When Luc Besson released Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets in 2017, it wasn't just another summer blockbuster; it was the culmination of a lifelong dream. Based on the influential French comic series Valérian and Laureline by Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières—the same source material that inspired Star Wars —the film is a breathtaking, messy, and utterly unique piece of cinema. The Visual Spectacle of Alpha
For years, Besson harbored the desire to adapt the property but found himself bottlenecked by the limitations of practical effects. It wasn't until James Cameron released Avatar in 2009 that Besson realized computer-generated imagery had finally evolved enough to properly depict the complex alien biomes of the source material. Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets - E...
In one of the film's most celebrated sequences, Valerian must retrieve the converter from a "big market"—a parallel dimension accessible only through a special visor. In this realm, agents can walk through walls, grab objects from other realities, and navigate a crowded market that exists in a different plane of existence. It is a three-minute sequence that contains more creativity than entire trilogies. When Luc Besson released Valerian and the City
In the pantheon of 21st-century science fiction cinema, few films have dared to be as visually audacious, colorfully bizarre, or genuinely ambitious as Luc Besson’s 2017 adaptation of the classic French comic series, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets . While the film received mixed reviews upon its release, focusing heavily on its lead actors’ chemistry, time has been surprisingly kind to Besson’s magnum opus. To discuss Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets today is to discuss a work of art that prioritizes world-building over plot, imagination over restraint, and spectacle over subtlety. It wasn't until James Cameron released Avatar in