It will be at least a decade until we see another space opera again.
Jupiter Ascending dug the hole.
Valerian put the nail in the coffin.
I hope you guys REALLY like Star Wars, because that's the only sci-fi space adventure we're getting for years to come.
I expected next to nothing out of this movie - I saw it purely out of morbid curiosity - and it somehow didn't even come close to meeting my incredibly low expectations. I know I said basically the same thing with Transformers: The Last Knight (yet another terrible, morbidly curious choice I made this summer), but this is, hands down, one of the dumbest, absolute WEIRDEST sci-fi blockbusters I have ever seen. Seriously, it's ******* BONKERS, to the point where nothing I can say can prepare you for the choices this movie makes and what it gets away with in terms of "story," or lack there of.
At one point, I kid you not, Cara Delevingne's character has to put her head up a giant jellyfish's ass to see some kind of psychic replay of Valerians' actions in order to track him down.
It makes NO SENSE, and that's just one bat-sh*t insane instance. At another point Valerian insists that Rihanna's character's alien form engulf him in order to pose as a different alien species as a means to gain access to a location. For a good five minutes, if not longer, the two walk around as one body, having a conversion amongst themselves, even though the mouth of the alien they're posing as doesn't move - all while your jaw is on the floor in disbelief that this is actually happening.
Overall, I give it points for some truly inventive action sequences - the effects are legit spectacular throughout, and there are some decently compelling ideas hinted at here and there - but when it comes to characters, CGI stick figures would have been more compelling than what they gave us. I've defended Dane DeHaan in the past, but dear God, in his role as Valerian, he's like if Keanu Reeves somehow lost 50 pounds along with whatever tiny shred of charisma he has. DeHaan's chemistry with Delevingne is so bad, and their relationship so poorly written - I can't emphasize enough how horribly stupid it is - that we're talking an Attack of the Clones level "love story" with similarly sh*tty dialogue. Even the secondary characters are terrible. I'd forgotten how weird Besson's casting choices were for smaller roles in The Fifth Element, but there's a kitschy charm to them in that movie that is completely absent here. There are couple in particular where you're just certain he asked the casting directors for the worst audition for the role and then cast them almost as a joke.
Walking out, I don't know that I've ever seen THAT much anger and laughter-in-disbelief as I've seen from an audience tonight. In the hallway outside the theater, this one guy just kept repeating to his friend, "That was the worst ******* movie I've ever seen," getting louder and more angry each time. I was walking in front of him and kind of turned around to laugh and commiserate, but he wasn't having it. He was SO PISSED. People seriously either had these angry looks on their faces or they were just laughing at how bad it was. I heard one group of friends say, in regards to Besson, "He had to have written that in French and then had it translated, because no human beings talk like that." In fact, it's written as if not only translated to English, but as if a 16-year-old French kid tripped on acid, wrote the first act high, but was then forced to write the rest of the movie during an epic hangover.
Seriously, *****this movie. I will never, ever understand why Hollywood doesn't put the same type of effort into developing a script/story as they do the hundreds of thousands of man hours - and millions upon millions of dollars - devoted to effects. It just doesn't make sense to me at all. More than that, this not only made me actively hate lifelong "passion project" blockbusters from directors in general (I can't remember the last time I saw a good one, if ever), but between this and the piece of sh*t Lucy, Besson needs to take a long look in the mirror - and an even longer break - and then think about calling it quits. I've never really been a huge fan of his, at least not since the '90s, and this movie assured me that I never will be again.
