Thread for Luc Besson's new comic book movie: Valerian

"Valerian is as gorgeous & epic a sci-fi adventure as you are expecting. However, the story & characters often get overshadowed by the world."

This may be the most negative thing Germain Lussier has ever written. The dude is a Peter Travers-level "I love everything!" gasbag.

Boy you got that right.

I was already drifting away from io9 when Annalee and Charlie Jane left, but when he took over I was done for good. It became just another superhero/Star Wars hype platform, like the world needs that.

Yes of course

http://ew.com/movies/2017/07/05/valerian-luc-besson-action-scene/

“After I wrote the sequence, I explained it to the crew for an hour,” he says. “They were smiling, but I could see on their faces that they didn’t understand a thing.”

And so at his L’École de la Cité in Paris, a free film academy the director opened in 2012, Besson recruited the whole student body to shoot a demo of the action scene’s 600 storyboarded shots as part of their curriculum.

“I brought the 120 students to the soundstage and we shot the entire scene,” Besson says. “They were the actors, they were the cameramen, the lighting people, the grips. Costumes, accessories. We put the 600 shots on the wall and one by one we shot them. They did everything in three weeks, and then we edited and put in some temp music.”

Besson adds with a proud laugh, “And then the crew understood the scene.”

You forgot the setup

A chase ensues between the minions of a three-nosed Jabba-type beast named Igon Siruss (voiced by John Goodman) and Valerian, who has inadvertently trapped his arm between dimensions.

Minor details!

All right, got tickets for a 3D showing on Thursday night so bring on the madness.

I've never seen a single Luc Besson film cuz of that Barbarella-without-the-'60s vibe.

Not even Subway?

no. That wd've been most likely.

The writer of this wrote on Letterboxd that watching Besson's entire oeuvre was "agony"

https://www.indiewire.com/2017/07/luc-besson-movies-worst-best-fifth-element-leon-valerian-1201857534/

That article is dopey. "Adele Blanc-Sec", "The Messenger", "Nikita" deserve higher rankings. Not a *great* filmmaker by any means but a pretty unique one.

he's produced some really interesting films, too.

As long as Morbs has an excuse to never enjoy things that I do, we're all good imo

I for one don't need a clickbait listicle to explain why I'm not interested in whatever drippy nonsense Spielberg's got coming up

drippy?? he hasn't melted any faces in 36 years

this looks awesome. who wouldn't want to see this?

Just got out of seeing it. Great, fantastic, 10 out of 10, so glad I saw it in 3D, wouldn't change a thing about it. Hits all the formulas just right, utterly gorgeous to look at, hope he does get to make more of them.

The AO Scott review in the NYT -- which I would describe as a sympathetic pan -- has many delicious one-liners. The tease is "Sci-fi on Adderall and Ecstasy."

He's a terrible critic and a mundane writer and has 0% interest in the visuals of a movie, but if you are looking for someone to halfheartedly and boringly recount a plot that anyone on earth could glean from a movie trailer he's your guy.

without looking at it i'm going to guess and say that AO Scott doesn't once give a visual description of anything in the movie in his review. wait, maybe he's blind. if so, my apologies. it would explain a lot.

well, he acknowledges the visuals are the point, sort of

Imagine crushing a DVD of “The Phantom Menace” into a fine powder, tossing in some Adderall and Ecstasy and a pinch of cayenne pepper and snorting the resulting mixture while wearing a virtual reality helmet in a Las Vegas karaoke bar.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/20/movies/valerian-and-the-city-of-a-thousand-planets-review.html

sold

a critic I sometimes like has panned this on pretty much purely social justice / gender pols grounds which, maybe it really is so retrograde that is tanks the movie but it seems like a weird thing to center otherwise

not a visual description. i need more coffee. a description of ANYTHING he sees in the movie. i just don't understand movie writers who have no interest in the whole moving picture part of movies. or sound either for that matter! what did it sound like? he should just write for USA Today.

"well, he acknowledges the visuals are the point, sort of"

LOL, yeah, a "hilarious" internet critic joke about mashing 5 things together and he's done! so tired. get a real writer, nyt.

"blank"...on acid! #yawnface

xpost You mean "uproarious" in NYT English.

AO Scott, I will bet you, has never rolled.

i just don't understand movie writers who have no interest in the whole moving picture part of movies. or sound either for that matter! what did it sound like?

The equivalent of music critics who devote their entire word count to gossip about the artist's personal life and analysis of lyrics as they relate to same.

that's basically all music criticism at this point

no it isn't

ok

ok

Should I see this in 3D? Normally I wouldn't

Yes.

ok

no it isn't

Valerian & Laureline: The Nebula of Ambivalence

i'm still gonna see this, 51% on metacritic which is similar to the 52% score the fifth element has on there. that seems accurate, i don't think this is receiving poorer notices than TFE did when it was released.

we're seeing it on the 4th

i enjoyed this. i also kinda hate 3D movies. the theater itself was kinda excellent though. newfangled digital theater in a mall with an excellent screen and sound and stadium seating. would actually love to see dunkirk there. it just takes me too long to get acclimated to 3D. and i have to sit way in the back to take it all in properly. i got used to it but 3D just ends up taking me out of movies. i don't get sucked in. i'm constantly aware that i'm wearing 3D glasses and watching a 3D movie.

the dude in this was pretty lame. and the main duo had zero chemistry. it felt like they had met each other the day before. it should have been two cool women. they had no fun together. no fun banter. nothing. but whatever. there was enough cool stuff in this movie for ten movies. so much to see! very inventive. just the costumes alone. creatures. very cool. i did feel detached though. partly because of the 3D but in general i didn't really care what happened to anyone. but still, very much worth seeing.

that rihanna scene was pretty lame. she sounded like a disney fish or something. her voice didn't fit the movie. also, i would love some future music in sci-fi movies. the retro thing must die.

this was dope (i didn't bother with 3D tho).

Sounds like thing is going to lose a ton of money.

it's not primarily aimed at the US market from what I can tell

I uh didn't enjoy this v much, bizarre casting choices and just no apparent thematic core to grasp onto really

dane dehaan: why

cara delevingne was a joy, having the movie titled after the less interesting lead was bleh. scott otm about the lack of chemistry, the dynamic between the characters and what was supposed to be cute (the whole 'playlist' thing barf) didn't work and the monologues about love hit the wrong notes

the middle part was too much of a shaggy dog story where the plot wasn't progressing

was the english dialogue written by people who were trying to coin new english idioms? kind of felt like it sometimes

that is to say, people who don't have english as a primary language trying to sound hip in english

cara delevingne was a joy

nah

they called up an intern at io9 on the phone and asked them for the hot new english language scifi slang.