I went to see it on opening night. It was so loving bad I was actually cringing in my seat. The actors are terrible. The guy talks like Christian Bale's Batman and the girl is really irritating and bitchy. Meanwhile the romance is kinda forgetin creepy. This weird-ass 14 year old-looking dude with the worlds most unfitting voice keeps hitting on his (honestly not that attractive) coworker and asking to 'add her to the playlist' or something. Super-douchey and irritating. There's literally a scene where he goes to a loving stripclub while his partner is getting murdered and watches Rihanna poledance for about 50 goddamn minutes. I kept thinking the uncomfortable striptease was leading up to a stuffty joke but it just kept going and going. It was like a couple full minutes of Rihanna stripping.
Also for a movie called 'The City of 1000 Planets' we barely spend any time at all in the alien biomes. They do a Zootopia-style intro to the city where they talk about all the alien environments--none of which they will ever visit. The plot doesn't make any goddamn sense--the 'conspiracy' is ridiculous and cheesy, though I won't spoil it. Everyone figures it out literally a third of the way through the film and after that you're just waiting for the idiots on-screen to catch up. The dialogue is straight up some of the worst I've ever seen. It's actually worse than Self Delete Squad (and leagues worse than Ghostbusters).
The visual effects are really bad. The first alien planet we visit is entirely CGI with CGI aliens, and the 'uncanny valley' effect is overwhelming. The textures and visuals look like a weird 2016 video-game cutscene. Also, it's really REALLY boring. The film literally ends with a moral dilemma of whether or not they have to return some stolen government equipment--which they somehow elevate to being a critical facet of Valerian's personality, despite him stealing and frankly murdering people without hesitation for the first 90 minutes. She basically tells him 'If you want any of this pusillanimous individual, you better not return the property.' And he flips like a switch. He does it. The movie ends with the terrible like 'I only want you on my playlist' as Valerian creepily forces himself upon Laureline while trapped in a small space-pod for the night.
Also, it's based on a series called 'Valerian and Laureline'--which I've read before--and was a major influence on Star Wars. I can't help but notice they kicked Laureline out of the title altogether and while they struggled to piece Valerian's character together for this terrible film, Laureline was nothing like her comic counterpart and far more bland. It's clear they hired the actor for her looks--and actually kept her in a skimpy bikini for the first half of the film. When leaving the ship, she puts a transparent sheet over her bikini that covers nothing. When told she's dressed inappropriately--she changes into another bikini. Eventually she changes into a suit of armor which is literally contoured to emphasize her gigantic steel breasts. Really loveist portrayal of the character, to be completely honest. They took a character with actual personality and not only drained the life out of them with a bad script and terrible actor but also exploited them by dressing them in a ridiculously and unrealistically skimpy outfit for the entirety of the film.
The death scene that marked the second act was so contrived the people I was with were actually laughing. They fell down a hole and as everyone was picking themselves back up--completely fine--a random character has been fatally wounded in a way that is not seen nor described. They seem to realize that this light tumble has sealed their fate and begin a slow death monologue that might be touching if they didn't shoe-horn in a celebrity cameo literally in the second of their death. Also, there are some greedy long-nosed creatures that are desperate for money and (while not as bad as Watto) appear to literally be socially acceptable Jew caricatures. Classy.
I give this film a 2/10. It's literally worse than The Phantom Menace.
