Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets - E... ⭐
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017) is a visually ambitious space opera directed by Luc Besson, adapted from the long-running French comic series Valérian and Laureline . Set in the 28th century, it follows special operatives Major Valerian and Sergeant Laureline as they investigate a mysterious "dark force" at the heart of Alpha, a massive, ever-expanding space station inhabited by millions of beings from across the universe.
The film ends with Valerian and Laureline defying orders. They return the stolen converter to the Pearls, which regenerates their home planet’s core. Instead of punishing them, the Federation Commander thanks them, and the two agents request to be stationed on Alpha permanently. The final shot is the two of them walking into the depths of the city, ready for new adventures—a perfect setup for a sequel that will likely never happen. Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets - E...
In one of the film's most celebrated sequences, Valerian must retrieve the converter from a "big market"—a parallel dimension accessible only through a special visor. In this realm, agents can walk through walls, grab objects from other realities, and navigate a crowded market that exists in a different plane of existence. It is a three-minute sequence that contains more creativity than entire trilogies. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
The film’s pièce de résistance is the "Big Market" sequence. Here, Besson visualizes a concept that could only exist in cinema: a dimensional marketplace where tourists in a barren desert wear virtual reality headsets to shop in a bustling, futuristic bazaar existing in another dimension. The interplay between the tactile desert reality and the digital overlay creates a heist sequence that is innovative, confusing, and utterly exhilarating. It represents the peak of the film’s ambition: using CGI not just to blow things up, but to bend the rules of physics and perception. They return the stolen converter to the Pearls,
In the summer of 2017, Luc Besson delivered Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets , a film that arguably stands as the most expensive independent movie ever made. Funded by European equity and fueled by a lifetime of adoration for the French comic series Valérian and Laureline , Besson crafted a visual spectacle that was audacious in its scope and colorful in its execution. Yet, upon release, the film became a cautionary tale of blockbuster economics. It flopped at the American box office, Critics carped about the casting, and the narrative was dismissed as derivative.
Thematically, Besson’s film gestures toward anti-colonial critique. The City of a Thousand Planets—Alpha—is literally constructed from the remnants of conquered worlds, a cosmopolitan utopia built on histories of extraction and displacement. The discovery that a seemingly innocuous trade in rare organisms masks a systemic pattern of captivity and commodification reframes the story as one about recognition and restitution. Valerian and Laureline’s personal arc—moving from complacent agents of a bureaucratic empire to sympathetic rescuers—mirrors an ethical awakening that the film asks its audience to share.
Besson’s genius in Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is how he introduces Alpha. The opening sequence, set to David Bowie’s Space Oddity , shows the station growing from a small module to a massive organism through a montage of diplomatic handshakes and dockings. There are no words of exposition; it is pure visual storytelling. We see a pearl-diving alien race (the Pearls of Mul) visit humanity, and we watch as the station accretes species like a coral reef. By the time the title card appears, the audience understands exactly what Alpha is: a fragile miracle of multicultural coexistence on the brink of collapse.
