Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets comes out (in the US at least) exactly a year today. But Luc Besson has already wrapped on his sci-fi spectacular, and dropped into San Diego with stars Cara Delevingne and Dane DeHaan in tow to show off a few scenes at Comic-Con. First, though, there was a sizzle reel of a more surprising nature. “We finished the film five weeks ago,” Besson told the Hall H crowd, “and I went on holiday for three weeks.” The director then treated the room to a slideshow of intimate vacation photos, including, in what might be a Comic-Con first, a close-up of his arse-crack.
With that out of the way, he and wife/co-producer Virginie Besson-Silla explained the history of the project. Besson discovered French comic book Valerian And Laureline when he was just ten years old: the heady sci-fi scenarios, written by Pierre Christin and drawn by Jean-Claude Mézières, blew his tiny mind. “It’s about two space agents who go through time and space… and they’re so cute,” said Besson. “I fell in love with Laureline, but I wanted to be Valerian.” After he hired Mezieres to do design work on The Fifth Element, the artist asked Besson if he’d consider turning it into a movie. “I said, ‘It’s just not possible — it’s ten per cent humans and 90 per cent aliens’,” recalled Besson. “But I bought the rights anyway and wrote a version that was pretty good. Then Avatar came and I threw my script in the garbage.”
A few years later, after seeking advice from James Cameron himself, Besson was ready to try again. Judging by the concept art unveiled at the Comic-Con panel, Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets will be big, bright and very bold, teeming with extraterrestrial life. Set in the year 2700, the action will largely unfold on a planet-sized space station called Alpha, which is 20km long and home to over 8,000 species. There are small aliens (one is housed inside a bubble with mech limb extensions), big aliens (including an ocean-leviathan with a jellyfish attached to its head) and aliens that are really into feathers. There’s even one that looks a bit like Bob the Builder, and which can only say, “Da!” The movie will also take us to a market planet that contains a million shops. Shudder at the thought of what sales week would look like.
The humungous scope of the project – the costume department cranked out 700 outfits – was further showcased by a selection of clips. The footage confirmed that Besson’s trademark eccentricity will be present and correct. In one scene, Laureline (Delevingne) escapes from two guards by using handcuff-fu, before confronting three curious-looking aliens (they look simian, but with elephant-like trunks). In another, she and Valerian (DeHaan), clad in a glorious Hawaiian shirt, team up with some bemused-looking hard cases on a desert planet to take on a giant lizard-beastie. But the sequence that got the biggest reaction saw Valerian stroll through Paradise Island, a neon-drenched part of Alpha full of model types and seedy nightclubs, before being lured into a cabaret by a squeaky-voiced space-pimp played by Ethan Hawke. He sits in front of a stage, where a stripper slowly turns. The big reveal: it’s Rihanna.
It all looks very polished, very sleek and very weird. Could this be the start of another sci-fi mega-franchise? It’s another year until we find out, but early signs bode well.