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Home Entertainment Center => DVD's & Blu-rays => Topic started by: Chiprocks1 on September 12, 2018, 07:15:56 pm

Title: Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017)
Post by: Chiprocks1 on September 12, 2018, 07:15:56 pm

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017)
2 Stars out of 5

Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPeqNTqZNN0

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets had me for 10 minutes at the start of the movie. I was watching the "Pale version of Avatar" and was kind of digging it for that very reason. In my head, in spite of wide swath of bad reviews, was in this. And then........the two main characters of Valérian and Laureline came in and took me completely out of the movie to the point that I kept starting and stopping the movie all day long. I have no idea about the comics that this was spawned from, but from a movie and story point of view....these two characters are completely irrelevant, even if they have to be the ones to save the inhabitants of Mül. If you want cardboard cutouts, they are the ones for you. The story itself was bland and at times extremely convoluted given how it jumps from one new character to the next without really giving much backstory of what's happening in the moment. Honestly, the entire movie....or at least the first movie should have been centered entirely around Mül and maybe in the sequel pick up with this two characters. I found the CGI characters to have more emotion then the two Human actors. Great eye candy. Looks and sounds amazing. But that's all this is. Beyond boring. I will never watch this one again. Skip. I'm not disappointed in the movie, because I knew exactly what this would be when I first saw the trailer.

Title: Re: Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017)
Post by: Neumatic on September 12, 2018, 10:21:44 pm

I think I posted about this movie, I had mixed thoughts about it... there were sequences I liked (the "Avatar" sequence, the Enterprise-esque opening sequence which works better when there aren't names all over the place, the Big Market, etc) but the issue I had with it wasn't the cast, it's that they were playing characters.

There's a moment early on where Laureline does this little greeting hand wave (which I have since taught myself), and I love that.  And watching the bonus features of that moment where they're playing around and the goofiness they had on set, I'd rather have seen THAT movie.  I don't want to see Valerian and Laureline, I want to see Dane DeHaan and Cara Delivigne.  I want to see two Eurotrash club kids save the universe, THAT'S fun, that's more in the vein of The Fifth Element which is what we were all hoping this movie would be.  They were waayyyy too serious in the flick.

I think having them just be them would have fixed a lot of problems.  Don't get why Valerian is into Laureline... but if she was Cara D, yeah I could see that.  Presuming that the long list of women he had been with before were officers and so on, a funky stoner would be different for him, AND push him out of his comfort zone.

Alex (the ship, remember the ship had a name) felt more like a third person on the team but not quite enough, there wasn't enough personality in the ship or what it did.  Obviously it's close to the Millennium Falcon because the Falcon ripped it off, but where was the funky French weirdness?

You know what movie could have been a good model for this?  Ghostbusters.  Have these two (three?) be the funny ones but it's a serious world and everything is serious and has weight, but they're kinda just going through it having fun.