Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

A long time ago humankind left earth and went into space in a space station above the earth. The experiment was so successful that many from earth moved there to live in a perfect artificial atmosphere and in harmony all races and religions. When the ship through expansion got so big it was messing with the very gravitational forces on earth it was cut loose and sent into space. Where it attracted a whole lot of other civilizations and the place just expanded and satellites created making it practically a solar system unto itself. This then is the background of Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets.

As for the plot of the film itself, when you've got a system of a thousand planets I guess it's kind of easy for one to slip in and not get noticed. This is what has happened to the survivors of a planetary massacre who just want to stay there unobserved and absorbing the technology and learning from a thousand or so cultures to resettle in a different planet.

There are in fact certain forces who don't want the massacre to come to light and therein is our story.

Based on a French science fiction comic strip Valerian has as its two adventurers Dane DeHaan as Valerian and as his female sidekick Cara Delavingne. Emphasis on the kick part because the woman kicks some serious butt in this film.

The two do a nice job here, but I think the leads should have been a bit older. As for DeHaan while I was watching Valerian I kept giving the screen a double take as I swore I was looking at Keanu Reeves. Maybe the producers had Reeves in mind originally.

One thing I did love about Valerian is the description of so many and so many different kinds of life forms. This is one of the few films that takes cognizance of the fact that there might be many kinds of life forms and not all of them will be humanoid and carbon based and oxygen breathing. In fact in the thousand planets only one quarter of them fill that description. Wonders in fact unheard of in Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek universe.

Valerian is a good science fiction film, not a great one that may rate an Oscar nod or three in the technical categories come next year.