Laureline, he's not worth it. The future of the human race is mostly Caucasuan, too, there's only one human of color in the cast, playing the Defence Minister, the rest of the cast is very white. (Rihanna doesn't count, because her character is an alien stripper. But note that the white woman gets to be in the military, but the black woman can only be a stripper.). Then there's that alien race that's got extremely pale skin, and also every member of that race is like supermodel-thin. There's racism, sexism and size-ism in every corner of this movie, it seems.
Really, I'm surprised that there would be so much racism in a film made by a French director - but maybe I shouldn't be. Sometimes the French can be just as racist as Americans, remember a few years ago when the French didn't like all the Muslim refugees that had taken up residence in France? Sure, there are some Muslim terrorists, but that's no reason to be racist toward all Muslim people. I just remember that there was an outfit that some Muslim women were wearing on the beaches in France, and it was a variation of the burkah, known by the portmanteau word "burkini". In 2009, a Muslim woman in France was banned from a public pool for wearing a burkini, allegedly there was a French law forbidding people from swimming in street clothes, but come on, that's some anti-Muslim racism there for sure.
For many reasons, this story is quite a mess. However, it supports my theory that if human should ever encounter races from other planets, we're going to put ourselves in charge of everything, and there will probably be some alien races that we're going to treat horribly - that's just human nature. So I'm going to try to be a little lenient with my scoring for that reason alone. Plus, in a year full of weird movies, this one may go down as the absolute weirdest - don't say I didn't warn you.
Also starring Dane DeHaan, Cara Delevingne (last seen in "Pan"), Clive Owen (last seen in "King Arthur"), Rihanna (last seen in "Ocean's 8"), Ethan Hawke (last seen in "Lord of War"), Herbie Hancock, Kris Wu (last seen in "xXx: Return of Xander Cage"), Sam Spruell (last seen in "Outlaw King"), Alain Chabat (last heard in "Ice Age: Continental Drift"), Rutger Hauer (last seen in "The Sisters Brothers"), Peter Hudson (last seen in "Jackie"), Xavier Giannoli, Louis Leterrier, Eric Rochant, Benoit Jacquot, Olivier Megaton, Gerard Krawczzyk, Sasha Luss, Aymeline Valade, Pauline Hoarau, Ola Rapace (last seen in "Skyfall"), Gavin Drea, Eric Lampaert (last seen in "Moonwalkers"), Mathieu Kassovitz, Sam Douglas, Claire Tran (last seen in "Lucy"), Sand Van Roy, Alexandre Willaume (last seen in "Tomb Raider"), Reginal Kudiwu, Jonas Bloquet, and the voices of Elizabeth Debicki (last seen in "The Cloverfield Paradox"), Thom Findlay, Barbara Scaff.
RATING: 4 out of 10 ex-girlfriends on Valerian's "playlist"
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