In the summer of 2017, something strange happened at the multiplex. Luc Besson, the visionary French director behind The Fifth Element and Leon: The Professional , dropped over $200 million on a passion project nearly forty years in the making. The result was Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets .
In an era where most sci-fi cities are just New York with neon lights (looking at you, Blade Runner 2049 ’s LA), Alpha feels genuinely alien. There is a district that is a hypercube of shifting mathematics. There is a submarine sector underwater. There is a "Funky Town" district that looks like a disco ball exploded inside a coral reef. Besson didn't just build a city; he built an ecosystem. What makes Valerian rewatchable is not the plot (which is essentially a space cop procedural about a stolen converter), but the texture. valerian and the city of
But here is the re-evaluation: Valerian is not a film to be "watched" for the plot. It is a film to be inhabited . In the summer of 2017, something strange happened
We are bored of the MCU’s flat lighting. We are bored of Star Wars nostalgia bait. We are bored of Dune ’s beige seriousness (as good as it is). We miss color. We miss imagination. We miss a director who says, "I want a scene where two characters have a conversation while floating through a nebula, and the background is made of actual liquid light." In an era where most sci-fi cities are
Valerian gave us that. It gave us a city where every corner hides a new species, a new language, a new mistake. It gave us a universe that feels lived in —not by heroes, but by billions of weirdos just trying to get by. If you skipped Valerian because of the bad reviews, do yourself a favor. Stream it on the biggest screen you can find. Turn off your expectations for snappy dialogue or romantic chemistry. Turn on your sense of wonder.
Let’s dive into the City. Before we talk about the film, we have to talk about the city itself. The subtitle isn't just marketing flair; it is the actual protagonist of the movie.
Watch the opening montage. Watch the market scene. Watch Rihanna dance through twenty bodies. Watch the Pearls sing their homeworld goodbye.