Anachronistic and baroque

"Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets" is a science fiction film produced by Luc Besson. It´s freely based on the French comic "Valerian and Laureline". It has obvious similarities to Besson´s classical space opera (pun intended) "The Fifth Element", so if you liked the stranger aspects of that flick, you will positively love "Valerian". If you´ll understand the plot is perhaps another matter entirely! "Valerian" is a Bessonesque extravaganza, with almost baroque special effects. There are probably more aliens (and more inter-dimensional holograms) in this production than in any other science fiction film I´ve seen. The similarities with "Star Wars" are obvious (think Jabba and storm troopers) but then, some people suspect that George Lucas actually ripped the original French comic. "Avatar" and "Babylon 5" also comes to mind. 

Valerian and Laureline are two special agents, sent by the Human Federation on various obscure missions. Valerian comes across as an immature teenager, constantly makes passes on his fellow agent, and is a pain in the ass in general. Laureline is the ice cold "serious girl" who is both a tech wizard and a martial arts fighter. At least Valerian´s personality is based on the comic character - I don´t remember Laureline being so stone cold (or so ugly) in the original version. One of the team´s peculiar missions take them to Alpha, "The City of a Thousand Planets", a gigantic space station where thousands of alien races (many of them bizarre) live in peaceful co-existence in what looks almost like an unintentional parody of multi-culturalist "diversity". It turns out that a mysterious evil force has taken over the core of Alpha, spreading like a radioactive cancer throughout the system. Or perhaps not, since a closer investigation by the federation agents reveal a much darker conspiracy somewhere else in the inter-galactic chain of command...

The plot contains several detours with little bearing on the main action, including one featuring Barbadian-American pop star Rihanna, who is obviously the "Plavalaguna" of this film. In another detour, we meet a bunch of carnivorous aliens who seems to have forgotten all about diplomatic protocol onboard the Alpha space station, LOL. 

I admit that "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets" didn´t move me *that* much, mostly because I found Valerian´s crush on Laureline an annoying distraction, but also for other reasons. The film feels extremely outdated. It´s obvious that we will never get the cybertronic holographic super-galactic future described, nor the extreme (and extremely harmonious) "diversity". The "noble savage" angle is another old trope I simply can´t believe in anymore. Of course, this is based on my own "subjective" views, but something tells me the rest of the world won´t believe in this kind of stuff either for long. 

So, yes, this is definitely hardcore science FICTION.