Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (French: Valérian et la Cité des mille planètes) is a 2017 English-language French 3D science fiction adventure film written and directed by Luc Besson, and co-produced by Besson and his wife, Virginie Besson-Silla. The film is based on the French science fiction comics series Valérian and Laureline, written by Pierre Christin and illustrated by Jean-Claude Mézières. It stars Dane DeHaan as Valerian and Cara Delevingne as Laureline, with Clive Owen, Rihanna, Ethan Hawke, Herbie Hancock, Kris Wu and Rutger Hauer in supporting roles. Besson independently crowd-sourced and personally funded Valerian and, with a production budget of around $180 million, it is both the most expensive European and independent film ever made.
The film was released by STXfilms on 21 July 2017 in the United States, and in France on 26 July, by EuropaCorp.Valerian received mixed reviews from critics, who criticized the plot and some of the casting, but praised the visuals, and grossed $225 million worldwide. Due to its high production and advertising costs, the film was considered a box office bomb.
Plot
In the 28th century, the former International Space Station has become "Alpha", a space-traveling (by the time it reached a critical mass when it was in Low Earth Orbit) city where millions of creatures from different planets live peacefully and exchange their knowledge and cultures. The humans form a special police division to preserve peace through the universe, including officers Valerian, a happy-go-lucky major, and his partner Laureline, a no-nonsense sergeant.
En route to a mission, Valerian dreams of a planet, where a low-tech humanoid race lives peacefully. They fish for pearls containing enormous amounts of energy, and use small animals to replicate them. Wreckage begins plummeting from the sky, and as the humanoids investigate the derelicts, one enormous ship crashes into the planet, triggering an apocalypse. A female humanoid, a princess of her people, separated from her group after the door to the spaceship wreck being used as shelter breaks, manages to send a telepathic signal just as the explosion consumes her and the surface.
Shaken, Valerian wakes. He learns that his mission is to retrieve a "Mül converter", so called for being able to replicate anything it eats, even currency. It is the last one in the entire universe, from a black market dealer, Igon Siruss. Before setting out, he asks Laureline to marry him, but she brushes him off, knowing of his many affairs with female colleagues and citing his inability to take things seriously.
Travelling to a virtual market called "Big Market", Valerian disrupts a meeting between Igon and two hooded figures seeking the converter - two humanoids, with the "converter" being one of the animals he also saw in his dream. He and Laureline recover the converter, and he surreptitiously steals one of the pearls that had been given as payment for the dealer, hoping to gift it to Laureline as a wedding present.
They return to Alpha, where their superior, frosty Commander Filitt, informs them the center of the station has been infected by an unknown force, rendering it highly toxic, that troops sent into the area have not returned, and that the infection is spreading. Laureline and Valerian are assigned to protect the commander during an interstation summit to discuss the crisis. The commander asks for the converter, but Valerian says that Laureline should hold onto it while they are protecting him.
During the summit, the humanoids suddenly attack - incapacitating everyone before kidnapping Filitt. Valerian frees himself and the others and chases the kidnappers, who head for the infected area. Valerian loses control of his vehicle, and Laureline loses contact with him.
Evading arrest for insubordination, Laureline finds Valerian unconscious at the edge of the infected zone. She wakes him, but is kidnapped after by a primitive tribe that lives in the center of Alpha. Valerian infiltrates the tribe's territory with the help of a shapeshifting dancer, Bubble. He saves Laureline and they escape, but Bubble is mortally wounded. She encourages him to keep pursuing Laureline, before dying.
Valerian and Laureline venture further into the infected area, realizing that it is not radioactive. They reach a large, shielded hall where they find the humanoids with an unconscious Filitt. Their leader, Emperor Haban Limaï explains that his people (who are known as the "Pearls") lived peacefully on the planet Mül, when a battle broke out in orbit between the human government's fleet and another alien species. The human commander, Filitt, ordered the firing of a doomsday weapon that, despite knowledge (or uncaring) that Mül was populated by a civilization, annihilated both the enemy fleet and Mül, as seen in Valerian's dream, sent to him by the princess and daughter of the Pearls' leader, Lihö-Minaa (which she also transfer her soul into Valerian's body after her death). A small group of survivors sheltered in a crashed spaceship and managed to repair it, learning much about technology and the history.
No comments:
Post a Comment