Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

Luc Besson's raison d'etre is to create films that are global successes rather than American ones. He's set up a whole studio in order to do so. The Fifth Element was pretty successful in the US, I don't see any reason this wouldn't.

I'm not completely down with Besson, but I really enjoy the Valerian and Laureline comics. They're a good fit for him.

Great news. The source material is pure unrestricted seventies, free love, lots of mind altering drugs, aliens that are actually alien in their thinking and acting. And one of the few female characters in comic book history that are actually women.
Besson picked my favourite book from the series, when the space opera was strong and before the heavy-handed time travel philosophy kicked in. As a huge fan of the series I am divided on Besson directing this. He's got the visuals down, no doubt, but he just never got me to believe in one of his characters as being an actual human being. This probably won't work if the protagonists are flat or shallow. Still a must see for me, the first since Fury Road.

Black Barney wrote: Crayons, those first two sentences are funny but are they actually true? Genuinely curious

Beyond a touch of hyperbole, I think it at least has the ring of truth.

The fifth element wasn't a blockbuster. Yeah, it was ranked number 1 for a couple weeks, but domestic gross was only 1/5 of worldwide sales.
It seems a movie that was only appreciated after the fact in video sales, and not during its offering in theaters. Most actually decent movies suffer this.

I think of Jeunet's 'City of Lost Children' as a sci fi, or at least steam punkish. And that film never got a domestic release of note beyond art theaters. Yet, I find it to be brilliant and only knew about it after it went to video.

French designed stories just don't do well in the states, sci fi or no.

Michael Barnes wrote: There hasn't been a great Luc Besson film in too long. And The Fifth Element, one of his best, is hugely inspired by Euro SF like Valerian.

Black Barney wrote: My only takeaways are that it looks a ton like fifth element, I'm attracted to the heroine, and I'm wondering if Besson intentionally put a cuter version of Milla just to piss off his ex

Fifth Element drew a LOT of inspiration from the Valerian comic books, because - Jean-Claude Mézières (Illustrator) originally got hired by Besson to do the visuals for the film!

Here's a quote from Wikipedia:

In December 1991, Mézières was approached by director Luc Besson, a lifelong fan of Valérian, who wanted Mézières to work on designs for a science fiction film called Zaltman Bléros. Along with his old friend Jean Giraud, who had also been approached by Besson, he began work producing concepts of buildings and vehicles for the futuristic New York depicted in the script. Interested by the flying taxi cabs that appeared in some of the drawings, Besson asked Mézières to draw more taxis and also a flying police car. By the start of 1993, production had stalled and Besson moved to the United States to work on the film Léon. Mézières returned to Valérian for the album The Circles of Power, published in 1994. This album made use of some of the concepts Mézières had worked on for Zaltman Bléros and featured a character, S'Traks, who drove a flying taxi around a great metropolis on the planet Rubanis. Mézières sent a copy of the album to Besson when it was finished. The commercial success of Léon led to Zaltman Bléros, now re-titled The Fifth Element, being green-lit for production. Mézières returned to the production and was amused to discover that the occupation of Korben Dallas, the film's main protagonist, had been changed from a worker in a rocket-ship factory to that of a taxi driver – obviously inspired by Mézières' drawings for the film and by The Circles of Power. Mézières produced further designs for the film including more taxis as well as spaceships and sets including the Fhloston Paradise liner seen in the latter part of the film. The Fifth Element was finally completed and released in 1997. Mézières published many of his concept drawings for the film in Les Extras de Mézières No. 2: Mon Cinquieme Element.[

When I was about 10, amidst the Asterix and Tin Tin in the comic section of the local library was one Valerian story "Heroes of the Equinox", and I borrowed it about 10 times. I have never really read more than that one story but I loved it so much as a child (I have vague memories of the covers of other stories, but can't work out if I read them or if I just saw them advertised in Heroes). I had forgotten about it until now, and really need to acquire some Valerian.

Cinebook has been publishing English translations of the Valerian books.

They're available digitally here: www.izneo.com/search.html?genre=7&editeu...&language=uk&target=

and physically thru Amazon

www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_nr_n_8?fst=as%3A...7659&rnid=2941120011

Rubbing it in:

Columbob wrote: Along with his old friend Jean Giraud

that's this guy: