Valerian - Luc Besson, The Enchantress, and a Dane

I just couldn’t get past the fact that Dane DeHaan sounded pretty much exactly like Bill and Ted-era Keanu Reeves…

Also - how did Laureline learn about the replicator animal at school?!? All bar one died before anyone even knew they existed…

I enjoyed it as a mess of really cool ideas and visuals, but its a bit of a mess. I can say the same about Fifth Element, expect the leads in Valarian could not redeem the movie like the leads from FE.

I watched the movie and liked it. Is entertaining.

Theres magic/poetic elements added to the movie that push it somewhat to the fantasy side of things. You could clearly see the movie comes from the “new wave”, and thats why have a defense of “the good savage” in it. A bit too much Silverberg in it, not enough Heilen for some people tastes.

Beyond Dark and Evil, the Movie.

I really liked the visuals and ideas of Valerian but the two leads looked and acted like children.

Omg exactly this. Childish acting, dumb lines delivered with a monotone thud.

Pretty much everything is quite good and fun and high quality about this movie - except the shopworn Noble Savage theme and the dreadfully miscast leads.

Saw this pretending it to be a Mass Effect movie/Fifth Element sequel (wait it should be the other way round). Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne are hopeless as leads. You kind of wonder why Delevingne keep getting role in big budget movies. At least Laureline the character is more lovable than Enchantress.

The problem with Valerian probably is because the space opera genre it pioneered was flogged to death by endless Star Wars/GotG movies, and there is nothing fresh left. Everything is almost always been-there-done-that.

Look, I’m just gonna say it. I liked this movie. Sure, the leads were terribad, their dialogue flat and the plot relatively on rails, but I thought the world building, art direction and prop/costume work was fun and interesting.

+1

Lead actors are truly awful but the overall movie is a lot of fun.

Watched it. Spoilers!

Mmmm yeah it could have been better. I still like the imagination that shines in the film from time to time, and I think the concept of two you agents in a big space opera is good, but the execution isn’t good enough.

The two biggest mistakes were:

  1. their romance. I like the idea the romance here, how it doesn’t start from zero like in most movies but they know already and from the first minute it’s clear this isn’t the first time they were flirting. But that idea needed support (for example mention how many missions they have done together before, how in one of them they had a ‘close encounter’ and since them he was interested on continuing it), otherwise it doesn’t look like natural, and also needed more development in the story itself, they don’t have a lot of what we could truly call romantic moments. The closest thing one saving each other’s lives?
  2. The bad guy. If you are going to use up the ‘bad guy was one of the good guy’s superior all along!’ plot, fine, it’s a bit stereotypical but ok. But then do it properly, hide it and have a reveal scene near the climax of the film. Here it doesn’t work because the film shows who is the bad guy in the… minute 47 of a 130 minute movie?!!.

I enjoyed it as well, but yeah, the leads (especially the guy) is horrid. Not sure whether he or the guy who played Anakin Skywalker was worse.

My main gripe was how Laureline was portrayed as a cool bad-ass operator who became completely useless and needed rescuing when she was captured.

She keeps getting roles because her daddy has influence.

Wow. For someone who claims to love the source material, Besson really took a dump all over it when he wrote that screenplay. I found that particular butchery so much more aggravating, the bad acting didn’t really register.

If you care at all about the comics, avoid this. I wish I could unsee it.

I saw this on the return trip. Loved the visuals, loved the ideas behind everything, hated it when the two leads opened their mouths. The former was not enough to overshadow the latter.

some of the dialog felt parsed through google translate.

On a somewhat related note…

Why buy it? My only guess is that the movie studio is almost bankrupt and really cheap to buy.

Given how Valerian underperformned at the box office and that EC already had a few rounds of lay-offs and departures in the past months, that’s the likely scenario.