Valerian.and.the.city.of.a.thousand.planets.201... Jun 2026

, a massive space station known as the "," where thousands of species coexist and share knowledge. The story follows two elite human operatives, Major Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and Sergeant Laureline

Besson uses the Pearls—peaceful, beautiful, and nearly extinct—as stand-ins for indigenous populations obliterated by colonial forces. The human commanders are not evil for the sake of evil; they are bureaucrats terrified of the political fallout of their mistake. The climax has Valerian and Laureline actively betraying their own government to return the stolen Converter to the Pearls, allowing them to escape to a new world. Valerian.and.The.City.of.A.Thousand.Planets.201...

"Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets" draws inspiration from a range of sources, including classic sci-fi films like "Blade Runner," "Alien," and "Star Wars." The film's visuals are also influenced by the works of Moebius, the French comic book artist who created the original "Valérian et Laureline" series. , a massive space station known as the

In 2017, French director Luc Besson released Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets , a film that represented a lifelong dream. Based on the seminal French comic series Valérian and Laureline by Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières—a series that directly inspired Star Wars —Besson poured over $200 million of his own fortune into creating a visually unhinged, original sci-fi universe. The result is one of modern cinema’s most fascinating paradoxes: a film of breathtaking imaginative scope that is simultaneously hollow at its core. Valerian succeeds as a museum of futuristic art but fails as a compelling narrative, offering a crucial lesson about the difference between world-building and storytelling. The climax has Valerian and Laureline actively betraying

Here are a few post options for Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

The film’s greatest triumph is its title character: the City of a Thousand Planets. Besson opens with a masterful, nearly dialogue-free montage showing the International Space Station expanding over centuries as alien races arrive, dock, and integrate. By the 28th century, Alpha has become a teeming, bioluminescent ecosystem of cultures. The production design is staggering, from the underwater market of Kyun to the shape-shifting shores of the planet Mul. Besson utilizes a hyper-saturated, colorful palette that stands in stark contrast to the gritty, grey realism of many contemporary blockbusters. Each new creature—from the dog-like assistant to the calculating rulers of the planet Pearls—is rendered with meticulous detail. In terms of pure visual inventiveness, the film is a masterpiece. It asks the audience to simply look and wonder, reviving the sense of awe that defined classic sci-fi illustration.