Valerian & The City Of A Thousand Planets
disclaimer: i am am, have been for 30 years, a fan of the original comic Valerian et Laureline
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valérian_et_Laureline
so expect my review to be as snotty and arrogant as those Game Of Thrones guys who "have read the books".
1. this isn't V&L. This is a "reimagining", reboot, or otherwise vaguely-inspired-by. the spaceship is the same, but that's about it. Also, not a single line of dialogue fits with the style of the books.
and, i mean, THEY COULD GET HIS NAME RIGHT.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYJFtq8kVy8 at the very start of the video, about 5 seconds in.
2. the characters don't have any chemistry
3. the actors don't have any chemistry
the visuals are pretty nice, but not amazing, most of the detail is lost to the eye. i guess if you have to pay for physical sets, you use them, but CGI is throwaway.
Cara Delevigne .. mama mia. I could watch her paint a wall and i wouldn't get bored. Dane DeHaan (the kid who plays Valerian) instead is an annoying kid that should be punched in the face repeatedly. figuratively of course. Also he speaks like Keanu Reeves as John Wick, but 17yo.
the 1960s/1970s SciFi style costumes looked cool, well, 40 years ago, today they look weird and frankly quite campy and fake.
Luc Besson's direction is, as usual, garbage. The man knows how to make happen these weird and unusual films, all props to him. But, that's it. He's a better producer than director. The actions scenes - which abound, as this is primarily an action film - all have the same quality and style as the traffic chase scene in Episode II.
Style is a weak point here. You may disagree, but what i see is a film partly trying to be serious, and partly being forced to used giant plastic helmets for its SWAT teams because "that was in the books". V&L actually got to be pretty f grim, with people who have had their skin rot away, a deluded villain ripping himself to shreds in a faulty machine, heroes being poisoned to death, treason, violence, risk, failure, drugs, poverty, with the occasional comic relief being represented by what, essentially, are the Ferengi, and just as vile under their cloak of comedy.
Style was what was innovative for the time. We had barely gone to the moon, nobody had ever heard of quantum anything, and Meziere's drawings were waaay more sombre than the average 1960s comic book, where androids looked like Robbie The Robot. These points of style could have easily been updated and that would have actually helped maintain the feel of the original books, but instead someone decided to go full-on retro camp while trying to do a serious action film with kids in it (albeit one of the kids is really hot; if you watch carefully during the monster-chases-truck scene, there's a nice butt shot of Cara).
Seriously tho Dane's voice is a joke.
The story, is, a thing happens on a planet kinda of like Avatar that kills everyone, and there is 1 small animal left that everyone needs because it poops useful stuff. Valerian and Laureline make a big fuss of their relationship. Ethan Hawke and Rhianna have a 20-minute sketch that reads like a commercial break, and leads into what basically is a voice-over cartoon. There's a fight scene which isn't half bad and it's the first time that i felt like something happened during the whole film, and then rhianna's character is killed off and we are back to the serious bits. The end scene .. is pretty cool. Clive Owen makes a good bad guy and the supporting actors steal the scene. There's a little of what made V&L great at the the end with Laureline whaling on the bad guy and some evil robots trying to kill stuff.
You won't miss much if you don't see it. On the other hand, you will miss much if you don't read the books. If you really want, you can do both.