Valerian. Anyone seen it. (Open Spoilers)

Cafe Society
1

Given that this is tanking at the box office, I’m not surprised there isn’t a thread. I saw it the other day and actually liked it, though I admit it is deeply flawed and not for everyone.
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Things I liked:

The visuals. The thing was beautiful from start to finish. The colors were brilliant, which was a very pleasant change from the washed out colors in a lot of blockbuster movies. (Looking at you, MCU.) The alien designs were innovative and I liked that not every alien could survive in a humanoid environment. Overall trippy and different.

The main story wasn’t bad, and a nice change from the Dark Entity Who Wants To Destroy or Conquer Us All trope I was expecting. Of course the “It’s the humans who are the real monsters” isn’t the freshest rope in the world either, but I thought it worked here.

Laureline punching the evil general over and over again, just because.

Things I was ok with:

The dialog. I get that it is hokey and mannered and deliberately stiff, and that may be off putting to a lot of people, but I got a kick out of it. It reminded me of the dialog in Barbarella and other psychedelic movies.

Things I didn’t like:

Valerian himself was too much of a douche. I get the “Cocky young hero who really has a good heart” trope, but this just slid too far into douchiness sometimes.

The humor. Let’s just say the the French and I have very different senses of humor and leave it at that.

That long scene when the ogre creatures capture Laureline and Valerian has to go to a strip club to find a shapeshifter in order to rescue her. It was just completely unnecessary and dragged. The long scene with the Ogre king was just supposed to be… Slapstick? right? Just completely left me cold. They could have gone straight from Laureline finding Valerian’s crashed ship to the two of them going to the hidden Pearl sanctuary.

Also, if you are one of those people who complains about things in movies not being realistic and not even making sense within the movie’s own constraints, skip this movie. Don’t even walk near the theater. The thing makes no sense at all.

But overall I thought it was a good time.

2

I enjoyed it, but it was no The Fifth Element.

3

That’s a pretty high bar.

4

We gave it a solid 8 for the visuals, the fact that they accommodated various life forms in a variety of habitats, the overall fun, and one point for it being a Luc Besson movie. But the lead actors couldn’t act their way out of a wet paper bag, had no chemistry, and were carrying on through a relationship based primarily on workplace harassment.

It’s going to be carried by the foreign market, i imagine.

5

I overall liked it, which is a bit surprising, because my feelings about Besson are mixed. I thought Lucy was incredibly dumb, but visually interesting. ditto for Fifth element. In fact, the last SF film of his I liked was Le Dernier Combat back in the 1980s.

But Valerian is based on one of those Dargaud-published comics, which I generally like, and one that was undoubtedly a huge visual influence on Star Wars I hadn’t even heard of it until the last year – I sent for and avidly read some of it). the stories, which were serialized, unfolded episodically, so it didn’t bother me that the movie had that same “feel” to it. Unfortunately, sometimes that works to the film’s disadvantage:

This is an example of one of those episodes getting out of hand and taking too long. My wife pepper Mill felt the same way about it (she also took objection to Bubble/Rihanna’s repertoire of typical stripper/male fantasy images – cabaret dancer/sexy nurse/schoolgirl. would those clichés even have survived into the future?)Still, it gave them an excuse for some great dancing and CGI.

Besson’s updating of the comic worked well, and the visyals were, overall, stunning, but the story doesn’t completely hang together and satisfy. Pepper thought Valerian especially was “too young” for his role. In the comics, he is more ruggedly, square-jawed handsome ( https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/06/Valerian_and_Laureline.jpg ) .
And I want me one of those cute little alien pets

6

I took my son to see it yesterday, at his request. He liked it. I could have cheerfully napped through the entire thing.

Valerian and his partner were both waaaay too young for their advanced ranks and supposed skill sets. They looked like they ought to be starring in the latest High School Musical.

The thing made no sense from beginning to end, and there were so many plotholes it made a season of 24 look logical and coherent.

This movie is not a good way to spend your money or time, in my opinion.

7

Ain’t that the truth. I love Luc Besson. Fifth Element, Nikita, The Professional, Revolver, etc. But man was this thing a dog.

The visuals are stunning, indeed. I loved the space station building sequence, the interdimensional bazaar, and the looks of the various aliens. (I think there was a cameo of some Mondoshawans in there somewhere.)

But looking cool just isn’t enough. (I mean, The Phantom Menace is fucking gorgeous…with the volume turned off.) The dialog, pacing, and story of this whole thing was painfully awkward.

Dane DeHaan is just not really credible as an action hero. He looks like he’s 16. He spends the whole movie doing a terrible Keanu impression with every line. It’s not all his fault - the stuff he’s given to say is atrocious - but he needs about 10 years and 20 pounds on him if he’s going to be another Bruce Willis.

Cara Delevingne as Laureline is better. She’s actually got some comic timing and I actually empathized with her character. The one genuinely laugh-out-loud moment in the whole film is when we realize what the actual purpose of her gigantic white hat is - she pulls off the joke perfectly.

My main criticism of the whole thing is just how much I don’t give a shit. Who are these hippy flower children who get annihilated? Why is there a marmot that shits diamonds? (Seriously, the McGuffin could be literally anything in the universe, and you chose that to set off an adventure?) Why do I give a shit about Valerian and Laureline’s insipid, awkward courtship? And what are the stakes? If they fail, so what - hippy marmot-shitting planet is still destroyed. The survivors still survive on the station. We already know they’re not going to kill anybody on the station, so nobody is actually in any danger. The evil lying commander is going to be exposed - great! But at what cost to the heroes? Nothing, really. Except the cost of a pointless five minute argument about it.

I rate this movie one out of one shitgems. ������������

8

Fifth Element is dumb, but it knows it’s dumb. It’s hokey. Bruce Willis and Milla Jovovich pull off the balance perfectly. It combines a legit space opera adventure with wonderful visuals and humor. Valerian could have been similar, but its leads simply can’t pull it off, the story is a mess, and the script needed a lot of work from someone who speaks English natively.

9

I just saw the movie, it was not very good except the visuals. The acting & writing was weak and of course Rhianna was dreadful. Stop letting her act in movies please. It desperately needed to be shortened.

10

i saw it last weekend and more-or-less liked it. The visuals alone make it a very memorable film. The plot is as (in)credible as any sci-fi plot, and theme should resonate very well with a modern-day, European audience – a peace loving, isolated ethnic group and their environment is wiped out as the collateral damage of somebody else’s war. However, it does fall short of being a satisfying film, mainly because of the lack lustre acting, and the lack of chemistry between the two leads. Cara Deleveigne and Dane DeHaan come across as if they are posing rather than acting out every scene, and their “romance” seems more irritating than intriguing. In the scene with the ogre king, when she is walking down the “catwalk” to the ogre king, with a plate of (obviously cardboard) citrus fruit in her hands, Deleveigne does not even bother to act – it looks more like a fashion parade than a march of the condemned.

Since a lot of this film is obviously CGI, and the acting would be mostly against a green-screen, Jean-Luc Bresson would have done better to choose more seasoned actors than these two.

11

It put me to sleep. :smiley:

12

But you were still rooting for the protagonists?

13

I really love The Fifth Element, so I was looking forward to this. I saw it today and was underwhelmed. Cara Delevingne got a lot of criticism for her lack of acting skills, but I actually thought Dane DeHaan was even more poorly cast. He was just too mumbly and lacking in charisma for the role.

Edited to add, I did enjoy the origin story of the city of Alpha.

14

The word “Insipid” was coined with the knowledge that some day this movie would be made.

15

Audience member from foreign market here. Theatre was mostly empty last night.

As you say, the visuals were extraordinary. There was some real thought which went into each alien species. The underwater jellyfish/behemoth chase scene in particular was so, so awesome. And the scene where Laureline was going to be trepanned and have her brain consumed like an oyster was very clever.

Which made the balance of the movie a profound disappointment.

Valerian indeed came across as a creepy stalker, who decided to up the ante on getting into Laureline’s pants through an impromptu wedding proposal. Dane DeHaan’s Valerian was so snide that he could easily have ended up being the villain of the piece. I don’t think Cara Delevingne is a natural actress, but she is enough of an it-girl to keep getting roles for a while and she might learn the skills of the trade in the fullness of time.

The plot was fine. The real let down was the dialogue, which was plainly a re-hash of my 12 year old’s English essay, written in haste the night before it was due at school. Rihanna’s character, Bubble, had a death scene’ soliloquy that was spew-worthy.

Probably good for a re-cut by internet fans using a respectable script.

16

I thoroughly enjoyed it, although it could easily be cut by about half an hour… Pure, undepressing space opera, the Eeevil commander gets punished, love triumphs. Now, if only it had some IDEAS that knocked me on my ass — eg: REAL science-fiction, Warren Ellis, that kind of thing.

17

Welcome to the Dope!

How would you compare it to Fifth Element?

18

This movie disproves my hypothesis about Besson. I had believed that he was terrible at every aspect of directing except for casting, and that sometimes he cast a movie well enough that the actors could transcend his directing to make something good (or at least fun).

But by all accounts, the acting in this one was bad, which suggests that the actors were all wrong. But the cinematography, I’ve heard, was actually pretty good.

19

Cinematography was extraordinary.

With the casting, you get the feeling that the studio had their way.

20

I’m still just stunned at how badly Valerian was cast. I seriously can’t think of a worse miscast in a major movie. And I don’t just mean they should have cast a better actor. Jake Lloyd was terrible in Phantom Menace, but at least he looked the part. There’s a scene where Valerian explicitly describes himself, in apparent sincerity, as a square-jawed, dashing action hero. This guy?

Get the fuck out of here.