Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (August 2017)

Official Australian release date: 10/8/17. Viewed: 13/8/17.

Director: Luc Besson

Actors: Dane DeHaan, Cara Delevingne, Sam Spruell, Clive Owen

Genre: Sci-Fi / Action

Rating: M

‘Valerian & the City of a Thousand Planets’ is director Besson’s return to science fiction, after ‘The Fifth Element’ (classic – now 20 years ago!) and ‘Lucy’ – which this is thankfully better than. ‘Valerian’ obviously doesn’t quite live up to the bar set by ‘The Fifth Element’, and while it has a few similarities, it’s sufficiently different to be it’s own entity. I haven’t read any of the graphic novels, so I went in just expecting a big space adventure – and that’s pretty much what you get.

Valerian (DeHaan) and Laureline (Delevingne) are two agents in the galactic federation (sort-of in love – they have a fun chemistry) and are called on to protect the General (Spruell) and the Commander (Owen) of Alpha, which is the so-called “City of a Thousand Planets”. The start of the film – set to Bowie, always a plus – does a great job of introducing how Alpha came about and what it stands for, and letting us know that we’re ~700 years in the future – as well as making the titles go by faster! We’re also introduced to the ‘Avatar’-like species from Mül, who link in to the plot later on.

There’s not really a whole lot you need to know, and it’s a bit ‘Star Wars’-lite at times, but there’s certainly plenty of aliens, robots and action scenes to see. A few odd cameos (Ethan Hawke, Rutger Hauer, Rihanna as a pole-dancer!?), but it’s really all about Valerian and Laureline trying to save the space station. While not really having anything groundbreaking or revolutionary, ‘Valerian’ has moments of humour, some great action scenes, plenty of colour and is an above average film.

Overall: Enjoyable, fun sci-fi adventure.

Gav's Rating: 3.5 stars.