Assignment 17 - Anna Baskin

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

This movie should have been a sci-fi nerd’s dreamland, complete with action, romance, technology, aliens, aliens, and more aliens. It should have been a paragon of geekiness, a nerdtopia of special effects. It should have elicited the strange nostalgia of watching good, formulaic science fiction, while also blowing our minds and exciting our imaginations. On paper, Valerian did all these things, checked all the geeky boxes, met all the nerdy requirements … it just didn’t do more.

To start, the good: the special effects. There’s no one alive who could discount the simple beauty of the strange and wondrous alien planets – from beaches to ships to markets. Every frame of the movie looks like a million bucks. You can see where the $170 million budget went, actually. The creativity involved with building these worlds and this technology is beyond commendable, not to mention the unique creatures within them. Honestly, it only took a few moments to completely validate the movie for me – the multidimensional tourist market, for one, as well as the chase scene though the different environments of Alpha. Here you can see the love and attention animators and writers poured into this world.

If only the dialogue was given the same care. While the movie sci-fi aspects reach high marks, any attempt at emotional appeal is immediately stifled by the trite and trying dialogue. As one character lays dying, Valerian pleads (with his strangely deep yet prepubescent voice), “Tell me what to do.” The dying alien responds: “Nothing you can do. Anyways, where I’m from, life is more painful than death.” Cringe. Should someone tell the screen writers to stop taking their dialogue from middle school fanfiction? Whether it’s the poor writing or the poor execution, the big moments of the movie – the moral dilemmas, the romances, the reunions – are all ruined whenever the actors open their mouth.

Put the movie on mute and you have a cinematic masterpiece. Turn the volume on and it’s… meh. Overall Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is fun, interesting and nostalgic. Just don’t expect anything too deep and you won’t be disappointed.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/user/id/977106012/ratings