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Beyond the Human Gaze: Posthuman Ecology, Imperial Nostalgia, and the Spectacle of Excess in Luc Besson’s Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

Despite losing money, the film is now a streaming giant. On Netflix and Amazon Prime, Valerian consistently charts in the "Visually Stunning Sci-Fi" categories. Word of mouth, slow and steady, is rehabilitating its reputation. ---Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets 20...

Thus, Alpha is a posthuman city built on a prehuman genocide. The film’s villain is not an alien monster but bureaucratic militarism. Thus, Alpha is a posthuman city built on a prehuman genocide

Future work might compare Valerian to The Fifth Element (Besson, 1997) as twin texts on French imperial nostalgia, or analyze the film’s reception in post-colonial Francophone Africa. When Luc Besson’s sprawling space opera Valerian and

When Luc Besson’s sprawling space opera Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets premiered, it arrived with the weight of a galaxy on its shoulders. Based on the seminal French comic series Valérian and Laureline , the film was touted as the most expensive European and independent movie ever made. It was a labor of love for Besson, a director who had already left an indelible mark on the genre with The Fifth Element .

To understand the ambition of the film, one must look at its roots. Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières’ graphic novel series began in 1967, predating Star Wars by a decade. Many of the tropes we associate with modern sci-fi—from sprawling space stations to political intrigue across galaxies—can trace their lineage back to Valérian and Laureline .

In the original comics, Valerian is not a gruff, whiskey-voiced rogue. He is a cocky, effete, slightly annoying pretty-boy. He is an agent , not a cowboy. DeHaan captures the character’s arrogance and vulnerability—the scene where he hallucinates his own failure while trapped in a dream pod is genuinely affecting. Delevingne, meanwhile, is the actual hero of the film. Laureline is smarter, tougher, and more competent than Valerian. She saves him repeatedly. Their banter ("I don't want to get married; I want to be a soldier") is ripped directly from 1970s French feminist comics.