MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED
So usually I leave movie threads to others here. But I saw Valerian today and even hours later, like any traumatic event, my brain keeps returning to circle it again and again, trying to figure out what the fuck I witnessed and could any of it possibly be real.
And most importantly,
why.
Here are our heroes. Major Valerian and Sergeant Lauraline, important military people who live on a space station with millions of other humans and aliens and go on important missions. They work for a generic and vaguely defined 'the government', something they announce on several occasions.
Obviously there is some romantic tension! Valerian starts the movie out insisting to Laureline that she is the one for him, while she insults him and chides him for his long list of past girlfriends. A few minutes later, he proposes to her, because she is the one for him, but she is a Strong and Sassy Female Character and is having none of that! I know what you're wondering...will they get together by the end of the movie??? Well, unfortunately revealing that would be spoilers! You'll just have to read to the end of this and see.
Okay, so...fuck. You know, I was posting this to laugh at the plot, but honestly I don't even know where to start. The dialogue. Oh sweet Jesus, the dialogue. Every sentence from the mouths of these two is
physically painful to hear. Just, 'banter' that's utterly banal and insipid, the kind of thing that usually gets punctuated by one of them rolling their eyes and declaring the other to be 'impossible!'.
Natural laws are defied again and again. On a space station housing millions, gaping holes are punched into and out of massive underwater habitats, and on two occasions
directly into space itself without even a hint of consequences. While dangling from a line over a fatal drop, Valerian shoots the alien holding it, and instead of plummeting to his death the camera just cuts away a second and then he's on solid ground and fine.
A handful of primitive, pacifist tribals who have spent hundreds of years frolicking on a beach in harmony with nature call their leader an Emperor for some reason. Despite having never previously heard of aliens and not knowing what stars, math, science, chemistry, or philosophy were, they also successfully figure out how to repair a crashed and broken apart ship full of advanced alien technology and grow food for several years, while in space with no resources. (After getting launched there five minutes after entering the derelict via exploding planet.)
Carefully pre-chewed Important Messages for the children abound. 'We lost our home because people we never even met were fighting a war," explains the sad Emperor. (The aliens btw are mystical androgynous Avatar aliens but whiter and with sparkles...possibly crossbred with Twilight vampires and given a bout of chemo.)
'If we don't cover up [ATROCITY], our economy will be ruined!' screams a white man working for the government.
'It's hard out there for an illegal alien far from home,' blue lesbian shapeshifting gel girl Rihanna-squid sadly explains. Later, she dies after giving a long speech about the importance of two people she met twenty and five minutes ago, respectively, staying true to themselves and following their heart and realizing their love for one another is the most powerful force in the universe etc...or something like that. Hokey speeches about the power of love abound in this movie actually, and they all start to blur together pretty quickly.
All of them fall flat except for the one attached to the major moral dilemma Valerian faces near the end. It is quite moving. Will he give a little CGI lizard critter to the aliens whose planet it originally came from? (the one destroyed by humans along with six million of their people? ...not sure how they could count that high without math but w/e...) Will he allow them to use its powers to restore their species at the urging of the love of his life, or will he refuse because the lizard is Government Property? The choice he faces here is wrenching and I think any of us would be just as conflicted in his place without a badly delivered speech about What Love Is to help us along.
...seriously though, I think I can place 90% of my hate for this movie squarely on the two leads, who, combined, have all the depth and emotive capacity of a sanded pine board. When not giving speeches about love, they spend the entire movie making bland quips and not having a facial expression.
In the end, after a full 24 hour period of bantering like a couple in a cheesy 80s movie (only minus all chemistry and charm) Tough Military Girl sighs 'how romantic' and accepts the offer of marriage and then they kiss.
Actually though, thinking of them like an 80s couple helped me figure out the big question that had been baffling me; that of who this movie was even supposed to be for. The answer, I think, is 13 year olds. But specifically 13 year olds who lived in the 80s. (It even has Rutger Hauer!) Sadly, the technology to make Valerian arrived 30+ years to late for them.
I don't want to hate on the movie completely. I'm obviously not the intended audience. And I'm sure there are probably some starry-eyed 12-14 year olds who are going to fall in love with it completely, even today. It's visually a very eye popping and colorful movie too, which some neat ideas for aliens and tech crammed in everywhere you look. Really, any random bit character (there are dozens) would have been a delight to follow instead of the two we got, who I spent most of the movie mentally begging to shut their mouths every time they opened them.
Still, it's pretty to look at and batshit/unique enough I might even genuinely enjoy this movie in something beyond a 'laugh at how bad it is' kind of way, if only I didn't have to listen to anyone talk. Maybe if a version comes out dubbed in Chinese or something...
And TBF, laughing at how bad a movie is is a perfectly viable way to enjoy it. My aunt was with me and we both had a good time. Still, the last two movies I've seen in a theater were Rogue One and Logan, and this...this was something very different. I'm also really glad I went in blind, I probably wouldn't have gotten nearly as much out of that slowly unfolding feeling of W...T...F??? had I read all the other reactions and people declaring it a flop already.
Anyway apologies for how rambling and senseless this was, but I just needed to spew words to help my brain even start to process it all.
