Finally got around to seeing it. I feel like starting my review the same way I did with Lucy, which is stating that Luc Besson consistently shows that there's still a very talented filmmaker hidden inside of him, but he can also be such a misguided filmmaker. Let's start with the obvious, this film is stunning to look at. Like seriously, this movie kinda proves how much money the Hollywood system wastes because even though this is an expensive movie, it looks like like every dollar was well-spent as far as the visuals go. Many of the scenes are just fukking
'Wow!' to see and I appreciated that most of the time Besson would take the time to show it off too. It is full blown-out comic book scifi so it would be easy to think it looks like some cartoon shyt but it is handled so well visually that you just buy every ridiculous moment of it.
But damn did he go wrong with the casting.
@Saint1 already mentioned it above but I was fukking dying at Dane DeHaan doing a Keanu Reeves impression for the entire movie. That shyt was at the least an 8/10 impression too which is kinda
in its own right but why the fukk would you have your $200 million scifi movie lead character purposely channel Keanu Reeves in the first place? shyt makes
zero sense.
And holy fukk, the chemistry between him and Delevingne was just awful. It was in fact so bad, that during the part of the movie where Valerian disappears and Laureline has to look for him, her performance becomes
noticeably better. Like it's not even as if there's no chemistry there, she actually seems to be completely out of her comfort zone just being in the dude's presence.
Like The Fifth Element this will end up being a cult classic. It has so much questionable bad stuff in it, but at the same time it's also a unique unparalleled scifi experience. Where else can you get a scifi movie that spends 5 minutes on a dance sequence featuring a transforming Rihanna swinging on a stripper pole as Ethan Hawke plays on a futuristic organ that somehow plays a very 2017-ish sounding Will.I.Am produced pop mix? Exactly!