Transcript
Speaker: Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to your favorite bad movie podcast. It's the only podcast that's brave enough to ask the question, if this movie is so bad, why do you like it so much?
Speaker: We're your hosts. My name is Chris Anderson. And with me, as always, I have the ah Valerian to my Laureline, Monsieur Greg Bossy.
Speaker: well then i'll Well, then I'll say hello like this. It's nice to talk to you. Shut I hate you. Marry me. I hate i hate mary everything about you. Marry me. And I'm mean person. you should I've decided I want to spend the rest of my life with you.
Speaker: Unfortunately, we do do not have the person who I want to spend the rest of my life here with me. My lovely wife, Anna. The rest of my wife, I think I said. I don't even care at this point. I'm bereft that they couldn't make it. But I'm so excited that we have a very special guest with us.
Speaker: You might know him as one of the doves of dove weather. But today, he is our own personal Commander Clive. It's AP! Ooh.
Speaker: Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to to see a problem and find the solution almost immediately by either talking to someone or doing a small transaction.
Speaker: Yes. yeah I'm excited to watch the movie of watching someone else play Myst. You know ah Listeners, this week we're talking about Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. If you haven't seen Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, good for you. ah Here is just a brief summary to hold in your mind.
Speaker: In the distant future, two government agents that look like they are 14-year-olds named Valerian and Laureline must investigate an anomaly at the center of a giant space station known as the City of a Thousand Planets.
Speaker: Invention.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's basically it. Yeah? Now, AP, of all the movies in the world, you brought to me two choices. Your first choice was Dancer in the Dark, which I thought too depressing. i not the Not the vibe. I'd be that's love to talk about it. That's an interesting choice. I had never thought of examining it through that lens, I must confess. But I also never got around to watching it because it sounded too depressing. But instead, we went for Valyrian and the City of a Thousand Planets.
Speaker: Why did you pick Valyrian and the City of a Thousand Planets? You know, I wanted to cast your mind to the salad days of 2017. Yeah.
Speaker: yeah A simpler time. a much simpler time. we Barely woke one was happening. Yes. A young fellow in college dealing with a lot of stress figured out, hey, if you don't do the homework, if you don't do the tests, you don't have to stress about them. so what's it It's true.
Speaker: So what did a little old AP do in the most stressful time of the semester finals? I watched this movie in repeat.
Speaker: and so Wow. It's a bad movie, but it yeah also holds a tiny bit of a spark within me. Sure. A pearl, you might say. Yeah, i' that is true there. And I could see, well, that I don't want to say that this movie is entirely bad.
Speaker: I think it is bad. i But I think there are good things in there. They're just nowhere near enough of them and they aren't that good. ah I hadn't seen this one before.
Speaker: It's based on a French sci-fi comic and I know a little bit of French sci-fi comics and it definitely reminded me of that aesthetic. yeah But beyond that, and you know and I had seen other Luc Besson films, but nothing about it looked interesting to me.
Speaker: and And I watched it and that confirmed my suspicion. I did not find this film to be that good. What about you, Greg? Okay, so I have to preface this by saying that basically since I think The Fifth Element came out in 1997, if I remember So i saw that as And I have kind of traditionally called that my favorite film since that time. I haven't really reexamined that. I saw it again. There's a like maybe 10 years ago or so they were playing it in the theater for like a day. So I went and I saw it's like still holds up, still a good time.
Speaker: But I've reached a point where I care less to try to figure out what my favorite thing of each genre or medium is. And so I haven't really reexamined that, but it's still like in my brain that like,
Speaker: The Fifth Element. That's my favorite film. And so when this came out, I saw trailers. I was like, okay, this is exciting. We're getting some kind of Fifth Element-y stuff from Bassan again. For sure. um I was pretty excited, but I didn't see it like opening weekend. And then I didn't hear anything good.
Speaker: And so I didn't go and see it. And then since then, it's been on like streaming. and I've been like an inch away from watching it like 17 times. And it just never, it just never pressed play. And so I was very excited to have an excuse to press play this time.
Speaker: ah And I'm going to keep my thoughts on what I thought until ah we get into it all, I guess. Okay, fair enough. I mean, you know me, Greg, I like to lay it all out on the table. Oh, it's true. It's true. like a little bit mystery. You your cards, yeah, close to your vest.
Speaker: Gotta have that second act reveal, the prestige. That's right. All right. Well, do you guys want to hear about what I learned about the making of Valerian in the City of a Thousand Planets?
Speaker: I would love to. Okay, good, because that's the next part of the show.
Speaker: I
Speaker: All right. So Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets was released July 17th, 2017. twenty seventeen Summertime. Perfect time to release this movie. July. Absolutely.
Speaker: ah Your director, Luc Besson, as we've mentioned. And I got two taglines. Tagline number one. This one I think is arguably the truest and most telling of them.
Speaker: From the visionary director of The Fifth Element and Lucy. Sure. Yeah. That's so true. Either you guys see Lucy? I didn't. I saw it in the theaters, brother. ah what What did you think about Lucy?
Speaker: i like I certainly love the idea of becoming smart through no work or effort. I yeah might be in love with that concept, to be honest. You should see Limitless.
Speaker: I would love Limitless-style pill to take every morning to yeah to make money on Wall Street and get laid. it Just like... Yeah.
Speaker: Just like he did in the in the very first day that he took the pill. But I could tell you that Lucy is a story that says, what if the singularity is a woman? And to that, i say, yeah, papi, yeah, absolutely. The singularity is female.
Speaker: Okay. ah Yeah, it was sort of like Limitless meets The Matrix, but with a sexy lady as the center, but still somehow was strangely boring.
Speaker: ah Tagline number two. A universe without boundaries needs heroes without limits.
Speaker: m
Speaker: it's it's um yeah it's It's hard to formulate a response somehow. It doesn't bowl me over. It sounds so sexless. It's probably like marketing copy.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. And I think maybe they're trying to go for like a retro vibe. Like I feel like this almost wants to be... like a Steven Spielberg movie almost in that sort of sense of adventure.
Speaker: Yeah. ah But obviously doesn't quite get there. And I mean, and also this is released in 2017. This is clearly part of that, like post Harry Potter wave of just trying to find why a feeling stuff that you could try to make out franchise out of what could be the next hunger games. What could be the next maze runner, you know, just anything to throw at the wall.
Speaker: I also think it's very much influenced by the Marvel stuff that was happening at this time. Oh, for sure. That makes sense. Yeah. Marvel had already been mature in its like storytelling and movies by 2017.
Speaker: seventeen so there was enough like space for people to copy and slopify the general like techno future like everything is like sparkling little lights that fix every issue and that is present in here because that was pretty much all of iron man movies after the nanobots got added to everything And I feel like it's, you could see Luc Besson being like, American comics work.
Speaker: Why can't I do that with a French comic? Why can't I do, why can't I be the French Marvel? You know, he could, he was thinking maybe this will be a slam dunk for me. And so, you know, in November of 1967, the French comics magazine Pilot, the publisher of Asterix and Obelix, and also Mobius's classic Western comic Blueberry, if any comic book nerds are listening?
Speaker: They added another classic French comic to its roster when it published the first installment of Valerian et Laureline, a sci-fi comic about a pair of government agents living in the 28th century tasked with stopping rogue time travelers from screwing up the timeline.
Speaker: okay It went on to become a massive hit and a forerunner of Heavy Metal magazine, and it ran for another 43 years. The last issue came out in 2010. Yeah.
Speaker: yeah no I mean, you got to respect that. It's probably really good. I don't know if any of it's actually been published in English.
Speaker: Now, one person that grew up reading Valerian at Laureline was French director slash never convicted sexual predator, Luc Besson. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah, it's a shame. I got to say that someone showed me The Professional after I had seen The Fifth Element. And after watching that movie, I was like, that's the sexual tension between the child and the man is a bit weird for me.
Speaker: Yes. I'm pretty sure that that has kind of influenced me not watching Valerian or reexamining The Fifth Element too much. Yeah, yeah. I remember when I was a kid liking The Professional because I was like 14.
Speaker: fourteen i was like, oh, Natalie Portman's hot. Natalie Portman's always been older than me. So when I was a kid and watching it, was like, yes. And the thing about Luc Besson is that he does answer the question, what is the most common Frenchman there is?
Speaker: it Yeah, because like we're, we're and I don't think we're going to get into detail here of Mr. Never Convicted, but ah mr Never Convicted is one of many, many, many French directors that has some some oddities in their background and it's it's yes the same absolutely yeah check out our uh episode on my father of the hero where we're talking of about uh national treasure slash serial rapist gerard depardue they got some problems in the culture over there in france you know not that we were ones to throw stones from here in america but they got some problems in the culture there too
Speaker: Uh, now, uh, Besson, he was such a fan of, uh, Valerian and Laureline that he hired on the artist, uh, Jean-Claude Meziere to do design sketches for the fifth element.
Speaker: ah At the time, Messier suggested that Besson adapt Valerian instead. He's like, Fifth Element's a piece of shit. You should adapt my comic. My comic's good. And Besson, as I recall, had worked a on the story for Fifth Element since he was like a child. I bet he didn't like hearing that, but...
Speaker: you know, say, lo ah but he was like, oh yeah, maybe someday I could do that. But he didn't think that technologically and financially at that point in history, you couldn't do it because you would need to make just too many different types of aliens and making all the different aliens would be too expensive.
Speaker: But then in 2009, James Cameron released Avatar. It was that long ago. yeah Yeah. That was how long the first one. Yeah.
Speaker: We're living in the future. Yeah. It only took him another 17 years. Yeah. He's almost done with the Quintology. Yeah.
Speaker: But yeah, 2009, Luke Bisson sees Avatar and he's like, now we've got the technology. Now it's possible. We can do a Valerian and Lorelene movie and you could do it right.
Speaker: And he saw how much money Avatar made. And that's another part of this puzzle for sure. In addition to like all those other movies that we mentioned before. And he thought, you know, I could do that. I could do that.
Speaker: You got to admire like swinging for the fences. It does take like a level of like self-assuredness to be like, hey, just one of the best directors ever ah made Avatar. A guy that just prints money.
Speaker: Yeah. I could just do that with and a French comic book and two people that look oddly too oddly similar to not be related but are still not related.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Oh. Oh, believe me, I want to go talk at length about our leads because they bizarre. You're going to have to, I think. Yeah, they are a huge part of what went wrong in this movie.
Speaker: So anyway, at this point in 2009, he had actually already written a draft of the script, saving it for a rainy day or maybe as an exercise. Who knows? But after he saw Avatar, he spent another seven months rewriting it and doing storyboards. So now we're probably somewhere in 2010.
Speaker: Now, at this point in his career, Bassan was doing a lot more producing than directing. And this experience would prove very useful because he was going to produce this movie and it was going to very expensive. He was eventually, with the help of many international investors, able to raise a budget of 197 million crazy This makes Valerian, it gives it twice the budget of the previous record holder of the most expensive French film ever made. More than doubling the record set by Asterix and Obelix at the Olympic Games, another comic from Pilot Magazine. Okay. ah i also read that it took the record for the most expensive independent film ever made.
Speaker: And makes sense I wouldn't be surprised. And I wouldn't be surprised was the most expensive film we ever covered on the show.
Speaker: Yeah. Well, I, when, when you invite Dove Weather into the show, you, we only bring the biggest, we only bring the loudest. Yes. I love it. There's nothing wrong with reaching for the stars.
Speaker: Your name is up on the big board. Who will knock down AP with a more expensive movie? Now, unfortunately, it appears that Bassan overestimated the international appeal of a 50-year-old French science fiction comic named after a sleep-inducing herbal supplement.
Speaker: It came in fifth in the domestic box office its opening weekend, only pulling in $17 million. dollars
Speaker: Bad word of mouth. ah Tanked it by its second weekend, when it came in eighth. At the end of its run, it only pulled in $226 million, dollars which is both a shit ton of money and also nowhere near enough.
Speaker: Other science fiction films of 2017, what else could you have imprinted on that weekend in college? Well, I mean... ah 2017 was a big year for for me because it was the year where I switched multiple majors. So honestly, i would like to say, hey, I had a roster of movies that I was watching, but it was it was flipping in between Valerian and Snowpiercer.
Speaker: Interesting. Okay. Okay. Snowpiercer on the list. We got ah Blade Runner 2049 also came out twenty seventeen okay Alien Covenant. Never seen it.
Speaker: It's fine. Geostorm. I've meant to see that. Oh, that one was terrible. That's exactly why I've meant to see it.
Speaker: ah The Dark Tower. Oh, yeah. You want see the Dark Tower? I just kind of wanted to. that one That one was a bucket of ah hand grenades to the face.
Speaker: Wow. Okay. Okay. Yeah, I bet it's real intense. I'm pretty curious. ah Life? Something called not... Something called Life? Okay. think it's about like ah cloning in space or something? I don't know. Sure, sure. and War for the Planet of the Apes.
Speaker: Ah. Ah. I haven't seen any of these these apes. This generation of apes. I've seen bits of the new ones. They seem fine. I've seen all of them. i am cold on every single one of them. Okay. Have you seen the originals?
Speaker: I have seen the originals. How do you feel about those? I like the first one. Yeah. <unk>s That's a good answer. I like the one with Poggio Maddy in it just because it has Poggio Maddy in it.
Speaker: yeah no that's Yeah, he's a great orangutan. i I have a quick story that i'm going go to tell about ah Planet of the Apes, but it also is going to involve the bummer alarm, which I have not properly wrote it to my headphones. So I will edit in the bummer alarm later.
Speaker: Bummer alarm. Bummer alarm. This next bit is kind of a bummer.
Speaker: It's 9-11. Okay. My best friend ah had ah the habit at that time of leaving as her outgoing message audio clips from movies that we had watched recently.
Speaker: And so at that point, we had just watched Planet of the Apes. And I call her up on 9-11 and her outgoing message is, you maniacs, you blew it up.
Speaker: Yeah. ah So I told her she should call me back and maybe change that outgoing message in case her parents call or something. Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker: ah What did she know? yeah it's true. It's true. There's also that. i got to We got to get her on the record. You guys want to talk about the plot of Valerian?
Speaker: Yeah, sure. Oh, please.
Speaker: Plot bumper, listen to me. I'm gonna give you the plot summary. Come on, baby. Here's the synopsis.
Speaker: Plot bumper, plot bumper.
Speaker: We open on the International Space Station and David Bowie music plays on the soundtrack. Oh, and that was such a cliche. I'm sorry. I know you have so much written, but I immediately I threw i remember that it starts like this and my palm hit my face at Mach 20 because the level of cringe. because it's Ground Control to Major Tom. For the listeners, it's not just a David Bowie song. It's Ground Control to Major Tom. I immediately wrote, poor song choice. like I was first just like, oh no, I'm upset. like In the first moment that this has begun, I'm already like sighing heavily.
Speaker: Yeah, if you want to put Ground Control of the Major Tom in your movie, you kind of got to earn it. You can't just in lead with that. And also, like it's like, hey, we're in space. What's the song about space? Let's go with the obvious song about space. It's like, just just do a score or something.
Speaker: It feels like a Visa commercial. Yeah, yeah. It's as much of a cliche as if it would have started with like a smash cut into something rectangular flipping around like in 2001. It's that level of cliche.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah, it it does not play. ah But we see the space station expand as more countries dock with it. Obviously, you see China dock with it very quickly with a big Chinese flag because, you know, China put a lot of money into this movie. That would make sense. And then ah more countries join and they add on more little modules. And then aliens start showing up.
Speaker: Love the aliens. All the alien designs were really good. Yeah, lots of fun alien design in this. That is definitely one of the high points, I want to say. This is one I also have to say, like i like i i am so My mind is so like geared into like viewing ah French directors as being like culturally insensitive. then like I immediately was like, okay, so Luc Besson is saying, oh, just how an Asian person might be alien to a European person. Oh, an actual alien would be alien to us. and it just I didn't like the co-location of real human beings with extraterrestrials. no Yeah, purely because I'm like, brother, try to win me over just a tiny bit.
Speaker: Just a tiny bit. Yeah, this you shouldn't be playing in this sandbox. You don't need this kind of heat, Luc Besson. One of the issues with this movie is it very much assumes that you're with it from the start. It's just like you love these characters. It's like I am seeing them literally for the first time. I have no idea who they are or what their backgrounds are.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. This seems like this is made for the fans. And the problem is I don't think there are any fans. Yeah. ah So but but but but the this montage continues. More aliens show up.
Speaker: And then we jump into the future where the city is now too large to orbit the earth anymore. So they strap some rockets to it and they shoot it out of deep space along with its millions of inhabitants of millions of different species. Yeah.
Speaker: We then cut to 400 years after that for a second prologue for some reason. he This one is on the planet Mule. ah Here an alien race dives on beautiful white sand beaches for pearl and they hunt for giant energy pearls that fuel their society.
Speaker: And they also feed the pearls to little lizards who excrete more exact copies of the pearls into the world. This is important that there's an excreting lizard.
Speaker: Yeah. And their entire ecosystem is based around this pearl excretion and collection process. It's also weird to me that like when it's excreting the pearls, it's just coming out from all sides of the body, but you're not seeing how exactly it's like someone's doing a little flaps on its back. is Is that what it was? Show me the pearls coming out then. Cause it was just like, we'll show you from the front. They'll just be bursting out of the sides with no visual representation. I mean, I don't really want it, but it's just weird. I don't want to see.
Speaker: things bursting out of its skin what what it is is this it just felt like someone was doing a magic trick for me but was revealing the trick and be like wasn't that cool it's like i just looked like you were manipulating something it also shows how like this it's not a sci-fi a hard sci-fi like oh no happening it is yeah effectively science fantasy I also had the same thought. i was like, where are these pearls coming from? Where's the mass for these pearls coming from, Luc Besson?
Speaker: and i Did either you guys see Avatar? This feels very Avatar. Yeah, this part is very Avatar. But Avatar also dances with wolves and all these other, like, the natives are magical and all this horse shit.
Speaker: Oh, yeah. Avatar obviously has more going on than these freaks, who I also instantly disliked. i don't They seemed like they thought they were better than me. I got that impression very quickly. I didn't pick that up.
Speaker: These aliens, my my notation for these aliens is I had a sexy alien tally going, and this was my first checkmark. Yeah. Okay. I mean, yeah, they were sexy. Maybe that's part of why I thought they thought they were better than me because they were so confident in their sexy bodies. Yeah, they were.
Speaker: ah You know, where's that there's not one schlubby guy in the whole village. They're doing a lot of swimming. Swimming keeps you trim. That's true. Great cardio and swimming.
Speaker: ah So anyway, the Mula Knights, their life of natural harmony is soon completely wrecked. Giant spaceships come crashing down from the skies above.
Speaker: ah The Mula Knights run and take cover in the carcass of a damaged ship. Uh, unfortunately their princess didn't make it to cover in time.
Speaker: And then she dies when an especially large ship crashes into the surface of mule and destroys the entire planet.
Speaker: As she dies, Yeah. Yeah. yeah But as she dies, she emits a blue shockwave of energy, which flies across space and time where it hits Valerian, our hero.
Speaker: yeah ah He doesn't really have time to process it, though, because his bikini clad coworker, Laureline, wants to wrestle with him. But she's not interested in a relationship, she explains, because he's afraid of commitment.
Speaker: And anyway, they don't have much time for that kind of discussion. Their ship's onboard computer system tells them that they are approaching planet Kyrian, the site of their next mission. So now we've met our two heroes. We've got to talk about these guys. Yeah, we do.
Speaker: who who I don't even know where to start. Somebody somebody kick yourself. So first off, I just got to say the voice he's using, I don't know if that's his natural voice, oh but it's just like his whole attitude was just kind of like he's got this husky thing and he's just like, I'm here to get your shit or whatever. I don't know.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm a federal agent. it It doesn't sell to me at all. He's putting on Keanu Reeves' voice. Yeah. Like he's speaking very like ah in short sentences in a very monotone like growl.
Speaker: He's just doing Keanu Reeves. Yeah. Yeah. The Han is doing Keanu Reeves. Yeah. And, you know, it's people who don't like Keanu Reeves should check out Dane DeHaan and then go back and check out Keanu Reeves again. You realize how much he's doing because this kid is not pulling it off.
Speaker: He also looks like he's about 17. Yeah. At one point he says, I've been in the service for nine years. Like, when the fuck did you join when you were six? Do we know how old he actually is? He was 30. He was 30? looks great for 30. He looks crazy. That's crazy. But also that's wild.
Speaker: You know what it is? It's the butt cut. The butt cut ages him down. You give him a different haircut, he'd look like Elon Musk. Sure. He's also very slim. He's not a very muscularly built yeah like actor. And like he doesn't have like a very hairy like appearance either. He's just this kind of ageless, semi-adult looking guy.
Speaker: He has a presence, but the presence is not one of a government official who commands authority. No, he's like a bully. He looks like a high school bully. Yeah.
Speaker: He also has no game. has zero game. As I was watching this, I was writing down some stuff that he did. And it just seems like his move, and only move, is to be annoying.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Ending and slightly incompetent. And they talk about how he bedded down all these women, but they never show him actually charming any woman. They just say he did it at some point in the past when you just as easily could have had a scene where he goes into a bar and like winks at a gal and you'd be like, oh, yeah, because he's charming. But they didn't they didn't even think of fucking do something like that.
Speaker: And this was also supposed to be Dane DeHaan's big like ah starring role. This is a huge budget movie. Huge budget movie. He's just coming off of the Amazing Spider-Man series as Harry Osborn. just a couple of years earlier, he was in The Place Beyond the Pines. So he's getting both the the critical and the like commercial success here and there.
Speaker: And after this, his biggest credit was playing a minor role in Oppenheimer, which is like good. That's not nothing. He's working. Yeah. yeah And this guy should be doing character actor stuff. He's not a leading man.
Speaker: He has an interesting face, and I think he could do interesting stuff, but he shouldn't be doing stuff like this. Like, I think and we've been talking so much about him. Yeah. let's talk about her for a second. Sure. Yeah.
Speaker: Gee, beautiful young lady, 22, eight years younger than him. ah Completely charmless in this performance. i thought yeah this is cara delevine who yeah is ah who got popular because she is beautiful because she's a literal model yeah and yeah this movie like luke besant like digs into his like perviness and he's like you know what i'm gonna introduce my feminine like heroine ass Just this bikini-clad, kind of dour woman that's in a loveless relationship with her superior.
Speaker: Is she in relationship with him? Their relationship is so ill-defined. Yeah. It seems like their relationship is that she won't date him. And that's the extent of it. And he just keeps asking her to marry him.
Speaker: And she's like, no. It's like, are you dating? i don't understand how we got to this marriage thing. Is this the future? Is this what we do now? And they have no chemistry at all.
Speaker: I think... I found her performance to be better than his, but I don't know if that's because of her performance or just the context of what else was going on. Because I felt like he didn't really do anything, and she at least has one scene in which she disarms a couple of people, and I thought, oh, that looked effective.
Speaker: Yeah, that's fair. and I think also she's asked to do less in a strange way. Yeah. You know what I mean? he's He has to charm the audience. She doesn't have to be as charming because she's sort of the mean girl.
Speaker: Well, yeah. like One of the things that so happens here is that like the um Valerian starts with high status. He is like sunbathing. He's looking cool. And Laureline is literally at his service. which Which, like, yout talk you asked the question whether it's, like, the context or, like, Delevingne's, like, work. And i think it's I think it's both at the same time. Okay. ah There has been a long history of, like, models ah being put into, like, movie roles that just has not worked out.
Speaker: And unfortunately, Delevingne is one of those. and But Luc Besson is giving her nothing. Nothing to work with.
Speaker: Well, so...
Speaker: ah so V&L, they land on Kyrian, where their orders are to pose as tourists and confiscate a piece of contraband that's being traded by a space pirate named Igor Sirius, played by John Goodman, who given absolutely nothing to do with him.
Speaker: He sounded so familiar, but I had no idea. Would have never guessed John Goodman. When the Goodman voice like apparated, i was i was just reminded of how like stacked this like cast is. Like Ethan Hawkes in it, in it. Yeah, like Clive Owen is in this.
Speaker: Yeah, he spent some of that budget on some big names in this. I wish he had found some better leads. I really think like if you had had some, a charming couple with chemistry in the leads of this movie, it would become watchable.
Speaker: yeah Because you just would enjoy spending time with them and everything else you would just like buy into it Because you'd like, yeah, I'm on for the ride. There's plenty of rollercoaster ride here, but you're spending it with like the two most unpleasant people you could find. I would say that that like their unpleasantness comes from this sense of like placidity. like Neither Valerian or Loreline are allowed to like have big, massive emotions because they're supposed to be the cool ones throughout all of this. And so it just becomes a wooden board, mogging a wooden board.
Speaker: and and you get the taste of like wood ash in your mouth. yeah it there is There is no flavor there. There's no cayenne. There's no pepper. There's nothing. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. Like ah if you had somebody with, and obviously to show my age, but if you had Harrison Ford and Karen Allen in like 1983 in these lead roles, they would knock this out of the park.
Speaker: They could pull off these, we're too cool people who are trying to outdo each other kind of vibe. But these two kids, they just, it's too big an ask for them. So, uh,
Speaker: The tricky part of ah getting this, uh, counterband is that the deal is going down in big market, a bazaar that's located in another dimension that you can access from the deserts of Curian.
Speaker: Needless to say, the mechanics of this are both overly complicated and internally inconsistent. Yeah. But, you know, you just got to kind of roll with it. ah We see a pair of Mule Knights barter with Cirrus before Valerian sneaks in and robs them at interdimensional gunpoint. He's in another dimension. His gun is in their dimension.
Speaker: it's It's a pretty cool idea. It's an interesting idea, but it's so complex and raises so many questions that I had a really hard time understanding like where the danger was at. like It's like so...
Speaker: can the dogs affect him if only his hands are in the virtual world in what part it's sometimes I got confused visually. Sometimes they could see him. Sometimes they couldn't. And then like at one point he like falls through all of these worlds. But in my brain, I was just like, he's in the middle of an actual desert.
Speaker: Is he like falling through something, which is not important, but because there's so much intricacy to this stupid setup, it punches so many holes in itself where you're just like, wait, I have some questions. It's like, there's no time for questions. It's like, there certainly isn't, but you're just showing me a lot of things that keep making me wonder questions.
Speaker: And the complexity doesn't add anything to the thematic or narrative structure. No, it's just kind cool, allegedly. And cool by some standard. like yeah yeah like i ever wrote them Yeah. I put that in quotes. That's in quotes. Like 500 years into the future, like ah somewhere across the galaxy. And the most exciting thing that Luc Besson could think of is a space burning man with a market section. Like it's it's so uncreative.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. I like the interdimensional aspect. I thought that was cool to have the the market be in another dimension and it is like a giant destination shopping mall.
Speaker: But I feel like it also is... So inconsistent has too many ideas and he isn't pulling off like half of them. Like someone needed to tell him to Coco Chanel every set piece it's in this movie. It's both overwrought and undercooked.
Speaker: Before we move on one thing I want to mention here. is This movie is mostly a series of chase scenes. Yeah. And there are absolutely specifically two chase scenes that I think actually work.
Speaker: I think the one in the bazaar in the market ah works. And I think later on, the one against the Mulean spacecraft works. Everything else is bad.
Speaker: But yeah this scene sets the mood ah for every other chase scene that's going to arrive. Yeah, I feel like wendy he's steveson when Sirrus unleashes his six-legged giant alien dog to chase after the school bus, I thought that that part was pretty good.
Speaker: I wasn't complaining about that part. And then they had to jump into their own ship. You this was a pretty fun little action sequence. ah But once again, maybe too, too many ideas.
Speaker: But this one, I think, yeah, you're absolutely right, AP. I'm going to put this as probably the best action sequence in the movie. I would agree.
Speaker: He's also asked her at this point to marry him for some reason. Yes, possibly at several points. Yeah. Back on the ship, Laureline inspects the stolen package and sees that it contains a mule converter, which is one of those little replicator lizards from the beginning of the film.
Speaker: She knows what that is, despite the fact that the planet mule was destroyed before she was born and all records of it have been erased. And also people knew what a mule converter was, even though they thought the piano planet of mule was not inhabited.
Speaker: No one had ever been been down to the surface. But now everybody knows about a mule converter. That drove me up a wall. So anyway, they also snagged the last remaining energy pearl while they were out there. So they got both halves. They got everything that the mule and us would possibly want.
Speaker: And you know what also bothered me? They have this little lizard that can infinitely replicate items and they never come up with one creative use for it in the whole movie. The whole movie, Loreline has it attached to her belt and she could be like, oh we need a bunch of pebbles. I don't know. Fucking anything.
Speaker: And they could have used that to solve a problem. They would have been great. Well, pebbles was the only thing that like, uh, look, I can imagine, uh, being used here because the pebbles were diamonds and why did those diamonds ah appear because laurelene being a woman loves a diamond so of course she's gonna duplicate all these diamonds give me a sack of diamond earrings i'll have one for every day of the week ah
Speaker: uh they soon arrive at alpha city finally we're at the city of a thousand planets the titular city Yeah. And they're there to deliver the goods to their superiors. They meet with general Octobar, a character that is both completely unnecessary and serves several key functions in the plot.
Speaker: This is Clive Owen. No. Okay. This is the other guy that ranked them. Oh yeah. The, the kind, the good one, quote unquote.
Speaker: Yeah. The, the other guy that's there to do yeah something. Yeah. ah For instance, the first thing he does is he introduces Laureline and Valerian to the commander, an even slightly higher ranking military guy played by Clive Owen.
Speaker: They find out that there's a radioactive void at the center of Alpha and anyone that they've sent to investigate it hasn't returned. And so Commander Clive is we meeting with the High Council of Alpha so they can talk it out. They never mentioned why he wanted that rare lizard stolen from the bazaar.
Speaker: I'm assuming to destroy it to cover up his crimes? I assume. ah Also, like, from nearly immediately meeting Clive Owen, I knew that he was the antagonist.
Speaker: Oh, yeah. Like, it's not... Not subtle. No. There's, like, a moment like, you're going to need to take these two with you. like, oh. Well, if you say so. And I was like, immediately, like, I just wrote down, like, Owen is in on it. I don't even know what it is, but I was like, Owen obviously has something to do with this. He's clearly a bad guy.
Speaker: He is such a, like, actively, like... the bad guy that like he only he's only missing the mustache that he could twirl yeah because he the the the cinematography like has him set up in the frame where he's like imposing and he's like in this like gaudy green outfit military outfit with this gigantic like brass like chest plate he He's supposed to stand out. And I honestly think the movie should have made him stand out even less because... And I'll get to this when we get to it. His motivation makes no sense.
Speaker: He should be a non-factor. I'm going to say this is a movie that benefits from you not taking notes while you're watching it. You don't want to think about this movie too much. We also should mention that he does have an army of of black imposing eyeless robots that are equipped with guns that nobody likes.
Speaker: Yeah. And they answer only to him. Yep. That's also a big clue. Yeah, exactly. It's those giant man-eating robots you have that nobody likes. I think that's probably a good indication.
Speaker: Yeah, he definitely, this is like a children's movie that's made for not especially bright children. Yeah. ah So unfortunately, the High Council, they get attacked by a swarm of Mulinites armed with their paralyzing goo guns. Ooh.
Speaker: The Mulinites kidnap Commander Clive and... ah They must have thought that he had the mule converter, but he did not. Actually, Laureline was hanging on to it for safekeeping.
Speaker: So she stays behind to provide assistance on the computer while Valerian chases after them, first on foot and then using his rocket boots on his cool spacesuit. And then he jumps into his spaceship, Alex, and then he jumps out of the spaceship and into his sky jet before hooking his sky jet under the grappling hook of the ship that has Commander Clive in it, which drags him into the Forbidden Zone at the heart of Alpha City. so yeah You mentioned he goes through so many things that don't have the a green mark that says Hasbro next to them that I think it's just a failed opportunity.
Speaker: It's true. And I think you're right as to this being the second best action sequence in the movie. This one also is pretty inventive. It was fun to see him leaping from like one biome to another in the city. So i got I have two issues with this sequence. The first is that every biome he goes through are the biomes that we were introduced to in the opening montage to talk about how many biomes there are. It's like, it's a city of a thousand planets. We get to see three and eventually a fourth.
Speaker: And it's just like, go to some others or have some variety. Like, it's so weird that it's like, we're city of a thousand planets. It's mostly staterooms and corridors. It's like, this is really boring. Like you have so much there, do some more with it. And also as a person who has seen the fifth element a lot of times, some of the shots from that sequence are basically just lifted from the fifth element and it left a real bad taste in my mouth.
Speaker: Greg, you kind of just mind blasted me. I didn't even think about how little of the 1000 planets we did see. Yeah, you get to see three and then eventually get to see like the inside of a building of a fourth one. I guess Paradise Alley is maybe another planet.
Speaker: Yeah. But it's just like, it's just like, they're just in corridors. It's like another corridor site. It's just like, let's go to the state room. It's like, can we go to anywhere else? Yeah. It is a little disappointing.
Speaker: you Especially considering, you know, we do get to see a good amount of aliens, yeah but I'm going to say less than 20 when yeah you did promise 3 million. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker: Laureline, she wants to go search for Valerian, but that stingy old General Octobar says, no, I don't want you to go look for Valerian. And he has her thrown in the brig, but then she escapes.
Speaker: So once again, General Octobar just sort of killing time in terms of this film. ah With the help of a trio of alien information merchants called the Dongan Dailies, ah then a cyborg submarine captain named Bob, she steals a psychic jellyfish off the back of a space dinosaur and uses it to find that Valerian is still alive. And she can go get him.
Speaker: He's by this one pipe in the Forbidden Zone. So there you go. So, yeah. So she walks over there and there he is. And we're like an hour and 15 minutes into this film for listeners. Like we have covered a lot of ground in just a short and synopsis.
Speaker: Yes, I'm skipping a lot of scenes with General Octobar investigating things is in general. Despite the fact that it's two hours and 15 minutes long, I think this is the film that I took the least amount of notes on.
Speaker: it Yeah, I only took six pages. It's like so much of it is just vapor. It's crazy. It's a lot of what I like to call CGI laser horse shit. Anytime I'm seeing CGI lasers on a screen, i tend to just sort of space out. Yeah.
Speaker: And this movie is only that. You know, i I think about some of the things that we haven't talked about. Which, yeah, we we don't need to talk about the the the extended like scene where ah Valerian and Lorelai are like showing off their space suits and like bragging a little bit about it. I didn't need that. And I certainly didn't want to bring it up until I needed to to make the point that... look the son needs to trim some of this fat two hours is too long yeah it doesn't serve the movie uh now ah but but but yeah she goes and she finds valerian uh she wakes him up and he gets back to work repairing the space jet and asking her to marry him he's like you gotta marry me you gotta marry me i'm honest
Speaker: Not interested. instead Let me take a moment here. Let let let me grab the handlebar here and drive us directly into a medium. Because okay the reason why I watched wanted to watch this movie, it's not because I'm a Luc Besson head or back when I was in college. It was because I was horny for Cara Delevingne. Okay? I'm going be straight with Understandable. Yeah. It's understandable. Very understandable.
Speaker: And so I'm into like celebrity gossip. And so like, i just want to ask you a little bit. Like Cara Delevingne is being presented as this femme fatale, highly competent figure who's above everything beautiful.
Speaker: And one of the things that I want to just ask you is do y'all know that the lurid history of Cara Delevingne's dating relationships? all I do not. Only in the vaguest terms.
Speaker: So i I only want to bring this up because Cara Delevingne should be working with the type that she kind of, the type of figure that she is out in the world. Because she has this long dating history. She's bisexual, you know. out all my ah bisexual baddies out there. but Shout out.
Speaker: Let me just start with one. Jaden Smith. Oh. Okay. Interesting. Interesting choice. He seems like an earnest young man. Let me give you another one.
Speaker: Let me give you another earnest young man. Leonardo DiCaprio. Okay. Okay. I'm going to say that could happen to anybody.
Speaker: Wrong place, wrong time. you know Let's not let's not victim blame on that Well, I agree with that. i agree with that. But like she she has some like big names on her roster, like St. Vincent, Michelle Rodriguez. Okay. 2024's Jack O'Connell from Sinners is in that roster. Okay.
Speaker: Okay. All right. Sounds like she's doing well for herself. I got to say, I'm not going to be a hater. And let me tell you, she's supposed to play this like beautiful femme fatale figure for like that's you know the foil to Valerian. And she is given nothing.
Speaker: She's given nothing yeah other than to be kind of like a handyman for Valerian every once in a while. Not even all the time.
Speaker: But yeah, there's one moment I'm going to bring this up later, but I just want to let you all know. Cara Delevingne is supposed to be like a hot, cool, like amazing space woman.
Speaker: And it doesn't make any sense that it's she isn't here. yeah Yeah, it's so strange that she's not able to pull off sexy space lady.
Speaker: Yeah. You know, because she's constantly, she frowns pretty much the entire movie. She is never happy when you see her. Yeah.
Speaker: I hate to say you should smile more to a lady, but I think she should have smiled more in this performance. um So ah anyway, She gets momentarily distracted by a glowing butterfly, which turns out to be the bait on a fishing line set up by a giant frog monster. The frog monster reels her in and Valerian chases after, but then he sees the frog monster dragging her into ah the frog monster stronghold. And her spaceship tells him that the only way to get in and rescue her is to go in disguised as a frog monster.
Speaker: And there could be like some sort of diplomatic issue if he's caught or something. Possibly. Yeah. Can I also say I had another tally going for ah what I ended up calling racialized aliens. Oh, okay.
Speaker: Because I'm like, okay, Lucas on clearly is going to have. Yeah. There's going to be some. Yeah. Yeah. and I had to put two tallies down for this, the these frog aliens. Okay, I could see that for sure. Because there's absolutely some sort of ah vague African-like aspect that they have.
Speaker: And I only say that not because i want that out of those aliens, but it's not a far-fetched idea that Luc Besson was flipping through some... inspiration and just said, who's going to be the person with this with like that's going to kidnap this beautiful woman? How about some like savages as I literally call? Yeah.
Speaker: I wouldn't even be surprised if he just lifted this right from a comic from 1975 in France when be much easier to pull off something like that. And these frog monsters were like drawn, like your typical cannibal savages. And he was like, yeah, I'm going to keep that design. That's a classic design on that.
Speaker: What do you know? This is just, these are aliens from 1975. What do you mean? We weren't even thinking about race back then, you know? And obviously then then you look at it and you're like, no dude, no dude.
Speaker: You can't have dudes that look like this. um So anyway, luckily, Valerian is right by Paradise Alley, the red light district of Alpha.
Speaker: He's not looking for a good time, though. What he needs to find is a shape-shifting alien called a Glamopod. Luckily, the very first person he asks, a space pimp played by Ethan Hawke, has a Glamopod in his employ.
Speaker: He can't pull off the space pimp. No, poor Ethan Hawke. Yeah. doesn't work. You see, I thought he was trying to go for like some sort of like queenie effect. I thought he was trying to go with, like ah oh I'm the maitre d' of this whorehouse.
Speaker: I feel like he was trying to do something, and whatever it was, he didn't get there, it by my estimation. ah But luckily, we get to meet Bubble.
Speaker: a shape-shifting stripper played by Rihanna. In what I'm going to say is arguably the least unpleasant sequence of the film, she does a dance number where she rapidly changes from one fetish outfit to another.
Speaker: Great an introduction to her character. Fantastic stuff. No complaints. yeah
Speaker: Obviously, Rihanna, beautiful woman, loved to see her scantily clad and dancing around. And also just read reinforces this idea that Valerian is like ah some hot shit that like yeah could get any space pussy that he wants.
Speaker: Yeah, even though she's literally a prostitute. Yeah. yeah ah But... And also he like gets tongue tied in front of her a little bit. And she goes on about how she's like a trained actor. And she's like this very sympathetic character and was actually one of the more interesting characters in the film, even though. would agree.
Speaker: Rihanna, I'm going to say not slam dunking the performance, but I'm not complaining. I question how much Rihanna was in that performance, actually. Because so a lot of it like Rihanna's a great performer, absolutely. In 2017, she was already not performing as much as she used to, though.
Speaker: So i think I wonder about the dancing, and I wonder whether or not like her face might have been like ah switched out with a performer, a more dedicated dancer.
Speaker: Could be. Because the dancing was incredible. The outfits were incredible. Rihanna the highlight this movie. And there was already digital manipulation going on. Yeah, absolutely. 100% she's the highlight. And then after that, because she's a shapeshifter, you just hear her voice coming out of an alien that looks like neither of these two people.
Speaker: ah So when Bubble finishes her dance number, V shoots Ethan Hawke and then offers her citizenship in exchange for her help invading the frog monsters.
Speaker: Bubble agrees and then wraps herself around Valerian and adopts the form of a frog monster. And they sneak into the Emperor's throne room. where they find Laureline about to get her brains eaten by the Frog Emperor.
Speaker: She's wearing a very big hat that's going to serve as a serving dish. I thought that was a fun visual. No. So her i'll give them yes her bits with the aliens are maybe my favorite part, just because she's like, I need to get out of here. And they're just like really being like, what about this dress? Huh? Huh? Like that bit. I really enjoy. That was good.
Speaker: Yeah. And the hat was great. Yeah, I think they needed a couple more scenes where they were like comically frustrated. And seeing her comically frustrated did make her more engaging, for sure.
Speaker: And then just seeing this alien just with his big eyes and a huge smile being like, yeah, you like it? just really enjoyed that bit.
Speaker: So once they're inside, they... start fighting their way out. They reveal themselves. There's a big fight scene. They kill a bunch of aliens and then they escape by leaping down a trash chute.
Speaker: Unfortunately, Bubble must have gotten injured in the fight because she says she was. And then she dies. So long. Yeah. Valeria and Laureline leave her corpse in the trash pile and move on with their lives.
Speaker: Goodbye, best character in the movie. Sociopaths. Yeah. Yeah. don't even like no tears shed. no like word. Whatever.
Speaker: Say, uh, they move on to the forbidden zone where they find a big glowing portal in a wall. They go through it and they find a big empty airplane hangar type space that's filled with Mulanite refugees. Refugees. Also, very quickly, as right before they approach it, he's like, by the way, um I've had a princess inside of me this entire time.
Speaker: It's like, okay. Sure. I wrote that down too. I'm like, no movie. Don't become transphobic. No, listens it's it's the whole thing. It's just like, what is going on?
Speaker: Very strange stuff. Yeah. Thankfully they didn't start leaning in into any sort of trans commentary because i definitely couldn't handle Lucas on not what we need. No. Uh,
Speaker: Let's see. yeah They sent through the portal. Mule Knight refugees. In addition to the refugees, they also find an unconscious Commander Clive. The Mule Knight Emperor tells them everything that happened.
Speaker: It's pretty much what you expect. They used to live on this beautiful, peaceful planet. Then there was a war that was happening in the skies above the planet. They got into a ship. The ship got knocked into space. They spent the last 30 years learning technology until they were brought in as scrap.
Speaker: ah to Alpha City, and now they're trying to steal their shit back so they can build a new homeland.
Speaker: It turns out, though, that Commander Clive was the one who shot the nuclear weapons that ended up destroying their planet. And who could have figured that out?
Speaker: Yeah, who would have thought that the one guy that we didn't like turned out to be the bad guy? Yeah, the guy with that evil army of robots. The eyeless robots with guns that nobody likes. And what was his motivation anyway? He's just part of some battle and then he like went overboard with bombing. I don't want to be like, mom um I know how to deal war and space, but like it feels like you got to be a certain type of freak to already want to be like a commandant of one of these ships.
Speaker: Like, I don't think this guy has any sympathy for the native life that he destroyed. No, no, this is, uh, yeah, he was just worried about it ruining his career because it was technically a war crime, but this is also the kind of thing that the United States does on pretty much on a pretty regular basis. So, but yeah, apparently in the future they frown on this kind of thing. So hopefully we'll get there someday.
Speaker: ah Uh, they wake commander Clive up to get his side of the story. And he's like, yeah, pretty much it happened. Like they said, but in my version, I'm the good guy.
Speaker: And Valerian and Laureline don't believe him. And then they give the Mule Knights back the last energy pearl and the replicator lizard. uh then general oh sorry i just just say at this point laurelian's like if you give it to them maybe i'll think about marrying you and it's just like why does anybody care what does anybody care about this relationship what relationship you shouldn't marry him no you shouldn't you should maybe find somebody else and he can i don't know what he can do it's not important both of you should graduate high school first yeah absolutely get your ged first that's right think about procreating yeah
Speaker: So ah General Octobar, meanwhile, he's caught up to what's happening and he's about to attack the Mule Knight refugee camp when Valerian and Laureline call up with Commander Clive to explain that the attack is no longer necessary.
Speaker: But then Commander Clive uses his this opportunity to order his loyal guard robots to attack on their own. Who would have guessed that the faceless, eyeless robots with the guns that nobody likes would end being that?
Speaker: Chekhov's robots. Valerian and Laureline fight off the guard robots, ah while General Octobar's assistant Sergeant Neza, even less necessary character, ah deactivates some bombs that we're counting down.
Speaker: The Mule Knights escape, leaving Commander Clive to get arrested. They eject Valerian and Loreline in an escape pod to be left alone, waiting to be picked up by a rescue ship.
Speaker: Valerian takes advantage of their quiet moment to once again ask Loreline to marry him. And this time she says, maybe. And then the movie's finally over.
Speaker: There you go. Maybe next time they'll be married. Tune in for Valerian and the inside of the star. ah Final thoughts.
Speaker: Five star ratings in terms of watchability and weirdness. Greg, what would you give this movie? ah So... I got to say, one of my biggest issues... So I mentioned it once, but the cribbing from Fifth Element happens at least two more times.
Speaker: um The second time is when Rihanna's dying... And so it's like you have a performer that's dying and she's like, protect her. She needs your strength and your love. And it's like that's just like the scene in The Fifth Element where Diva Plava Laguna, a performer who's just been killed, is like, she needs your strength and your love. And it was just like, OK, come on now.
Speaker: And then there's a shot, too, where. um As he's fighting, as Valerian is fighting the faceless robots where he just like gets over a barrel, it gets over like a barricade, throws his arm out and shoots four of them in the face. It's like that is directly from the negotiation scene in the fifth element. um So the movie is just like kind of confusing. Most of the plot takes place in the last 30 minutes.
Speaker: And so it's like, what have we been doing for an hour and 45 minutes? It's been pretty weird. There's some interesting visuals. he's a He's a competent enough director that some of the scenes feel kinetic enough that they're interesting.
Speaker: But largely, it just was a lot of gobbledygook. um But at the same time, it went faster than I was expecting it to. So for that reason, I'm going to give it a two for watchability.
Speaker: Yeah, I think it your your mileage may vary with this one. i know that I'm docking it a little bit for just feeling like someone just kind of remaking a good film that they've already made almost shot for shot, not shot for shot. But you know what I mean? Like was it just felt derivative of his own work, which is weird because I've only seen like three of his things. Yeah.
Speaker: And it's pretty weird, I think. i'm going to give it three and a half for weirdness. It's so okay is's just bizarre at times. And some of its weirdness is just in the choices that it's made and why you would make those choices.
Speaker: Because it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. um But that made it kind of weird. Some of the aliens are weird. The motivations are weird. The characters are weird. None of that's necessarily positive weirdness. But there's some weirdness in there.
Speaker: That's fair. I landed very similarly to you, Greg. I gave it two and a half stars for watchability. I think there is a lot to look at. It's a very rich text. But ah these main characters are just so unpleasant. Yeah. And they also make me feel very old.
Speaker: I look at them and I feel like I'm a million years old. I don't particularly like that. um And yeah, it's also just like, like I said, about 30 to 40% of this movie is CGI laser horse shit. We're just like, I'm going to be looking at my phone for the next five minutes.
Speaker: ah Weirdness, three stars. It does have a very unique, very European sensibility. And you never see that at like this huge mega budget. Yeah. But yeah,
Speaker: It's also weird that ah your main characters are a little shit and his jerk ass girlfriend. e AP out of five stars. What would you give this movie in terms of watchability and weirdness?
Speaker: Oh, I would give this a five for watchability. Okay. you You think I'm playing, but I don't. No, I love it. It's the genuineness that makes me laugh.
Speaker: There's often times when I think, okay, maybe I read too much into movies and art. Maybe I think too much of them in this way that doesn't provide any sensible like analysis, right? It's not...
Speaker: But then i see a movie like this, movie that I would challenge the most overthinker of overthinkers or the snootiest of snootiest analysis ah per people to tell me what are the themes in this movie?
Speaker: What is the narrative in this movie? How are those reinforced through the cinematography, through the dialogue, yeah through the set pieces? How? And I would challenge them to tell me that because as someone who has been seeing this movie at least once every two years for the last almost 10 years, ok I can tell you that there there are no themes in this. yeah Even wanting to say, oh, is is this even like is this a movie about like ah you know the the civilized city-state versus the like criminal and bankrupt ah countryside? But it isn't.
Speaker: No. Or like, i would even like to say, is this is this movie like ah like a right wing like slop? And it also isn't.
Speaker: No. Like the masculinity in this is like a wet towel is more masculine yeah than Dan the Han in this. Than Clive Owen in this. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. So i i i the reason why I brought this movie and the reason why want talk about it because it is breathless without any, it's not sold. has nothing to say to anyone, French or otherwise.
Speaker: Hard agree. Yeah. No, I'm right there with you. Right there with you. Well, that was our review. Oh, did you give it a weirdness rating? Oh, for weirdness, I'm actually going to put it lower. I'm going to put it to two. Like, it's not that fair yeah Honestly, like, even the easiest way of getting, like, weird with an alien having, like, some sort of romantic or, like, amorous, like, attraction to an alien, that literally never happens in this. Like, there is no one horny for a different species of yeah it's alien.
Speaker: And that's that's not weird at all. That's not weird at all. Agreed. Mm-hmm. Listeners, that was our reviews, but I found some other reviews and some reviews that specifically address the issue of horniness.
Speaker: So we're going to talk about them in the review review.
Speaker: You wrote a review of the film, now we're going to review you.
Speaker: Review, review
Speaker: That's right. It's the review review. ah We went back to Common Sense Media this week. I was hoping you'd go to Common Sense for this one. Yeah, move over IMDb. Yeah. ah So we went to I went to find out what the kids were saying. Because this does seem like a movie that would be like, maybe I'd like more if I was 12. And I wasn't looking at these two guys as like, you know, upstart little punks.
Speaker: ah So first review from Jellybean.com. the review titled great movie. Jelly bean is 14. They gave it five stars and they recommend it for age 10 plus. Okay.
Speaker: I personally loved this movie and I think it's a great to watch with family. The only brief scene some may consider inappropriate for children is one containing an exotic dancer, but it's nothing younger kids haven't seen before on the internet.
Speaker: And i will yeah, I love the plot and the movie is just the right amount of romance. There is violence in this film, but what else would you expect from an action movie? And again, it's nothing compared to what children are exposed to from the internet.
Speaker: I 10 out of 10 would recommend this movie to anyone. Great messages. Great role models. Would you consider Valerian and Laureline role models?
Speaker: Um, I mean, they certainly play roles. That's true. They are modeling something. and And I could see someone like seeing that and saying, like I could be like that, but I don't think that that's what they're attempting. And if they are, I don't think it's working.
Speaker: Yeah. If they're role models, i don't really want to like yeah I don't really want to argue with that person as much as I want to take away their access to the internet. That's fair. I think that's fair. You need to read some good ah books. You need to sit down with a book.
Speaker: ah Mama, don't let your babies grow up to be Valerian. mm Uh, second review comes from Bixby Aina. I, I don't think this was a name that's meant to be read out loud. Uh, their review loved it with five exclamation points.
Speaker: They are 12 years old. They gave it five stars and they recommended for 12
Speaker: Some people say 15 plus or 16 plus just because the stripper pole. Well, I say 12 plus because a 12 year old should know what a stripper pole is. And it is barely stripping because it's Rihanna just dancing. She barely dances on the pole. Other than people criticizing the stripper pole, I think it was overall the best movie I ever watched.
Speaker: Wow. Too much violence. Great. I love the closers on the common sense reviews. Yeah. Too much sex, too much violence. i I feel like I'm being introduced into a different side of the internet. It's like weird, isn't it? It's intriguing.
Speaker: I can't help but, like, you're telling me the ages of these commenters. but They listed publicly. I have read comments like that on Reddit with the same like level of like analysis and like ah puritanical like bent.
Speaker: I've read that on Rotten Tomatoes as well. i Is the internet just 14-year-olds? More than you think. That's one thing you need to remind yourself whenever you're talking to someone that you know nothing about them and they're on the internet. Remind yourself, maybe this person is like a 12-year-old.
Speaker: Maybe I just need to disengage from talking to a 12-year-old right now. ah Last review. Mr. Sly Walker. Mr. Skywalker is 13. They gave it four stars. They they recommend it for 13 plus. The title of their review, way too inappropriate for an 11-year-old.
Speaker: m This movie was good, but from the beginning, you could see the sensual theme. The movie starts when two teenagers are wrestling in skimpy swimsuits. Then they change into more professional clothing, which is a skimpy bikini covered by a see-through blouse and see-through skirt slash leggings.
Speaker: Then you assume, yeah, this guy writing down every costume as he comes with like, nope. Mm-hmm. ah Then you assume that was it.
Speaker: When you get to Rihanna pole dancing in a club, then Laureline is put in a skimpy dress and it is ripped up. That dress was not skimpy. No.
Speaker: Additionally, there is some real sappy stuff, like I'd Die For You, which is so cheesy, it literally makes you cringe. True. True. Basically, true.
Speaker: Finally, the movie ends with the classic makeout scene that obviously leads to some... quote, stuff, unquote. And that wraps up the film.
Speaker: Do not let younger children watch this as I watched this with my younger brother and he got really immature about it. Great messages, too much sex. i would have did just I feel like i would have been so cool writing for Common Sense at like 13, 14. that time, I was watching a lot of different movies, but like I would have loved have been like, you know, this is probably more for a because they have yes it has a fast-moving car and they're just barely getting allowed to drive cars and we don't want that.
Speaker: I love it when there's like a kid on there who's like, I'm 12, but I watch movies at a 16 year old level. I always try and find those guys. Well, ah do you guys want to play a game? Yeah, please.
Speaker: All right. We're going to play a little wins going on.
Speaker: That's right. We're playing When's Going On. What I'm going to do is I'm going to read you a title of the film and a description of the film. and these are all films that were produced by Luc Besson.
Speaker: Okay. His career ran from 1981 to today, still going strong. What I want you to do is I want you both to tell me a year that you think this movie came out. If you get it within five years of the year it came out, you'll get one point.
Speaker: If you get it within one year, you get two points. And if you get it right on the button, that's three big points. And his career's gone from when to now? 1981 to now.
Speaker: You got it.
Speaker: Any questions? Everybody feeling good? I got this. Yeah. All right. All right. I like that confidence. Question number one. American renegades.
Speaker: A team of Navy SEALs discover an underwater treasure of Nazi stolen gold in a Bosnian lake. American Renegades. Greg, when do you think that one came out? 89.
Speaker: All right. What about you, AP? It definitely has this 90s sound to the description. But I'm going to go ahead and say it's 2021. 2021.
Speaker: twenty twenty one All right. AP gets a point. That was 2017. Wow. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Question number two. Plenty of game left to play.
Speaker: Exit. A mentally unstable man who doesn't have a firm grip on reality must investigate whether or not he's a serial killer. Exit.
Speaker: AP, when do you think Exit came out? That is a 2000s description if I've ever heard it. Back when mental illness was barely introduced into the world of films. So I'm going to say it's 2004. Okay. so How about you, Greg? So you took the date I was going to say. So this gets tricky now.
Speaker: I'm going to say 2009.
Speaker: oof Greg, you went the wrong way. That was 2000. Another point for AP. Okay. yeah And there's no reason you can't give the same answer. Oh, I know.
Speaker: I know. i've But it's no fun. It's the price is right mentality, you know, where it's like, I don't want to be like 2003. You know, like that would be, that's, I don't like it when people do that, even on the price is right. But it's like, you know, it's like, I want to go different than Just to spread it, spread it out.
Speaker: i know I appreciate your integrity and your love of the game. Yeah. You're like Uncle Drew in that way. I don't want to compete. I don't care if I win, but I still will play the game.
Speaker: Absolutely. I'm here to fucking win. Yeah. Okay. Good for you. Question number three. Enter the warrior's gate.
Speaker: a teenager is magically transported to ancient China where he learns to convert his video game skills into those of a Kung Fu warrior. Enter the warrior's gate.
Speaker: So this, the question I have is at what point in film are you using video games as a formal element? You know what I mean? I feel like this is either eighties or like early So I'm going to go 87. Okay.
Speaker: Okay. How about you, AP? You know, i I like where Greg's mind is. i The thing that I'm like honing into is like China. Yeah, I thought about that.
Speaker: So I'm actually going to go that's more of a 90s thing, 90s worries. I'm going to say 1998. Ooh, skunked you both. That was 2016. 2016.
Speaker: twenty sixteen Okay. Woof. Yeah. right. Plenty game left to play. Question number four. Halal State Police. Okay. Someone is killing Parisians of Arab ethnicity.
Speaker: When an Algerian diplomat is murdered by this same assailant, two Algerian detectives are sent to help the French with their investigation. But these two have their own way of doing things.
Speaker: Halal State Police. AP, when do you think that one came out? This sounds just so French. So French to the point where it's like, oh, Algeria. Algeria mention. I'm going to say it's 1986.
Speaker: Okay. Okay. What about you, Greg? 2007. Ooh, Greg, on the board. That was 2011. Okay. Whoa. Yeah, way too recent to be doing that. Yeah.
Speaker: Question number five. Dicky Neck.
Speaker: That was Dicky Nick. Yeah. A big mouth womanizer helps his introverted friend find true love. Dicky Nick.
Speaker: Greg, when do you think Dicky Nick came out? 1999. Okay. Okay. AP, what about you? It's such a timeless concept. It could be. It's true. Anytime in the last 40 years. Uh,
Speaker: But like the name is so silly, I think that's only allowed after Cockblockers came out. i'm go to we'm gonna I'm going to I'm going to go dark here, and I'm going to say 2025. Ooh, I like that.
Speaker: You got to split the diff. It was 2006 on that one. Okay. It's all right. Here we go. Question number six. L'Enfant Lyon. L'Enfant Lyon.
Speaker: A young African boy uses his friends, the wild animals of the savannah, to defend his village from Arabian slave traders. L'enfant Lyon.
Speaker: AP, what do you think that one came out? ah you You give me some hard ones. sunshine I'm trying to think of like, what's the French? I'm trying to put myself in the French mindset. m And then I immediately tap out.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. I'm gonna, I kinda wanna say you wouldn't be making something with the description Arab fighters in the description after the 80s, but I don't know. I'm gonna say it's 2014. 2014, okay, about you? 2002?
Speaker: twenty fourteen okay greg how about you
Speaker: two thousand two That one was 1993. You guys have lost your mojo. Yeah. 93. Well, one thing I've realized is it's producer and I don't know at what point, I don't know when he did a lot of producing, you know what I mean? So it makes me skew later in the career.
Speaker: Understandable. Yeah. Most of these are post 2000, but there are a couple of curve balls in there. Question number seven, Arthur and the revenge of Malthazar. Yeah. Arthur answers a distress call from Princess Selenia, who is menaced by the nefarious Malthazard in this entry in the Arthur and Invisibles franchise.
Speaker: Greg, when do you think that one came out? I feel like Arthur and the Invisibles should be some kind of clue to me, but I don't know what that is. Understandable. So I'm going to say 2012.
Speaker: Okay. Okay. AP, what about you? You know, Arthur and the Invisibles is enough of a tell to me that I was going to go with a similar number, 2010. Okay. That's one point for Greg, but two points for AP. That was 2009. Okay. all right.
Speaker: If you hit these next two on the button, Greg, you'll slam the door on them. right. I mean, there's only two points between you. AP sits on four, Greg sits on two. Still anybody's game.
Speaker: Question number eight. Kamikaze. A crazy, old, and bored scientist invents a system which allows him to reach through the airwaves and transform live TV cameras into weapons that kill whoever is being filmed.
Speaker: Kamikaze.
Speaker: Topical. AP, when do you think Kamikaze came out?
Speaker: I don't think it's very topical because yeah what what was the verbiage there? Livestream cameras? Live TV cameras. Live TV cameras. That is the 1980s. All right. I'm going to say that's 1988. Okay.
Speaker: okay Okay. Greg, what about you? 95. I think the TV cameras puts it earlier. Yeah. AP gets the point that was 1986.
Speaker: Last one. It all comes down to this. yeah You can tie it up if you get it on on the button. Color Me Kubrick. The true story of a man who posed as director Stanley Kubrick during the production of Kubrick's last film, Eyes Wide Shut, despite knowing very little about his work and looking nothing like him.
Speaker: Star John Malkovich. Greg, when do you think that one came out? 2004. Okay. AP, what do you think?
Speaker: I think that's such a wonderful answer. I'm going to have to steal some of it I'm going to say 2001.
Speaker: Okay, well, ah Greg, you get two points, but AP gets one. That was 2005. Okay. AP, you are our big winner. Good job. Yeah, first time ah for some caller, first time winner. Yeah, i don't want brag. I'm real Valerian the way that I move sometimes. Uh-oh, it's the Batty Awards.
Speaker: Now you're messing with the Batty Awards. Now you're messing with the Batty Awards. Now you're messing with the Batty Awards.
Speaker: Now you're messing with the Batty Awards.
Speaker: Congratulations to all the nominees.
Speaker: That's right. Congratulations to all our nominees. It's the Batty Awards. So it's little awards that we give out to those people, places, moments, touches, details that make a bad movie so good. Greg, hit me with your Batty Award.
Speaker: Okay, so the three aliens that have the information, what were they called? The Dongan Dailies. The Dongan Dailies are probably my favorite characters in the film. Fair enough. ah There's three of them. They all say a portion of the sentence, and they go at one point they're like, if you shoot one of us, you lose some of the information because we have it split amongst the three of us. I thought that was a fun little, like,
Speaker: They had some color to them. They had some background. It was fun. I liked them. They felt fleshed out despite the fact that like that felt like good sci-fi, just dropping little nuggets of information. ah But they have my favorite line in the whole movie, which is where after she they pull the jellyfish off the sea dinosaur or whatever, They're like, so you have to put it on your head and then you just, you you put, it's a hole there. You put it on your head down to your shoulders and then you just keep your head in there for a minute. If you go longer than a minute, it'll start eating your memories and then you will die. And she's like, you're joking. And one of them just goes, never when we're working.
Speaker: And I thought that was like just a funniest thing. i really loved that line a lot. It came out of nowhere and it was just one of them was like, never when we're working. So i felt so serious. Love that.
Speaker: that That's the kind of line that always gets you, Greg. I got an eye on this Greg ticklers. Oh, yeah. ah I'm going to give my baddie award to, you've talked about how much it lifted from the fifth element. I'm going to give it to an award to a moment that was lifted from the movie taken also written by Luc Besson. Okay.
Speaker: ah When at one point ah in the beginning, when ah Valerian is holding a gun up to the giant space worm, that's voiced by John Goodman.
Speaker: And John Goodman says, i will find you and I will kill you. And Valerian says, good luck, which is the exact exchange that Liam Neeson has with the kidnappers in Taken, but flipped where the hero is saying, i will find you and kill you. And the kidnapper says, good luck.
Speaker: Wild. yeah Wild. that This is such a self-referential work. yeah AP, do you have a batty ward? Anything you want to shout out? Yeah, so in this future world, we meet the defense minister, we meet Sergeant Nessa, we meet General Octobar, and course, we meet Commander Arun Flint.
Speaker: And every single one of them has this like strength to them, this like pride to them, the way that they're dressed, what they're representing, their martial characters. But every single one of them has to do this little dainty two-finger tap on the screen. Oh, yeah. To be able to interact with the like holographic bullshit on the screen. e And I love that.
Speaker: I love that so much. It's just like... At a certain point, that like, Octobar is in the hot pursuit of the, like, conspiracy. And he tells ah a subordinate to, like, give him some space. And he, in his little delicate, like, sneaking ways, has to just do a little tap.
Speaker: A little tap. And then he gets into the conspiracy. It's great. It's cute. it's it's It's very hard to use a touchscreen in a butch way, I want to say. Yeah. You never saw dirty Harry using a touchscreen.
Speaker: AP, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's been great to have you. It's great to talk about Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. oh Oh, and I did want to mention, i almost forgot, Anna tracked down a very unique entry into the Two-Timers Club. The director of Grimsby.
Speaker: the director of grimsby appears in this movie. Louis Leterrier is one of the, uh, like guys that meets aliens in the beginning. There are a bunch of French directors and like different European film stars in that opening sequence doing cameos. Rutger Hauer, the most recognizable of them, but director Louis Leterrier was also one of them. And he's one of their rare two timers to make it from like behind the camera to in front of the camera. yeah
Speaker: Nice. Salute. But, Now that we've gotten that out of the way, AP, tell everybody about dove weather. I know I'm going to be coming on to talk about the whale.
Speaker: I'm very excited for that. But what else should people know? So Dove Weather is a podcast that has me, AP, and my co-host Marcy. We ah dive into a piece of media and art of different forms. So sometimes movies, sometimes music, sometimes books, sometimes it's poetry. In the case with Chris, it will be a movie. We're going to be watching The Whale.
Speaker: And we're going to be using some lenses to like talk about that feminism, ah materialism, and ah more than anything, just a real low down level of just excitement. like what We always talk about things that we like. we i I might not think Valerian's a good movie, but I like it. No, that's why we like talking about it. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: And if you are interested in more things that are queer and a little more ah it bent towards the that direction, that weather is perfect for you.
Speaker: way It comes out every Monday. ah Today, the latest episode that came out was probably Raw, which is a another French movie. Oh, love Raw. I love Raw.
Speaker: But yeah, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. I i enjoy the show. Y'all have this great production and I really like it. I'm really grateful to have been here. So thank you so much, Greg and Chris, for having me.
Speaker: ah Thank you so much for coming on. thank you Listeners, thank you so much for tuning in. Join us next week when we're going to be joined by ah returning guests, brother and sister duo together for the first time, Angela Carlucci and Toby Goodshank. And we're going to be talking about another first, our first ever mini series. And we're going to be talking about the dark secret of harvest home starring Betty Davis. I know nothing about it and I've blocked out four hours of my weekend to watch it. So come back and join us. Hit that like and subscribe. Give us that five stars. Five stars is free.
Speaker: And until next week, be good and goodbye. Goodbye. Bye.
Speaker: That you would, if you could And you know that you should Yes, you know that you should be good
