Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets - E... (Pro)

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.

Valerian and Laureline are tasked with a routine mission to retrieve a last-of-its-kind a cute, dog-like animal that can duplicate matter. However, they soon discover that the converter is the key to a much larger conspiracy. A dark, unknown force is operating within Alpha, threatening its very existence. As the duo investigate, they uncover a cover-up surrounding the destruction of Mül and the true nature of the dark force, which turns out to be the desperate, surviving Pearls trying to reclaim their converter to restore their planet.

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However, on streaming platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets has found a second life. Sci-fi fans looking for something that isn’t Star Wars or Star Trek have discovered its unique charm. It is a film that rewards repeat viewings—not for the story, but for the background details. Every frame is packed with aliens, signage, and tech that you missed the first time. Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets - 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.

Cultural Impact and Reception Commercially and critically, Valerian divided audiences. Praised by some for its inventiveness and criticized by others for a perceived lack of narrative focus, the film has since been read as both a valiant modern riff on classic sci-fi comics and an example of spectacle exceeding story. Its ambitious attempt to bring European bande dessinée aesthetics to a Hollywood blockbuster register marks it as an interesting cross-cultural experiment, even if it does not always cohere dramatically.

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. In the summer of 2017, Luc Besson delivered

Besson‘s journey to making Valerian was long and arduous. He had originally considered adapting the comics in the 1990s, but the technology of the time was not advanced enough to realize his vision. Instead, he channeled his ideas into a smaller, more manageable project: the 1997 cult classic The Fifth Element , which itself bore many stylistic similarities to the Valerian universe. After two more decades of advancements in CGI and digital filmmaking, Besson finally felt the technology had caught up to his imagination.

To see how Valerian fits into Besson's filmmaking history, we can compare its production scale to his 1997 cult classic, The Fifth Element . The Fifth Element (1997) Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017) ~$90 Million ~$180 Million Primary Visual Style Cyberpunk, practical miniatures, stylized costumes Hyper-vibrant, heavy CGI, digital worldbuilding Core Theme Individual love saving the universe Anti-colonialism, military corruption, and co-existence VFX Shot Count ~250 shots Over 2,700 shots

This sequence—sometimes referred to by fans as the "E" for "Evolution" or "Exploration"—is a dazzling, nearly wordless ten minutes that accomplishes what the rest of the film struggles to achieve: it makes you fall in love with an idea. It flopped at the American box office, Critics

If there is one reason to watch Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets , it is the production design. Besson collaborated with the comic’s original artist, Jean-Claude Mézières, before his death, ensuring the film remained faithful to the source material’s aesthetic.

Despite its narrative flaws, the film is widely considered a cult masterpiece for pure world-building. It rejects the dark, gritty, and utilitarian aesthetic of modern sci-fi in favor of a bright, optimistic, and uninhibitedly creative universe.

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.

However, the emphasis on spectacle also exposes the film’s structural weaknesses. Frequent detours into visual novelty sometimes come at the expense of narrative economy; characters and subplots are introduced with visual flair but underdeveloped in terms of motivation or consequence. This imbalance produces a film that is often thrilling to watch but occasionally thin to think about.

The most famous and technically complex sequence in the film is the “Big Market” interdimensional chase. In this sequence, Valerian dons special goggles that allow him to see and interact with a bustling, crowded alien marketplace that exists in a parallel dimension from his own. This required meticulous planning, with Besson and his visual effects team from Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) mapping out every shot to seamlessly blend the physical set (a desert) with the fully digital market world. The scene is a masterclass in spatial storytelling and visual inventiveness, showcasing an immersive world that feels truly alive and alien.