It is funny that I was just watching Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets while drinking Valerian. I was pissed at Luc Besson because I just watched and reviewed The Fifth Element. That review was more of a ramble about my theory surrounding his personal life. Which ties in neatly into the message of the film “Love”. But for some reason I completely forgot to talk about its qualities. Which I suppose this review will fix. I will compare the two grand space-operas from Luc Besson. And hopefully we will learn something in the process.
I say this as someone who’s read the comics and was really looking forward to this movie:
It was not good.
Mostly, I think it was horribly miscast and the pacing was weird (as I recall).
100% agree. Also read all the comics. The leads looked like teenagers, lost in an adult movie. And there was zero chemistry between them.
The movie effects were pretty decent, but they should have picked a different story to introduce people to this universe.
Fifth Element also had Gary Oldman and Chris Tucker. You can’t go wrong there.
It also didn’t help that the movie spent half an hour with sidequests that were utterly irrelevant to the plot.