: Dispatch ships to various galaxies and scan them to uncover missions and encounter new alien lifeforms. Diplomacy & Missions
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is a 2017 space opera film directed by Luc Besson, based on the French comic series Valérian and Laureline . It is renowned for its visual spectacle and holds the record for the most expensive European and independent film ever made.
The film features an international cast with several high-profile cameos:
In the pantheon of 21st-century science fiction cinema, few films have dared to be as visually audacious, colorfully bizarre, or genuinely ambitious as Luc Besson’s 2017 adaptation of the classic French comic series, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets . While the film received mixed reviews upon its release, focusing heavily on its lead actors’ chemistry, time has been surprisingly kind to Besson’s magnum opus. To discuss Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets today is to discuss a work of art that prioritizes world-building over plot, imagination over restraint, and spectacle over subtlety. Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets - E...
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets faced an uphill battle upon its July 2017 release. Grossing roughly $225 million worldwide against its massive budget, the film struggled to turn a profit during its initial theatrical window, largely due to stiff competition from established franchises and a divided critical reception. Why Critics Were Divided
Visual Design and World-Building Where Valerian most fully succeeds is in visual imagination. Besson and his production team create a maximalist mise-en-scène: kaleidoscopic cityscapes, fluid creature design, and painstakingly detailed environments that reward sustained looking. The film’s aesthetics draw on Mézières’s original art while filtering it through contemporary CGI capabilities. Set pieces—such as the shifting marketplaces of Alpha, the luxury of Bubble Town, and the densely populated streets—function as both sensory overload and evidence of serious world-building effort.
The undisputed star of Valerian is its world-building. Besson creates a universe that is dense, colorful, and teeming with life. : Dispatch ships to various galaxies and scan
Compare it further to the Valerian and Laureline comic series. Suggest similar sci-fi films to watch next.
However, the emphasis on spectacle also exposes the film’s structural weaknesses. Frequent detours into visual novelty sometimes come at the expense of narrative economy; characters and subplots are introduced with visual flair but underdeveloped in terms of motivation or consequence. This imbalance produces a film that is often thrilling to watch but occasionally thin to think about.
Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets - Everything You Need to Know The film features an international cast with several
Unlike contemporary franchises such as Star Wars or the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which often utilize standardized color palettes and familiar landscapes, Valerian embraces a "Baroque" aesthetic. From the bioluminescent landscapes of the planet Mül to the "Big Market" (a multidimensional bazaar existing across overlapping planes of reality), Besson prioritizes sensory overload. This approach forces the viewer into the position of a true alien, emphasizing the sheer scale and incomprehensibility of the cosmos.
The film is a lifelong passion project for Besson, who grew up reading the Valérian and Laureline comics by Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières. The Setting : Most of the action takes place on , a sprawling space station where thousands of species
The film features a star-studded cast, though its leads garnered the most discussion.
: A massive interdimensional bazaar on the planet Kirian. Shoppers must wear special goggles to see and interact with the 1,000,000+ shops that exist in a parallel dimension. Essential Viewing/Reading Order If you want to dive deeper into the source material: