Movies: Valerian And The City Of Thousands Planets

(Drivebycuriosity) - France is famous for having an excellent taste and for producing refined food, fashion, perfumes and other luxury. But the country also can create solid popcorn cinema a`la Hollywood. This is the merit of Luc Besson. The French movie mogul directed block busters like  "Nikita", "The Fifth Element", "Léon: The Professional"& "Lucy" and he produced a legion of action packed fun movies.

Besson`s newest creation - "Valerian And The City Of Thousands Planets" - is
now in the US cinema theaters (imdb). The movie creator took a big bet. "Valerian" is the most expensive independent film ever made. France`s Spielberg independently crowd-sourced and personally funded Valerian with a production budget between $177–209 million (wikipedia).

It seems that most of the money went into special effects. The movie is certainly a feast for the eyes. I didn´t care much about the plot (you can find a synopsis here wikipedia). "Valerian" is fantasy and not science fiction - there is not much science and logic in it.  The movie - based on a French comic book series  - is as much science fiction as "Alice in Wonderland".  But I enjoyed the film anyway. "Valerian" looked fresh thanks to the amusing cockiness of Cara Delevingne & Dane DeHaan who`s  funny adventures as special agents are the backbone of the movie. I also enjoyed Rihanna in the role of the shape shifting creature Bubble.

"Valerian" is state of the art and shows the evolution of computer generated action movie spectacles -  and you could see influences of "Star Wars", "Avatar" & Besson’s own “The Fifth Element".  His team created fascinating fairy tale landscapes & scenarios and I enjoyed the legion of hilarious computer generated aliens and other figures.

Unfortunately for Besson`s bet, it seems that "Valerian" flopped at the US box offices. The film doesn`t cater to the pseudo religious ambition of the Star Wars cult and the duo Delevingne &  DeHaan does not deliver the bromance of the typical American action movie. But it is a lot of fun to watch the film anyway.