Review of Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

Visually it's excellent. Good integration of virtual reality ideas into a futuristic scenario.

• Story is pretty good. Reminiscent of Avatar, but with a good bit more meat to it.

• The male-female dynamic between Valerian and Laureline is hopelessly reliant on clichés. Worse, the casting of Dane DeHaan as Valerian really doesn't work. Not if they want him to be a womanizer. Way too dorky. If they hadn't written him that way DeHaan would have been fine. If Luc Besson had just brought in somebody to write a even slightly less clichéd take on the relationship between the two leads, the film would have been ten times better.

• Having said that, Cara Delevigne is fine as Laureline. She pushes back against the sexist framing, but I still don't get why Laureline is a Sergeant as opposed to Valerian who is a Major. The actors are basically the same age and refer to each other as partners.

• Film really needs a more compelling lead, which is one the reasons it doesn't work as well as The Fifth Element. Compared to other Space Operas, I'd put it ahead of Jupiter Ascending and at roughly the same level as John Carter (which was too long but otherwise very good.)

So it's worth seeing, but not a must-see. Of course it's being savaged by critics who tend to have a herd mentality. That's too bad because it deserves better than that.