Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets: An Oppo mini review

[ttyymmnn]

I discovered, quite by accident, the best way to watch this film.

Turn the sound off.

I really like Luc Besson. The Professional, La Femme Nikita, District B13. Fun films. And The Fifth Element is one of my all time favorites. When I first heard about Valerian, I was excited. Then I watched it. Besson knows how to make a movie that LOOKS fantastic. Valerian is visually stunning. But the acting is horrible, and that can only be due to Besson's direction. I think Besson is like George Lucas. Big with ideas, but bad with direction. The best Star Wars film is arguably The Empire Strikes Back, and that was directed by Irv Kirshner. Besson needs to stick to vision, and let others direct.

I mean, come on. This is an amazing image. But the rest of the scene? Not so much. The tension between Valerian and Laureline, which should have driven the film, comes across as two people bitching at each other. Dehaan is more wooden than a redwood forest, and Delevingne doesn't seem to know that Dehaan is in the room. When they finally consummate their relationship at the end, we just don't care any more. We're just happy they shut up for five minutes.

This has been Oppositelock Movie Corner. Time for bed. Catch you on the flip side, Oppo.

[Melissa]

@ttyymmnn I wanted to love this movie. I was a huge Luc Besson fan most of my life (Let's put aside his fondness for underage girls and grooming a 12 year old) and this movie was just such a letdown.
The production is amazing. They managed to give life to so many different life forms, such intricate set designs which are completely erased by the bad acting and horrible choice of actors. There are moments where the camera just rushes through scenes following the awful actors but if you pause you can just see the incredible details.
Feels like such a waste. I can't imagine how frustrating it is to all the artists who worked on this.

Patrick H Willems did a great video about this kind of movie

and I fully agree with him.
This is my favorite kind of movie.

[pip bip]

@ttyymmnn quick one, how bad is the acting of Kara Delevinge or however you spell her name?

[Krusty Wants Out]

@pip-bip Her acting wasn't bad. The plot is dumb and her character is forced to play a supporting role instead of being a co-lead. She did a better job than the Valerian actor. The movie had so much potential and it turned into a Michael Bay movie.

[Vondon302]

@ttyymmnn Hmm turn the sound off and play some classical music.
It might work.
Blade runners is one of my favorite films and I've actually watched it with the sound off and classical music playing. It works really well.

[frinesi2]

This is one of those movies where watching the CinemaSins review was more than sufficient for me.

[ttyymmnn]

@pip-bip said in Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets: An Oppo mini review:

@ttyymmnn quick one, how bad is the acting of Kara Delevinge or however you spell her name?

I could almost tolerate her work, but Dan Dehaan was even worse.

[MUSASHI66]

@ttyymmnn I’d like to comment about the whole movie, but it was so bad I gave up after 20 minutes. It was unwatchable and I was so excited to see it.

It’s amazing how easy it is to ruin a movie with so much potential.

[ttyymmnn]

@vondon302 I haven't tried that with Blade Runner, but maybe I should. I saw BR for the first time back in the day in the theaters and I was drunk and it made no sense and I thought it was terrible. I have since learned how wrong I was. We watched it at the beginning of the quarantine, the version without the voiceover, and it's absolutely brilliant. I still haven't watched all of 2049. I need to get back to it, but start from the beginning.

Have you ever read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I read it once a few years ago, and to say that BR is based on it seems a bit of a stretch. I also found it to be a relentlessly depressing story.

[Vondon302]

Totally agreed on the book. I tried a few Philip K Dick books and never got what the big deal was. Great ideas horrible writing.

[ttyymmnn]

@Melissa I will say that the reason I like 5th Element so much is the LOOK. It makes me think of all the pulp science fiction novels I read as a kid, where the cover art was often better than the story itself.

[Tripper]

Like others my wife and I wanted to love this movie. Visuals are awesome but otherwise its pretty bad. The WORST part though...We saw it in a Movie Tavern, which I have always hated...the people next to us were eating the entire time and smelled like actual CAT PISS. Like their clothes def had cat piss on them no doubt in my mind. We left but not soon enough.

[CaptDale - is secretly British]

@ttyymmnn Yeahm this is an adequate review of this film. My only comment is the visuals made up for the mediocre acting.

[VincentMalamute]

Agree. Great visuals, decent story, subpar acting. No chemistry between the leads.

I love Blade Runner. It seems that all dystopian movies and TV that followed irritatingly copy BR's take on urban scenes. Asian signs, 3D holographic building sized ads. I just started watching Altered Carbon and they do the exact same thing. They had a lot of money so it looked decent.

"the reason I like 5th Element so much is the LOOK" It also had better acting, chemistry, humor.

On the thread of copying things, I tried watching Dark Matter. They're copying everyone. They copied the Firefly cast without the wit and charm.