Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
Many years in the future space station Alpha, the home to species from a thousand planets, finds itself threatened by a mysterious growing radioactive core; as a result, government agents Major Valerian (Dane DeHaan) Sergeant Laureline (Cara Delevingne) are tasked with a top secret mission to identify a strange intruding species, saving Alpha, and saving the Universe….easy stuff. Directed by Luc Besson and based on the comic books of Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières this ridiculously packed cosmic adventure rockets into orbit with massive ambition warping the viewer through thousands of years of space history, unapologetically moving from one wild space odyssey to the next at a pace that might even raise the eyebrow of the most attention deficit viewers. It’s as if Besson thought creating the equivalent of a Soda Graveyard with Sci-Fi elements would be the mega payoff that audiences are hungry for, instead he’s created a hanging mobile with so many moving parts that sadly a number of the really great elements are eclipsed by the flash boom bang, voiding the film of its strategic impact. End result, there’s a ton going on here, not all of it works, but, just enough does to illicit a few laughs and entertain for almost the entire 2 hours and 17 minutes run time, just remember to mainly check your brain at the door, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is rated PG-13.