VALERIAN AND THE CITY OF A THOUSAND PLANETS

VALERIAN AND THE CITY OF A THOUSAND PLANETS. Luc Besson, dir. script. "Based on the comic book series 'Valerian and Laureline by Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières." Hugues Tissandier, production design.[1] France: EuropaCorp Fundamental Films (first-listed production companies) / EuropaCorp. (French distribution), STX Entertainment (US theatrical distribution), 2017. See IMDb for complexities of production and distribution.[2]

Of interest here, and possibly more generally, for the visuals. Note movement among various worlds, both open and assertively natural and organic (and sometimes strongly gelatinous), juxtaposed to those built by sentience, human and otherwise, and often combining to various degrees mechanization, militarization, bureaucratization — and the cybernetic, hard-edged metallic, robotic, virtual (VR), and AI-managed (although not ruled). Central here, and to the plot, is the planet Mül: a low-population, unspoiled Tahiti of a world of a gentle non-human species, threatened by a war among humans (and others?) where their world's destruction by huge spacecraft is collateral damage.

Note positive containment inside spacecraft for the building of the giant space-station Alpha: which becomes the gigantic "WONDER CITY OF THE FUTURE" in space; note also the positive containment of Valerian and Laureline inside their AI-assisted spacecraft — and contrast such positive containment to images of somewhat sympathetic military forces being trapped in various military areas of Alpha by large K-Tron battle robots[3] of a Cylon-ish cast,[4] whose villainous human commander is visually associated with gears and in the dialog associated with "procedure," the military chain of command and therefore bureaucratic organization.

VALARIAN is covered in detail on Metacritic (where it received "Mixed or average reviews").[5]

RDE, Initial Compiler, 24/VII/17