#anyway. i love LOVE teh motion inside the comic

[crashbarrier]

Everything that is wrong with “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets” that shouldn’t be

This is cross posted from my LJ, so is a little “behind” on date -  (and yes i forgot Tumblr is a blog - duh!)  Anyway, context.. I went to see Valerian at teh cinema because  it’s one of those films that my partner and I recognise as being a ‘Cinematic visual masterpiece’.  Which should be seen on the big screen. Although we went for 3D rather than IMAX because it didn’t seem to need the IMAX touch – though maybe we should have gone to IMAX because the focus was totally off on the 3D and we have issues with “Ghosting” and the occasional tearing of the image.. which was just weird - but not enough to give me motion sickness. but I digress.

Beware here be spoiler and ranting

Basic Premise of the story – (note this is a very cursory overview), we have a brief overview of earth going into space and becoming a hub of space commerce, the international space station grows and grows to become a port of call for intergalactic travelers. Eventually it becomes too big, threatening the planet (I guess it’s because it could plummet to the earth and create a disaster on a level that would wipe out the planet) so it is pushed into space. And by the 28th century (earth time?) it has carried on traveling but has grown has been is re named “Alpha” and is the “The city of a thousand planets” a hub of knowledge and mostly co-operating cultures (it’s a little like Zootopia the city) . .

Cut to a planet Mul (pronounced Mewl) where we see a peaceful idyll enjoyed by a race of what look to be aquatic based life forms (that, strangely enough, look a lot like the Maasai of Africa if they lived on a beach) who are living their daily life, doing their thing, harvesting pearls (which contain huge amounts of energy), and then using these weird little lizard creatures (Mul converters) to create more pearls and return them back to the planet, in what seems to be a form of sacrificial offering (sacrifice as in offering dumped into a pool of water). When suddenly the skies darken and death starts to rain from above. Large pieces of space ship being to drop into the atmosphere and hit the ground. In panic and curiosity the people investigate one of the large pieces and find a spaceship, they climb inside and shut the door to protect themselves. In doing so the handle falls off so the door cannot be opened. Trapped inside they are unable to open the door for their princess who is trapped outside while a wall of fiery death is approaching. They watch their princess die as the wall of fire approaches… in her death the princess releases a flash of light (which is her soul) which flashes out into space and….

… Seems to hit our titular character (Major) Valerian (Dane DeHaan) who is R&Ring on a holo-beach simulation based on his ship. Which he shares with his subordinate (Sergeant) Laureline (Cara Delevingne). Valerian and Laureline are agents of a galactic wide military organisation, they appear to answer directly to a governmental office within the planetary government. Contacted by the Minister of Defense they are sent on a mission to retrieve a stolen “converter” which is being sold in a black market deal in a universal market. Cue a heist movie? Where they grab back the stolen merchandise which is one of the little creatures from Mul which they take to the space station Alpha to return to the Galactic Federation via Commander Arun Filitt (Clive Owen) . Valerian and Laureline are then assigned as bodyguards to the Commander while he has possession of the “converter”.

During a meeting of the space station’s council, they are attacked by a previously “unknown” group of people who incapacitate the people and kidnap Commander Filitt. Valerian chases the perpetrators into an area of the space station that is currently registered as a dangerously radioactive area. And after “misc adventures” himself and Laureline discover that the survivors of Mul are living there and creating a way to re-create their now dead world. The Commander (who inadvertently destroyed their world by ordering a devastating attack on an enemy they were fighting in a war that ended up next to Mul) is seeking to cover his actions (as he was warned the planet had non-primitive lifeforms on it but chose to use devastating weaponry on the enemy and so triggering the rain of death that killed Mul) of effectively perpetrating war crimes. By wiping out the only witnesses – the Pearls. It turns out the pearl that Valerian picked up during the deal gone wrong for the converter and the Mul Converter are needed to create the power needed to create a facsimile of the planet Mul on a space craft that is going to be launched into space. Cue fighting and stalling and craziness culminating in the launch of the Mul Pearl ship, the reveal of the Commander’s complicity in the destruction of the planet Mul, the death of several security and command staff of Alpha and the capture of the Commander. Leaving Valerian and Laureline in space in an old International Space Station pod awaiting pick up by their organisation/or space ship Alex. With the two seemingly solidifying their relationship???

The only initial comment I have for this movie is that it is half a good movie. In the same way that the Live action movie of Avatar the last air bender (’The Last Airbender’) was half a good movie. Visually it is amazing, no expense has been spared to reproduce the universe created by the original comics. But unfortunately the same level of detail has not been spent on the script, which is sloppy and lacklustre, the editing which spends a long time lingering on the effects heavy scenes, and the acting.. Which lacks any form of charisma what so ever.

I realise that this might put you off watching this movie but visually it is amazing. And if you have a subscription or something it is worth seeing it on the large screen just for the “Space” alone. Unfortunately I suspect once it loses the enormity of the screen, and the depth of the 3D, like Avatar the Cameron movie, it will look a little like a collection of cut scenes from a computer game because unlike The 5th Element it lacks the charisma and pacing of story which makes the movie cohesive.

The main over all glaring complaint I have is the so called “love” story that takes place between Valerian and Laureline, because it has no love it in what so ever. There is no on stream chemistry between the two. Their interactions are on a level with two people who know each other but aren’t really attracted to each other. To be honest that could have been cut out and you would not miss it at all. Plus the ‘character’ of Valerian is totally un-empathic. He is 2dimensional, appears to be a serial womaniser, he makes no emotional connection to his paramours collects them as a “playlist” and the to make it more off, it appears that he they are his subordinates so he uses his position of privilege to “seduce” his female Professional Military Subordinates into a physical relationship……. So.. sexual coercion by a superior to a subordinate???

As a viewer of the movie I found it extremely hard to empathise and follow/side with this character He epitomised absolutely everything wrong with a white male privileged lead character. He is also a complete mystery as to his motivations he appears to be a reckless Maverick who gets the job done but forgets things like innocent bystanders and collateral damage, however he then starts to spout rhetoric about following the rules and being on point for the galactic federation?? On one hand he’s “I am unable to open up and let people in” but then proposes marriage to the Sergeant for no good reason than “I like you because I can’t have you”.. infact throughout the whole movie the only truly meaningful relationship he has is with Bubble, the exotic (truly exotic) dancer alien who he abducts?? To use in a dangerous mission to rescue?? Laureline.

Laureline is an equally schizophrenic character.. on one hand the epitome of the “strong female lead, functional practical and thinking, yet on the other hand she seems to somehow “fall in love” with this serial womanizer for no other reason than he keeps pestering her. Everything that I thought we have ditched in lead female characters over the last 10 years is revealed here.. She does a lot of the leg work but is overshadowed by the male lead. She is “strong” and “opinionated” but “falls in love??? with the shallow lead character” I assume because, al-la Disney princesses, he has pursued her to the end of the movie and not taken NO! As an answer (danger-danger Will Robinson….Danger! - in the real world this could be stalking???) she is the only character who actually knows what is going on, but is mostly ignored by the lead character except as an object of sexual pursuit (indeed, even the professional strike team at the market spend a lot of time giving her the puppy eyes rather than acting in a professional manner). Laureline’s sole purpose it appears, is to be artificially thrust into dangerous situations so the male lead will “rescue” her and be a “hero”. She is side-lined, ignored and backburnered until needed by the narrative to look “pretty” and be rescued. Indeed she spends a lot of her time in revealing, outfits that seem to only gain coverage when she needs to do stunts.. (I will note that while I can understand that she is, largely living in controlled environments which mean that clothing to keep warm is not necessarily a thing, she is a professional military agent on duty.. so I would have thought even a vaguely “professional” level of attire would be a thing, and possibly putting on even a uniform jacket when speaking to the Superior might be a thing.. - again there is the possibility that the organisation she works for has a hiring policy similar to that in ‘Barbarella’ but even so, it just felt off. )

I have to say that the level of Misogyny in this movie is spectacular. Indeed it was like watching a film from the 1980’s – 90’s but without the filter of “it is from a different time where this is acceptable”. All of the main important characters are male (although they are a diverse set of male characters) what females you see on screen appear to be there for the visual diversity alone – case and point. The team are on Alpha receiving orders from the Minster of Defense. The minister addresses the group as Gentleman an Lady (singular – referring to Laureline) however there is a female aide stood with the crowd …so it is “ladies” the aide is completely and utterly ignored (yes this could be an error on the part of the director setting up the scene after the dialogue had been created but still!).. in fact this same aide character is present in the command room throughout the film and has little to no reason to be there she is ignored, and never really acknowledged. All the real, meaty action stuff is done by the male characters. A wonderful example of the “token female presence- there to lend visual diversity but little more than set dressing” - when all the action kicks off and the robot shocktroops mow down the command centre, the female aide takes cover with the coms officer?? (he may have just been a lieutenant) the commander shouts across the room to get to a console in the centre of the room, the Commander (whose name i have forgotten) never once addresses the female officer, or even acknowledges her existence to find out if she is okay.. as far as the scene shows she could just be a piece of the office furniture.  

Laureline “falling” for Valerian due to his faithful ‘pursuit’  is just painful to watch. She spends the whole film ignoring his come-ons, being sarcastic and rebuffing his advances then at the end.. falls into a clinch with him for no good reason than it’s the end of the movie and this is what should happen :o .. There is absolutely no chemistry between these two characters at all through out the movie, except for snark and rebuttal. The only level of relationship implied at early on is officer and subordinate, which no real attraction shown by the subordinate to the officer. The conversations are short and flat, with no outcome that would indicate a reason for them to be together at the end. 

Indeed you could re-edit the movie and remove any and all references to this supposed romance and you would never know it was there..over all it is just completely distracting and superfluous to the main story..

Now I have to explain.. I don’t normally notice Mysogyny, i have always self-identified with the protagonists (usually Male) so i seriously do not notice female side-kicks and/or characters as anything other than story devices (literally ambulatory plot progressive device -  Its a by product of growing up on a diet of action movies from the 80’s/90’s) but for even the idea of Mysogyny to trigger my stunted and tiny Mysogny radar then there has to be somethign wrogn with this plot.. 

I mean the fact that such a character as Laureline, could be created and placed on screen in today’s cinematic world,  just flabbergasts me.. given the degrees of complaint put forward of 2 dimensional female characters, of sexual objectification, etc.. This woman, who is a professional, military level, security agent spends the whole movie being hit on by her superior officer, and pretty much any male character she meets. It is just astounding. Even the exotic dancer/prostitute character Bubble has an easier time of it than Laureline. It is writing like this that is fundamentally dangerous because it give impressionable males and females the idea that as a male if you have an object of your desire then you pursue them until they capitulate and say “yes” (which isn’t a proper yes, it’s a coerced yes) they they “will be yours”... 

Simultaneously impressing upon females that if a guy pursues you for a long time, and does not take no for an answer, that even though you show no interest in them what so ever,  then you should capitulate (presumably as a reward for persistence rather than any real emotional connection) this type of relationship advice is so very dangerous. And is very much on par with Mr Grey from 50 shades of grey… (you know creepy stalker dude who pursues an reluctant woman until she gives in etc). 

Now you could say I am reading too much into what could be thought of as a shallow piece of fluff, but seriously if I am picking up on these vibes then there is something fundamentally wrong with the writing and characterisation. Because I do not identify with female characters and as such never truly see the whole White Male Privilege thing unless it is pointed out.

The film itself is bloated.. it reminds me of “Star Trek: The Motion Picture”, or even the cityscapes from the live action “Ghost in the Shell” (Funnily enough another movie that employs Weta for effects???), we spend so much time effects-wanking. Pouring over effects lovingly created with a multiplicitude of levels and detail… that we give up Story time so background that could have been used to flesh out the story as a whole is dumped for lovingly detailed fly-bys of the various places we are in. 

A good example being ‘Alpha’, where we are treated to a visual extravagansa of all of the various habitats (which reminded me so much of Zootopia), along with an N’th degree description of the people and environments they live in which takes about 5 full minutes. which was largely pointless because we only see maybe 3 environs, which could have been introduced via various pieces of dialogue while characters  transitioned the space station etc. I mean look at Disney’s Zootopia -  they give you the gist very quickly as Judy travels into the city via a train ride, no messing and takes probably 30 seconds to a minute..  or better still,  compare that with the Guardians of the Galaxy description of Knowhere which is a bare bones voice over by Gamora complimented with a little on screen text.. less than a minute possibly 2 if you take into account the “parking the ship fly-past” ..the description is clean perfunctory and combined with the visuals tells you the viewer everything you need to know for the scene. We don’t need to see all the habitats and living areas to know they are there and it actually does nothing for the scene, especially as later on Valerian goes on an exploratory crash through every layer and habitat to get to the people who kidnap the Commander.  Visually informing us the viewer of the differing levels of the space station (crashing through things appears to be a thing Valerian does a lot) in a very direct and interactive way.

Over all the film suffers the same problem that the Live-action “Ghost in the shell” has, it has a bunch of iconic scenes lovingly reproduced from the source material. However this is at the expense of the story and characterisation. It could be that Luc Besson is so overly familiar with the source material that he has forgotten that you can’t take the character at face value because you have no baseline for his character. I as a person who has never read the source material come to Valerian as depicted on the screen and find him totally reprehensible. He is arrogant, womanising, shallow and wholly unattractive as a possible love interest. He doesn’t care and forms no attachment at a fundamental level, his former entanglements being “affectionately” known as his “play-list” this is not a character that I can get behind. Especially as the actors choice in depicting the character is cold, smug and arrogant, why would I care about that person. why should I want to follow this person through their adventure?  - I will note that now I have taken some time to look into the character’s background and found that he is this way because of his training and past life experiences. But there is no signals to this on screen so why do I care about this character. I don’t. His singular pursuit of Laureline is reprehensible to me, not only because he is in creepy stalker mode, but  because she’s his subordinate in a position of hierarchy.  And no matter how “strong” she is, she is in a position where,  because of the chain of command, she is psychologically placed in a position where you do not say no to a superior officer. (This is why this sort of thing is strictly and explicitly covered by regulation in the armed services) now if she had genuinely returned any sign of affection during the movie then I would get it, but she doesn’t. But he pursues her relentlessly throughout.

Compare this with Peter Quill in Guardian of the Galaxy – a comparable character, you are shown his mother’s death, his age at which this happened and when he was abducted, removed from his family and home environment and raised in a male centric bachelor environment this is imparted over the course of a pre-credit cold opening followed by his pre-theft of the orb from Morag and his complete dismissal of his current sexual conquest who he openly admits that he “forgot she was there”.. he makes no emotional attachments (especially to women) because he is scared they will leave him. He has grown up in an environment of bachelor hierarchy where emotions and feelings are not entertained and an aura of bravado and machismo must be maintained to keep one’s standing in the pecking order. So his background is given to us, over the course of two story advancing scenes which do not slow down the pacing.. but tell us exactly what and who Peter Quill is and why he is.. With Valerian all you get is a passing comment that sets up that he is a Major in an vaguely military level organisation, and that he has had a series of female companions (mostly his direct subordinates) who he uses and looses. You are also treated to scenes of him being a maverick and reckless in his performance of his duties, but - much later on contrary to everything that has happened in the story to date he suddenly becomes fanatically devoted to his organisation’s cause??? a little character quirk that is hinted at nowhere in the preceding movie and literally makes you go ...”Wait.. what now!”  

The script could have done with passing through a few other people who may be aware of the source material but not enough to allow that to colour their view of the story.. they could then fill in these missing areas and create a story.. rather than a collection of errant scenes, and characters rather than meat puppets delivering lines to make the scenes look active. The film is unwieldy and top-heavy relying on visual over substance. It expositions when it should be quiet it is quiet when it should be expositioning. You could cut at least 45 minutes of the movie out of it and you would not even notice that stuff was missing. 

Also.. the continual hat tipping to the 5th Element, really only needs to be done once...  We know that you used the artist from Valerian to design the world of the 5th Element.  and the continuous little tips just keep reminding you that out or the two, the 5th Element is the better movie, with it’s tight story line, snappy dialogue and effects that are used to inform advance the plot. Not just be there to look at (don’t get me wrong it was ground-breaking in the terms of effects at the time and still stands out as an amazing movie)

I find it amazing that you can create a movie where the main character could be removed from the movie and it would improve the movie. There is almost no reason for the main character to be there front and centre. They are written so flat they are at best a supporting character. The aliens are amazing.. the Pearls of Mul have a fascinating story which was covered in a perfunctory way as exposition but actually that could have been the story to concentrate on.. Following them trying to survive and get back some semblance of a society. Perhaps have Valerian and Laureline as background characters dropping into and out of the scenes??? Just having the film called “City of a Thousand Planets” would have been fine I think.

It does sound like I actively despise this movie. But actually I don’t I quite enjoyed it on a light entertainment level. I think it could do with a clean-up, and re-edit. Perhaps trim some of the lingering effects shots, streamline the dialogue and re-edit round the so-called relationship between the two main characters because that is a pointless side plot in this “adventure”. I am worried however that like Avatar, it won’t hold up to transfer to 2D format, that there is not enough story there to keep you interested without the spectacle that is 3D. It will be interesting to see if this movie gets anywhere.