I was looking forward to Valerian. Not because I found it particularly appealing, but just because it is the unicorn of the modern film industry: a big-budget original movie. Yeah, it’s based on some old French comics, but that’s close enough to original in a year when I’ve seen the 8th Fast & Furious, 9th Planet of the Apes, 6th Spiderman, 5th Transformers, 8th Alien, etc. It is also a life-long passion project for director Luc Besson (who made The Professional, La Femme Nikita and The 5th Element), who has been trying to make this for decades. Given all that, I was bummed when it bombed at the box office (it bombed so badly that I had to go to the movies a day early this week because my local theater is pulling it this afternoon). Well, the good news is that I’m no longer bummed that the movie tanked. Because fuck this movie.
To be honest, I only have a vague notion of what this movie is about. I was zoning out pretty hard during this one. The main plot is the old Native American world (aliens being the fill-ins for Native Americans here) is ravaged by war from outsiders story. These aliens must then recover a pearl (I think) and a space dog that were taken from them because their ecosystem is oddly dependent on shaking magic pearls out of a space dog (I don’t write ‘em folks, I just report on them). So the main plot is the cliché Native American story but done in a sci-fi setting, because apparently nobody told the filmmakers that Avatar was already released a decade ago.
Beyond that basic idea, I have no fucking idea what’s happening for the majority of the film. I even forgot what the main plot was supposed to be because its only really mentioned at the beginning and end. The middle 14 hours or so of the film is a series of vignettes of the main characters meeting wacky people and doing weird shit, but nothing seems to have anything to do with anything. I completely forgot what the main characters were even supposed to be doing. It’s like they spent all their time designing this world and all its inhabitants, and then finally realized that they needed a fucking script so they threw in one of the most lazy, tired plots imaginable (again evoking Avatar). I went to the bathroom at what I thought was the halfway point of the film. An hour later, I again went to the bathroom and again it seemed to be at the halfway mark. Then the movie went on for what seemed like another nine hours. That’s what happens when a movie has no sense of plot structure; you can’t tell when you are nearing the end or what act you are in. After the film, my girlfriend (who was looking forward to this and was slumped down with a look of abject misery by the end of it) mentioned that the main action of the film takes place 30 years after the opening scenes. I didn’t even realize that any time had elapsed. This morning I asked her what the name of the main character was and she said his name is Valerian, you know, like the title of the fucking movie. That is how few fucks I gave during this film.
The film is also terribly miscast. Dane DeHaan (star of past cinematic gems like A Cure for Wellness and Amazing Spiderman 2) is supposed to be playing a badass cop or soldier or something. Problem is that I kept forgetting that he is a cop and kept thinking that he is just a kid tagging along because he looks like he is 16 fucking years old. I know he’s actually in his late twenties, but he looks like he isn’t old enough to shave. He has absolutely no gravitas or presence to him and the role should have gone to somebody that could actually pull off a grizzled hero (if this was made 20 years ago, it would have been Stallone or Bruce Willis). Cara Delevigne seems like a decent enough actress, but she is also too young for this part (and its distracting that her eyebrows seems to be larger than her face in some bizarre biological paradox). But after this and Suicide Squad, I am done with her. Rihanna is also in this for some reason. She plays a shape-shifting stripper (it’s PG-13, guys, so don’t bother) in one of the movie’s many diversions from the actual plot. Many people seem to enjoy her music, which isn’t exactly my cup of tea. But I think that we can all agree that she can’t fucking act. Watching Rihanna try to act is like watching Selena Gomez try to do anything; she’s fucking awful at it. There is not a single memorable actor or performance in this entire film. I felt like I had amnesia walking out of this movie, because I immediately struggled to remember a damn thing about it.
This whole thing is just sad. With the director’s love for this material, I expected this to at least be somewhat endearing, but it is just a soulless, boring experience that was one of the hardest movies for me to sit through this year because I just didn’t care. I didn’t care about the characters. I didn’t care about the plot, whatever it was. I just felt sad and wanted to go home. How anybody thought that spending $208 million dollars on this movie was a good idea, I have no clue. But at least I won’t have to endure a sequel.
Image By: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valerian_and_the_City_of_a_Thousand_Planets#/media/File:Valerian_and_the_City_of_a_Thousand_Planets.jpg
