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I tweeted:

 

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Valerian has some nice character design but lacks the deft charm of Fifth Element and the prowess of Avatar. Shame.

 

Roderick said:

 

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Valerian and the city of the thousand planets is pretty cool! And exceedingly French. I went in with low expectations for the story (not being the biggest fan of The Fifth Element) and was constantly pleasantly surprised. You'll find plenty of faults in the characterizations and some seedy scenes perhaps, but as a colorful and sly and lavishly colorful, familiar-yet-weird space adventure, this has everything you could crave for.

 

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Well I liked the movie, so you are both wrong.

I never read any of the comics, but after seeing the movie it's really clear that the series was a big influence on Besson when he wrote Fifth Element. For the Fifth Element Besson was able to construct the whole world and characters from scratch. But for this movie he had to write a story for a well established world, and to make it work try to introduce viewers to this world within a short time.

The Fifth Element is really compacted as a world for just what is needed for the movie, as there does not exist anything outside of the movie. A sequel to Fifth Element makes little sense. Another Valerian movie will make sense, because they can have a butt load of other adventures in that world. I would really like another movie in 5 years or so.

 

 

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I think Roderick liked it too!

 

Perhaps Besson aimed to do more world-building with this one, but if that has a negative impact on the film as a single entity then it's not a good idea or needs to be executed differently. It's a trap lots of franchise-starters (and even -middlers) fall into these days.

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Yep, and that's why it's a horrible medium to present a large and complex world.

Apparently the Dark Tower is also suffering from it.

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Oh, I am definitely very positive about Valerian. Mind you, I didn't know anything about the world beforehand, from the comics or other media (supposedly there is a horrible faux-anime floating around somewhere). I don't feel there was too much exposition. The movie sets up its premise rather handsomely and takes only the barest minimum of time to establish things. Alpha itself gets a bigger introduction because of its key role in the film, but even so keeps enough surprises for later enjoyment.

 

In regards to the comparison to The Fifth Element, when watching that film I frequently felt that the characters were so over-the-top that they weren't taking the world serious, and so I shouldn't either. Valerian manages a better balance. While still offering crazy characters,

 

the champagne-popping deep-sea diver and the dimensional market guide come to mind,

everyone feels more invested in what's at stake. No matter how irreverent Valerian gets.

 

Perhaps a more interesting comparison is with Guardians of the Galaxy (2). Though they tap from the same barrel (colorful, slightly comedic space adventures), GotG carries with it a more ironic feel. It feels like it seeks an understanding with the audience that they both know it's kerrazy. Valerian on the other hand feels more like a true-spirited hommage to retro scifi, and manages it without feeling out-dated.

 

[Note: not a burn on GotG btw, which is fun and good]

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There's a completely different comic style of the US vs Europe, there European comics have way deeper lore and leave much more to the readers imagination due to the fact that there's maybe a story once a year and not every two weeks.

I'm sure that certain person has a big backstory in the comics. Just like the

mercenary squad

.

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