---

Shortly after the video camera was invented special effects started to make its way into movies. The early director everyone likes to talk about is George Melies who used his background as a magician to pioneer special effects in the early 1900s. In most film studies class he is a go to for discussing mise-en-scène (whatever is in the frame). His works aren’t full of symbolism like the German expressionism movement or famous directors like Orsen Wells, but they are such a pure expression of what a movie can be visually that he is considered to be one of the greats. His studio would even go so far as to hand paint film prints to give it color. Impressing people visually was his pure goal. In Japan this kind of special effects driven film making was given the term “tokusatsu” which is largely associated with movies like Gojira and Super Sentai’s “suitmation”, movies where an actor in a large suit destroys models, but refers to any special effect driven movie. After 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Wars (both influenced by tokusatsu) this type of movie was thrust into the mainstream sphere. There were smaller niche movies like Z.P.G. and Logan’s Run that tried to create this kind of wholistic world but the idea of a massive budget visual spectacular wasn’t quite understood until Star Wars’s massive success. There’s moments where Star Wars feels vast but it hasn’t kept that feeling as time has moved on, especially when compared to more niche works at the time in comics and animation.

A big problem with live action special effects is needing to make the special effects parts fit within the real world components, models have to be painstakingly crafted and framed in a way to make it seem like the Death Star is the size of a “small moon”. Comics and animation don’t have the same problem since the characters and the world can fit together relatively easily, allowing works like Nausica, Angel’s Egg, and Mobeious’s comics which presents world that are unmistakably unique. Jim Henson was able to create similar works with puppets such as Dark Crystal and Dinosaurs that show worlds with vastly different rules in a sort of live action setting. It wasn’t until 3D CGI in the early 2000 when movies could finally make entire worlds come to life effectively. George Lucas infamously tried to make this kind of movie with the prequel trilogy, but failed to direct the actors and write a decent plot, so after some critical praise the movies became harshly criticized and are completely dismissed. There’s numerous movies that have tried to strike this iron, all with various degrees of success but it wasn’t until Cameron’s Avatar that we quite got the visual feast we hungered for. Unfortunately the world lacks a lot of variety and gets repetitive visually, we’re also nearing the end of the movie’s “visual lifetime”. Because computer graphics jumps forward so much every 5 years CGI has a horrible shelf life and movies that are praised for their realism inevitably become harder to watch and take seriously. So when a movie manages to be visually impressive it has to be enjoyed immediately or it will sour.

Enter Valerian

There is not a single movie that captures the comic book-esque science fiction like Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. There’s so many unique designs, characters, creatures, tech, etc. nearly every minute of this movie is unlike anything else ever made while simultaneously completely different from itself 15 mins ago. I haven’t seen anything that is such a pure visual treat. There are entire areas that appear for a minuets with enough style to be a major set. There’s tech that is used only a couple times and could be a little story into itself. All the nice little details that could create a rich world that come from compressing a massive work into a movie. Besson has said in interviews that there’s over 60 major alien races that all have bios, but that’s the extent of how much Valerian explores what it has, it’s bursting with flashy objects and has little to say about what it presents.

Unfortunately after visuals there’s nothing positive to say about Valerian. The plot is really boring and without all the unique designs it would be an absolute failure as a thriller. There’s no real driving force in the movie, there’s a goal but it never feels important since the main plot quickly gets side tracked into saving the main characters (who we know won’t die because the comic ran for 51 years) for half of the movie. There’s nothing really thematically engaging about the movie. There is a message, but it only really exists in the first and last 30 mins and it’s pretty much the same as Avatar but with less impact and argues against the direction of the movie.

The main message is that even things that just seem beautiful have a higher moral value that should be protected. In Avatar this is shown thru unobtanium, a substance of immense value but is an important part of the Navi culture; and, just like in Avatar, Valerian shows this by a creature that can generate limitless wealth being important to the Mul’s culture. However while Humans vs Navi was the central conflict for the entire movie and was the main character’s arc, ending with a massive war as emotional payoff, Valerian’s conflict unfolds pretty much entirely in the last 30 mins, with a disturbingly similar plot. The rest of the movie consists of rapid fire beautiful imagery but there’s nothing deeper to appreciate or respect about the movie. They’re just goofy scenes with a lame action hero.

Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element did manage to do something similar, where the plot is just a thin excuse for some interesting set pieces, but it worked because Leeloo was such an intriguing character and the wild world of the humans is used as a self-justification for why earth should be protected. Fifth Element also had really enjoyable characters and comedy, so the movie stayed engaging even when the plot wasn’t moving forward. Valerian tries to have comedic moments, but the main characters are so bad and fail to deliver any laughs.

This is where details of the production history start to make way too much sense. Luc Besson has wanted to make a Valerian movie for years, even during the production of The Fifth Element, but put it off because it wasn’t technologically feasible. Then after seeing Avatar he realized it was possible to make Valerian now, so he threw away his old Valerian script and made a new one. This explains why Valerian has the body of Avatar and seems like a shallow version of Fifth Element. Fifth Element had to put more focus into its cast and the fun little details of the world to make up for its overall simplicity, and while Valerian is a very detailed world it feels so much less real because of the way the characters interact with it. It seems like Fifth Element captured what Besson wanted to do in a sci-fi epic adventure with a crazy comic book world and then Avatar reshaped that. So now we’re left with a movie that has twice as much flashy eye candy as Avatar but with hardly any of the heart we’d expect after Fifth Element.

So, should you watch Valerian? Yes. A hundred times yes. Right now. It’s amazing how much this movie accomplishes visually while only costing 200 million. That’s still an absurd amount of money, but it proves there’s no excuse for a Hollywood budget movie not having a set at the level of Valerian. At the very least watch until Valerian arrives on the city. That contains the best action, most impressive sets, and best use of future tech. After those 40ish mins everything falls apart, but you can imagine what could’ve been, and it’s beautiful.