Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017)

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017): based on the comic strip written by Pierre Christin and illustrated by Jean-Claude Mezieres; written and directed by Luc Besson; starring Dane DeHaan (Major Valerian), Cara Delevinge (Sergeant Laureline), Rihanna (Bubble), and Clive Owen (Commander Arun Filitt):

Last summer's hot mess of a box-office bomb is this summer's... well, it's not a hot mess. It's not exactly good, either.

Valerian (also known as Valerian and Laureline) was an immensely popular French comic strip that began life in the late 1960's. It offered (emulating an earlier French strip, Barbarella) a combination of space opera and spies, a sort of Flash Gordon of Her Majesty's Secret Service. The strip was set hundreds of years in the future, but because of time-travel technology, agents Valerian (a guy) and Laureline (a woman) could operate throughout time and space so as to protect the future Earth alliance's interests.

The strip gradually elevated the spunky Laureline to the level of co-equal with Valerian. Indeed, in the story arc that writer-director Luc Besson based much of this movie upon, Ambassador of Shadows, Laureline is the protagonist while Valerian spends much of the story imprisoned off-panel.

No such luck here. Perversely, Besson's movie is a tone-deaf 'Love Story' in which Laureline and Valerian's relationship must end in the marriage Valerian wants because, you know, whatever. Of course, Valerian is a Major and Laureline is a Sergeant. No problem there! Valerian's courtship of Laureline throughout the movie runs the gamut from sexual harassment to assault to stalking. What larks! Of course Laureline, often incompetent (as is Valerian) falls for him in the end because LURV!

Of the other three major female characters, two are dead by the end of the movie. Whee!

Luc Besson professes to a life-long love of Valerian and Laureline. Boy, I'd hate to see the movie he would have made if he hated the source material!

There are sections of visual grandeur and cleverness. The movie comes out squarely against genocide, which is awesome. Rihanna is good as a shape-changing hooker with a heart of gold and the underwhelming name 'Bubble.' The score by Alexander Desplat is solid. 

The two leads are a bit perplexing. Dane DeHaan is utterly miscast as Valerian unless the point was to satirize the typical male action hero, in which case I guess he's perfectly cast. As Laureline, Cara Delevinge is dismayingly underweight in a bathing suit and dismaying gaunt and hollow-eyed throughout. She spends about two-thirds of the movie in a padded spacesuit. I don't normally worry about the health of an actress based solely on her physical appearance on-screen, but here, yeah -- it's frankly a bit creepy.

There's certainly enough here to be interesting, so long as one doesn't try to watch its 2 1/2 hours in one sitting. It may actually be better than Besson's over-praised The Fifth Element, and it's certainly better than his equally over-praised Lucy, which to me came across as some sort of racist parable, intentional or not. Lightly recommended.

The Collected Valerian Volume 1

Valerian Volume 1 (1967-69/ Collected 2017): written by Pierre Christin; illustrated by Jean-Claude Mezieres; translated by Jerome Saincantin: Before it was a blockbuster financial bomb of a movie directed by Luc Besson, Valerian was a beloved French comic strip ('Bande Dessinee' or 'BD' for short). It began in the late 1960's and influenced Besson and many others French and otherwise.

This volume collects the first three Valerian story arcs. Thankfully, as anyone can attest who lived through the awful English translations of major European comics appearing in Heavy Metal in the 1980's, the translation here is excellent.

Writer Pierre Christin and artist Jean-Claude Mezieres start off slowly, but by the third adventure ("The Empire of a Thousand Planets"), they've really hit their stride. Valerian is a science-fiction adventure set in the far future. Agent Valerian can travel through both time and space to protect his present day, and he does, recruiting medieval peasant Laureline in the first adventure. The first two adventures involve time travel and are intermittently enjoyable.

By the third adventure, Jean-Claude Mezieres's art has progressed immensely from the awkward cartooniness of the first two adventures. Things are still cartoony, but Valerian and Laureline no longer look like Keane kids. His visuals of alien planets and space battles also take a great leap forward. The third adventure is thoroughly engaging. It would have made a great movie. Too bad Besson chose to throw a bunch of Valerian adventures into a blender and then throw the result on the screen.

Christin's writing doesn't have as far to go as the art, but he has also improved markedly by the third adventure. One can see how the strip became beloved. It may have elements of the then-contemporary and the classic science-fiction strip, from Barberella back to Alex Raymond's beautifully illustrated Flash Gordon of the 1930's, but Valerian is also its own comic strip. BD, that is. Laureline and Valerian are hyper-competent without being boring, and the third adventure involves a pretty solid 'Twist' towards the end.

I don't know that I'll revisit Valerian. But I may -- it's certainly superior by the end of this first volume to an awful lot of science-fiction comics. And the second story arc demonstrates that even French comic-strip creators love them some Jerry Lewis. Recommended.