There are movie roles actors don‘t recover from. More often than not it‘s a big budget movie where someone takes a chance on a lesser known actor playing a leading role and that actor has to come through. If he can he is instantly a superstar (i.e. Chris Pratt in Guardians, J-Law in Hunger Games), if he can‘t he‘ll vanish into obscurity (Hayden Christensen in SW Ep 2/3). Sorry to say, Dane Deehan is clearly in the latter category. That‘s not to say that with a different lead this movie would have been a success, but at the very least it would have been watchable. Deehan is as unlikable as you can get in a leading role, his chemistry with Cara Delevingne is non existent and he presents his lines like he is reading off a teleprompter that is lasered into his retinas. He is also committing one of the cardinal sins of acting by acting cooler than he actually is. I have no problem if someone does it in a comedy, making fun of his own character (i.e Chris Pratt in Guardians). But Deehan was dead serious in this movie. I‘m curious to see when and if ever he gets another lead role, but I'm willing to bet it won't be a big budget movie. Indie films maybe. Perhaps a voice in the next Pixar film. TV probably. But the big ship has sailed. I'm not blaming him by the way. If you get offered a role like this, you accept. Whoever auditioned and casted him however should be locked up in prison next to the people who put pineapple on pizza and the guy I saw the other day driving a GREEN Ferrari.

I went in expecting this movie to be bad, so at least I wasn't disappointed because of high expectations. Better casting would have improved this movie immensely.

I can't imagine Luc Besson envisioning the role of Valerian and saying, "You know who would be great for this role, Dane DeHaan." Maybe he went, you know type casting? Well, let's do the opposite of that. I would really like to know what he was thinking.

I mean seriously, how in hell did the people making this movie think the pale, sickly looking with the dark circles under his eyes Dane DeHaan could pull off playing a cool, witty, bad-ass action hero? He couldn't & he didn't. I fully expected him to have a nose bleed at any moment. This guy looks like a real-life young Mr. Burns from "The Simpsons". Might as well have Jim Parsons who plays Sheldon Cooper on “The Big Bang Theory” play the role. He would have been about as believable. When DeHaan first started reciting his lines in the movie, I was like, "This guy is talking like he thinks he's a bad-ass. Oh wait, this is for real. He's supposed to be the hero? WTF?" It was awful. Surely they could have found an actor with some charisma to play the lead role. Where’s this generation’s Bruce Willis? And Cara Delevingne, sure she's cute, but come on, she looks more like a high school cheerleader than a bad-ass government operative. There is just no way to buy either of them in the roles they were playing. Among all the other things, they just seem too young. There was supposed to be a romantic relationship between them yet they had zero chemistry. I couldn't feel it and ultimately it was unbelievable.

If it weren't for the stunning costumes, sets, and visuals, this film would have been a total bust.

In the end, I did manage to suspend disbelief just enough to get a modicum of enjoyment, but trust me, this was in spite of the lead actors and weak story line.

[spoiler] Question about the story. How much time was supposed to have passed between when the Pearl Princess released her consciousness into the universe and when she landed in Valerian? The Commander played by Clive Owen was in charge when Mül was destroyed so it didn’t seem like much time at all. The movie made it seem like only maybe a week passed. PLEASE REPLY IF YOU KNOW THE ANSWER. The surviving non-technical Pearl people who lived in harmony with their environment get to Alpha, quickly learn everything there is to learn, and then apparently develop a new technology of their own that no one can penetrate to hide themselves at the core. How is that even remotely believable?
Edit: After watching the movie again, I noticed that twice it mentions that the planet Mül was destroyed 30 years ago.[/spoiler]

A spectacular spectacle of a movie that faithfully adapts a French 1970s sci-fi comic book. If you think you might see it some day, you owe it to yourself to catch it in 3D on a big screen now. In a world of paint-by-numbers blockbusters, this is an invigorating slap to the eyeballs.

The flick would benefit from more focus and deliberation; often, story beats are glancing blows instead of precision hits. The biggest flaws, however, are found in the dialogue, which is at best serviceable and at times painful, probably owing to its transition through times, languages, and mediums.

Valerian isn't perfect, it's a bit clunky, but the sheer unusualness, whimsy, and wonder overpowers the movie's faults, making it well worth watching.

It's a fun movie, but it's not what I would call a sci fi classic. It's all spectacle, with eye popping visuals. It creates some really interesting side characters and alien worlds. The drawback is the two leads. They seem rather bland and one dimensional. Their romantic bantering is quite boring. The supporting characters are more colorful and interesting. If you are a fan of Luc Besson's The Fifth Element, you will probably enjoy this. Just don't expect anything too deep from this movie.

Well, the scenes start comin' and they don't stop comin'. Aaaand that's basically the whole movie.

No, honestly by the end of it I was actually pretty on board. It took me a lot to get to that point though. The ham-fisted romance subplot they kept awkwardly grinding the movie to a standstill for was chief amongst the swill I felt I had to wade through to get to that point of enjoyment. The primary alien race being the most poorly animated was another. But somewhere between the Rhianna actually being bearable in this, and the Ethan Hawke character I want to see 500 more times, I did actually somewhat enjoy _Valerian_... Somewhat.

_Final rating:★★½ - Had a lot that appealed to me, didn’t quite work as a whole._