Blu-ray Movie Review: Valerian
2017 – Valerian and The City Of A Thousand Planets
Lionsgate Films 2017
PG13 | 2hrs 17 mins | Action | Adventure | Sci-Fi
HD | 1080P | Dolby Atmos | Dolby TrueHD 7.1
4K | 2160P | HDR10 | Dolby Vision | Dolby Atmos | Dolby TrueHD 7.1
2.40:1 Aspect Ratio
Starring: Dane Dehaan | Cara Delevingne | Clive Owen| Rihanna | Ethan Hawke | Herbie Hancock | Kris Wu | Sam Spruell | Alain Chabat | Rutger Hauer | Rihanna
Directed by: Luc Besson
Ratings & Reviews
Please see here for my comments on reviewing movies.
My ratings are simple being marked out of a maximum of 5+. My reviews are biased towards the technical production aspects of the film with brief comments about the story line. Extras, sorry, that’s just not my ‘bag’.
Not having 4K or Immersive audio yet, what did the 1080P24 version look like? Very good, and the sound track was acceptable.
Entertainment: 4
Video: 4+
Audio: 4
Technical Review – HD Blu-ray
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets was shot digitally using ARRI Alexa XT cameras in ARRIRAW Open Gate (3.4K) and finished as a 2K Digital Intermediate. It is often a stunning visual presentation, if you can overlook the patently obvious and fake looking CGI. There are several scenes, like the Big Market, that look like poorly rendered CGI video game images with high resolution characters placed in the frame. The scenes on planet Mul look outstanding, but the distant moutains are cleaerly CGI and spoil, what is to my mind, superb CGI graphics with the “Pearls”, the planets inhabitants, looking quite exceptional, especially their reactive skin and its changing color palette. The overall images provide excellent black levels, like those of deep space surrounding “planet” Alpha, intense highlights providing good contrast and some superb coloring as seen on the Pearl characters. Overall the sharpness is very good and detail is generally excellent, really popping on props, costumes and the cute little lizard creature, with color palettes having an exquisite range of hues. Unfortunately the CGI integration is less than stellar, especially in some of the human scenes, but at least there are no obvious compression artifacts. Human skin tones and textures are very realistic without being over saturated, with some excellent facial close ups. I have to assume that this movie looks really impressive in its 4K HDR10 rendition, if you ignore its obvious flaws.
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets offers a Dolby Atmos track that defaults to Dolby TrueHD 7.1 in my system. The soundtrack carries the movie very well, providing plenty of accuracy. However, I didn’t find the music soundtrack engaging even though it was generally well integrated into the action and dialogue. Imaging was precise with human dialogue always clear and well defined, being accurately located across the front mix, even though, on occasions, it seemed a little low level compared to ambient sounds. Surrounds were moderately active providing an immersive sound field and directionality for various effects, such as in the ‘Big Market’ brawl, to carrying a locales natural ambience and reverberation. Overall, there are plenty of intense elements and atmospheric support for the various environments together with an excellent dynamic range and a fairly aggressive LFE channel.
Story Overview
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets was directed by Luc Beeson, who previously directed The Fifth Element, Lucy and The Professional. Let’s be honest here, this movie took some liberties being a cross between, Avatar, Star Wars and Guardians of the Galaxy (with no funny lines).
The movie is based on the science fiction comic book series Valerian et Laureline, created by Pierre Christin and illustrated by Jean-Claude Mezieres. The comic book series was launched in Europe in 1967, ending in 2010. The two lead actors, a pair of time traveling agents, Major Valerian (Dane DeHann) and Sergeant Laureline (Cara Delevigne) apparently bare no resemblance to the comic’s characters and their interaction is weak, to say the least. I’ve seen more spark from a lighter!
The story line opens up in the 28th century on planet Mul, with the “Pearls”, (celestial beings who live a life of holistic harmony with their surroundings), together with their little friend, Melo the Converter (Grumpy Transmuter), all going about their day to day business. This beautiful peaceful haven was about to get a rude awakening.
Working for the United Human Federation, the two agents are charged with maintaining order throughout the human territories. They are tasked by the Minister of Defense to recover an important stolen artifact from a crime lord who resides in the middle of the galaxy’s largest bazaar, the ‘Big Market’. The pair end up having to protect the artifact during an attack back on their space station base, Alpha. This station, a vast and growing metropolis, was released from earth’s orbit when it became too big to remain there. As it continues to drift through space, growing to enormous proportions, it becomes the home to millions of human and extraterrestrial species from all over the universe, who have converged on it over hundreds of years to share their cultures and knowledge with each other.
After a group of aliens, whose presence was unknown to Alpha’s security forces, capture General Filitt (Clive Owen), their commanding officer, Major Valerian and Sergeant Laureline must travel to some of the stations more seedy zones, and enter a forbidden dark area deep within Alpha’s core. The assignment to rescue the General, and discover what the aliens are planning and why, uncovers the ugly secret.
As the story unfolded on Mul I immediately wondered about the CGI effects, of which there were plenty, ranging from outstanding to “why did you bother?” Despite the CGI issues and a few audio anomalies, I found the movie quite engaging and had the sound track and acting been up to par, it would have proved to be a very entertaining movie. These distractions, however, didn’t cause the movie to drag. I can’t say the same for the relationship between the two leads and their acting. In spite of this, the 2hrs and 17 minutes went by quickly. Is it worth seeing? Yes, if only for some of the spectacular CGI effects, colors, hues and textures.
