Valerian and the city of a thousand planets(2017)

[Greg]

Well, it looked really good. And it started off really well. But then not so much.

Basically there's a thing the hero has to get in order to save the thing and his girl is in danger and there's lots of things happening. And Rihanna is an alien who can shape shift but mostly into sexy versions of herself. And Valerian seemed to be doing a Keanu Reeves impersonation the entire time.

And in the end there is a big speech about love and diversity and the whole galaxy or planet is saved from the evil machinations of the bad guy. And Valerian and his girl go off to be married despite the fact they seemed to have no chemistry whatsoever.

But it looked good. It seemed to have a lot of the same story arc as The Fifth Element.

[Drunk Monk]

Greg is spot on with the review above.  I totally agree about 5th Element - the color scheme, the tone, the pacing - I like Besson for his espionage films - La Femme Nikita launched a whole genre of femme fatale assassins and the Taken franchise was...well, if you weren't into them you should be blackballed from DOOM.  I thought his work with Jet was interesting, not in an over-the-top way, just in a different style of martial arts film.  But his Sci-Fi is rough.  I'm still at odds with 5th Element and hated Lucy.  This was like 5th Element on CGI steroids.  The actor playing Valerian sucked.  He was just flat - like the worst Keanu ever.  Cara Delevingne (who we'll call 'eyebrows' from now on) had potential but was stilted by a dumb role and the ending hook-up with Valerian was lame and unbelievable (didn't that happen in 5th Element too?)  Like Greg said, zilch on the chemistry, and this would have worked if she just blew him off.  Eyebrows was more memorable as the Suicide Squad sorceress, which really isn’t saying much at all. Rihanna stole the show for what little bits she was in - sexy versions, you say?  Well, it's Rihanna.  That's what she does. Her shape-shifting scene was very entertaining, one of the highlights of the film.  This poaches heavily from Avatar  (Mul = Navi) and Star Wars (Falcon-shaped ship and the garbage shut escape) and sure a few others.  It's very visual and there were some concepts that were borderline intriguing, like the VR other dimension market, but some were silly, like washing your face with 10 megaton power pearls. It was made with some Chinese money so Kris Wu has a flower-vase role.  I think I would've enjoyed seeing it in Chinese better, because it would've been more abstract.  I hope Besson goes back to making spy flicks.