Valerian and the rest of the title
I have mixed feelings, a lot of which are of the frustrated variety, about this film. I can understand why reviewers gave it middling ratings because some aspects are brilliant and others are not good. If you like your science fiction weird and wonderful and colourful, go see Guardians of the Galaxy 2 first this but be aware there are problems.
To break that down, the script is one problem. There’s a lot of cause to ask ‘And how did they know that?’ but such plot holes can be waved away by fun dialogue (fail) and characters you care about. Sadly, there was a bit of a casting fail. As our hero Valerian, DeHaan seems to be channelling Keanu Reeves (certainly vocally, but also in the blankness) without the essential Keanuness or charm that helps Reeves get away with it in the right part. Dude, WHY? I don’t think I liked Valerian very much, and then I thought about how much more I might have liked him if he’d been played by Miles Teller, say. Although some of that is the script.
Cara Delavigne does nothing to make people who were critical of her turn in Suicide Squad change their minds, so they could have cast anyone else, probably, and it would have been better. I thought Rihanna had more chemistry with DeHaan, so I never really cared about whether Valentine and Laureline would or should get engaged, although I liked that in the name of their partnership, they would drop everything, disobey orders and search for and find each other, except they sometimes stopped being competent super officers of space law (esp her) to get lost/abducted. See the problems with the script again.
So, there’s a void at the heart of the film, and it is definitely guilty of the male gaze. I mean, I knew it wasn’t going to cater for me a la Jupiter Ascending, but the whole sequence with Rihanna/her CGI double basically playing clichéd male fantasies doing 12A appropriate pole dancing…NOT NECESSARY.
But, on the other hand, it is eye-popping, the title sequence is neat and the Pearls, an important alien race, are gorgeously rendered - think an echo of the Greys, the grace of Elves, an Egyptian influence and beings who touch each other a lot. There’s a lot of inventiveness (from the comics source or Besson’s brain?) and I loved the non-lethal weapons and the chase scenes, so the scenes that devolved to confusing shoot-em-ups were disappointing. It was also a wee bit human-centric - says the viewer who loved Valerian being shifted to look like Laureline’s alien captors and fighting them.
Basically, if nobody vids this source, I will be gutted.
This entry was originally posted at http://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/290185.html.
To break that down, the script is one problem. There’s a lot of cause to ask ‘And how did they know that?’ but such plot holes can be waved away by fun dialogue (fail) and characters you care about. Sadly, there was a bit of a casting fail. As our hero Valerian, DeHaan seems to be channelling Keanu Reeves (certainly vocally, but also in the blankness) without the essential Keanuness or charm that helps Reeves get away with it in the right part. Dude, WHY? I don’t think I liked Valerian very much, and then I thought about how much more I might have liked him if he’d been played by Miles Teller, say. Although some of that is the script.
Cara Delavigne does nothing to make people who were critical of her turn in Suicide Squad change their minds, so they could have cast anyone else, probably, and it would have been better. I thought Rihanna had more chemistry with DeHaan, so I never really cared about whether Valentine and Laureline would or should get engaged, although I liked that in the name of their partnership, they would drop everything, disobey orders and search for and find each other, except they sometimes stopped being competent super officers of space law (esp her) to get lost/abducted. See the problems with the script again.
So, there’s a void at the heart of the film, and it is definitely guilty of the male gaze. I mean, I knew it wasn’t going to cater for me a la Jupiter Ascending, but the whole sequence with Rihanna/her CGI double basically playing clichéd male fantasies doing 12A appropriate pole dancing…NOT NECESSARY.
But, on the other hand, it is eye-popping, the title sequence is neat and the Pearls, an important alien race, are gorgeously rendered - think an echo of the Greys, the grace of Elves, an Egyptian influence and beings who touch each other a lot. There’s a lot of inventiveness (from the comics source or Besson’s brain?) and I loved the non-lethal weapons and the chase scenes, so the scenes that devolved to confusing shoot-em-ups were disappointing. It was also a wee bit human-centric - says the viewer who loved Valerian being shifted to look like Laureline’s alien captors and fighting them.
Basically, if nobody vids this source, I will be gutted.
This entry was originally posted at http://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/290185.html.