Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017)

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017)

Director: Luc Besson

Cast: Dane DeHaan, Cara Delevingne, Clive Owen, Rihana

My expectations were extremely high for Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017) because the filmmaker behind the camera was the one and only Luc Besson, a director who has proven himself time and again to be a visionary with films like The Fifth Element (1995) and Lucy (2014). And he’s also proven himself in non genre films like Leon: The Professional (1994) and  The Big Blue (1988). Besson’s always been a prolific director who jumps effortlessly from genre to genre with success. But I was extremely excited with Valerian because it marked his return to big budget, larger than life, escapist science fiction that we saw him play with in The Fifth Element, a film I was blown away by when I first saw it. I literally saw it five times in theaters! And if the trailer for Valerian was to be an indication of what we could expect, Besson was poised to wow us again. Does Besson still have the ability to amaze us?

Valerian is all about these special government agents, Valerian and Laureline, who are assigned to retrieve a creature, the last of its kind, who can reproduce a pearl that can offer limited amounts of energy to the universe. But of course, dark, evil forces (read: the government) are after it and so, the race is on to protect this little creature from certain death. At the same time, Valerian is trying to prove his love to Laureline, will he ever learn to love anything but himself?

This film has lots of pros, but unfortunately lots of cons as well. But lets start with the good shall we? The good is that the film is a visual tour de force, a barrage of ideas that never stop coming. Right from the opening sequences of the movie, where we see how the titular city of a thousand planets is formed, we are wowed with race after race of alien beings, who start forming a part of the gigantic floating city in space. I get what Besson was going for with this movie. He wanted to do something that was so filled with imagination and creativity that there is no way it could be ignored. He wanted to give us an overdose of awesomeness and for all intents and purposes he succeeded. Imagination never stops with this one; you’ll be saying “cool” every five seconds. Now considering the amount of imagination and design involved in this movie, it should have been a huge hit in theaters. So what happened? Why did it flop so spectacularly?

The flopping came as a result of some of the films negative attributes. For starters the films plot is paper thin. There is no plot here save for running from one place to the next, trying to save a cute little creature. Sadly, without much more than that in terms of story, the film turns into a beautiful looking, empty spectacle. Pretty to look at, but with no substance, Valerian turns into the classic case of style over substance. Then there’s the fact that American audiences like a little familiarity with their genre fare and you’ve got yourselves the ingredients for a perfect bomb at the box office. If a film doesn’t come from some pre-existing universe that audiences were just dying to see come to life, then they won’t care or connect, even if the film is good. Valerian and Laureline comes from a French comic book from the sixties that American audiences never read or heard of until now. For Besson it’s a lifelong dream come true to bring his childhood comic book heroes to life, but for American audiences Valerian and Laureline is something they are not familiar with at all, filing it under the “too weird” file.

Then there’s this male chauvinist thing about it. Valerian treats women like sex objects, and for most of the film he treats Laureline like crap, even though he’s supposed to have affection for her. He’s always being the quintessential “guy” telling her to “wait here” while he takes care of everything, which today is considered “passé” by savvy movie audiences. In todays modern films, women have grown past the damsel in distress cliché, but apparently, nobody gave Besson the memo. Even the title of the film is chauvinist when you think about it. The comic was called Valerian and Laureline, not just Valerian. Why kick the female out of the film’s title? Is she not integral to the film? Are they not a duo? I roll my eyes at that type of thing. Then there’s the thing about the two protagonists having zero chemistry together. They do not look like they are attracted or in love with each other at all! It’s like we’re supposed to believe Valerian is passionately in love with Laureline, but there’s nothing there to prove it to us. It seems to me that if LOVE is the theme that is going to hold this film together, and it is supposed to be, well then Besson should have made sure it was passionate and heartfelt. He should have made sure their love for each other shined through and quite honestly, it doesn’t. Valerian comes through as a selfish cold guy who cares only for himself. I mean, I get it, he’s supposed to be selfish and cold in order to learn the ways of love, but come on. At least a glimpse of their love for each other would have been nice.

But I don’t think Besson ever meant for it to be “deep” or profound, it was simply meant to be a spectacle, eye candy in its purest form. So maybe if you go in with that mentality you won’t be disappointed. There’s a couple of inside jokes in there as well for lovers of The Fifth Element, actually, the film has many similarities with The Fifth Element, certain scenes in Valerian felt copy pasted from The Fifth Element, but fear not. Valerian has so many new ideas, you won’t mind. Final say is that this is an amazing film visually, conceptually and design wise, but is totally void of the love and emotions that it professes to be about, so that in my opinion is its biggest fault and in my opinion the reason why it tanked at the box office. And that’s weird because Besson’s theme, in a lot of his films has always been love, and human emotion, so in that sense I was surprised that the film was lacking in that area. Yet, in the films defense I will say that it didn’t deserve to fail as big as it did because there is space out there for escapist films whose sole purpose is to entertain us, and in that respect, Valerian did not fail at all.

Rating: 3 1/2 out of 5

Suicide Squad (2016)

Suicide Squad (2016)

Director: David Ayer

Cast: Will Smith, Jared Leto, Margot Robbie,Viola Davis, Common, Jai Courtney, Ezra Miller, Jay Hernandez, Adewale Akinnuoye Agbaje, Cara Delevingne, Joel Kinnaman, Karen Fukuhara, Ben Affleck

The thing about Suicide Squad is that it’s neither a good nor a bad film. Sadly, this is what Hollywood is doing a lot of these days, films that are neither here, nor there, they simply exist somewhere in the realm between good and bland. That being said, I had a decent time with Suicide Squad; it entertained even through its flaws. I was surprised to discover that it had moments of brilliance, few as they were yet was extremely dissapointed that a writer/director of David Ayer’s caliber delivered such an average film. But before we get into anything, I want to let you guys know that this review is coming from a true blue comic book fan, so I’m not one of those people who went into Suicide Squad already hating it. Actually I was truly looking forward to it. I even saw it opening day. The main draw for me were all the cool possibilities the concept of villains as heroes had to offer, plus we had director David Ayer behind the cameras which gave me a lot of hope. The result wasn’t as disastrous as some reviews make it sound, there’s some fun to be had with Suicide Squad. But I’m sure you’re wondering exactly what these pesky flaws everyone keeps talking about were, so let’s get down to it shall we? 

Suicide Squad is all about this top secret government project called “Task Force X” that unites a group of villains who are under the custody of the federal government (read: in jail) in order to have them do the governments dirty work. So as it turns out, these villains end up being the heroes, because an even more villainous witch called ‘The Enchantress’  is hell-bent on taking over the world. In order to achieve this, she brings to life her once dead, but equally powerful brother. The Suicide Squad’s supposed to stop this all powerful entity. Will they achieve their mission? Or will their collective insanity tear the group apart?

If you have seen Ayer’s body of work, then you will know why I was a bit disappointed here. I mean, Harsh Times (2005)? An amazing picture! End of Watch (2012) and Sabotage (2014) were both highly watchable in my book.  Let’s not forget that Mr. Ayer was a great writer before successfully transferring his talents to the directing department. Before becoming a successful film director, he wrote amazing scripts like Training Day (2001). So yes, I’m perplexed as to why Suicide Squad didn’t blow me away story wise. With Ayer at the helm, I was expecting more of an edge to this film. When the film starts, you are first lambasted with a ton of background stories for each character, which I thought was a mistake because what ends up happening is we get a bunch of fast forwarded versions of each characters origin story. Hollywood’s forgotten that mystery is one of the major elements of cinema, we don’t need to know every single little thing about every single character; especially not in an ensemble piece like this one. I mean, if we’re watching a solo Harley Quinn movie then fine, give me that full blown origin story. Otherwise it’s too much, too fast. As it is, you get these little snippets of everybody’s story squeezed into an already cluttered film. That’s problem number one.

 It’s The Joker and Harley Quinn that you want to see the most of. Sadly, the Joker isn’t on the film as much as you’d think he is. Don’t know what the general consensus on Jared Letos Joker is, but I do know that the decision to make him The Joker divided fans. Me? I was happy with the choice; I’ve always thought he was an underused actor. In my book he is one of the greats of his generation. His Joker is the first to feel like a real gangster, like a crime boss, a guy who’d dabble in selling drugs in a night club while screwing his hot psychiatrist, I mean, he wasn't so cartoony, he felt evil. Each representation of the Joker has been special for different reasons, but I like where Leto is going with it. He wasn’t so much a comic book character, he felt closer to the kind of gangster you’d find on the streets, only with make up on his face; loved whenever Joker and Harley were on screen. That scene of Joker rescuing Harley Quinn while shooting a machine gun from a helicopter while laughing maniacally? Yes please! More of that!

Where the DC cinematic universe is failing is in not giving equal importance to each character. Some are the stars of the show because they are played by the big stars, while characters like Killer Croc, Katana and Slipknot are treated like throwaways. That’s something that Marvel movies never do. Even the smallest, weirdest characters are given their moment to shine in a Marvel movie. While in DC, the weird characters are simply that, weird. Sometimes the way they are portrayed makes you wonder why they are even there. That boomerang throwing villain, why was he there? He does very little. Oh, he’s supposed to be the comic relief? He doesn’t do a good job of it either. Then there’s Slipknot a character introduced at the last minute, like that nameless character that comes along for the mission on an episode of Star Trek, the one you just know is going to bite the bullet. And so on. By comparison, in Marvel movies even Ant-Man gets epic!

On the positive side of things the film does have its moments which for me dealt with Harley Quinn and The Joker, and let’s face it. These two characters are the main draw of the film; it’s why the kiddies are going to see it. You think they care about a Boomerang throwing dude? Nope, their butts are in those seats to see Joker and Harley fall madly in love. The visuals that come out of that origin story are some of the best the film has to offer. I would have preferred seeing a Joker/Harley Quinn solo film instead of this film, but whatever; maybe Warner Bros. will wise up and release it for next Valentine’s Day or something. The squad goes up against powerful villains, almost too powerful for the Suicide Squad, but that’s what this film is all about, it’s less about super powers and more about the tricks these characters have up their sleeves. In the end, the film is told in a choppy manner. It’s messy story wise and doesn’t flow. Some scenes feel forced, so much so that you can practically detect where they squeezed in those re-shoots. Still, though troubled in certain areas, there’s fun to be had with Suicide Squad and thanks to Harley and The Joker, it’s a success at the box office, but I’m going to have to side with the general consensus on this one, DC needs to start making better movies instead of making mediocre ones.

Rating: 3 out of 5