Fifth Element director Luc Besson returns with another crazy, quirky, colorful sci-fi adventure movie with Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets adapted from the French comic series byJean-Claude Mézières and Pierre Christin.
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You can watch the first teaser trailer for the film above.
The teaser establishes setting and mood more than anything else. We get extensive shots of the colorful and imaginative sci-fi world that Mézières and Christin created as far back as the 1970s (and if you haven’t checked out their collected work in graphic novel form, you definitely should). We get to see places like the titular “City of a Thousand Planets,” which is actually a massive space station housing thousands of alien creatures. We also see a wasteland setting, a futuristic marketplace and plenty of creatures and altered humanoids who all look like they belong in The Fifth Element universe. Finally we get to see stars Dane DeHaan (Amazing Spider-Man 2) and Cara Delevingne (Suicide Squad) as agent Valerian and his partner Laureline, respectively, and get a taste of their feisty odd-couple dynamic.
NEXT: Valerian Extended Footage Review
From our extended look at the film during New York Comic-Con (clink above for more on that) we can tell you that Valerian is the most ambitious film that Besson has ever attempted.
If the teaser didn’t convince you, the creation of alien creatures and advanced tech to be used in some big action sequences has been a challenge that kept the film of Besson’s slate for decades. Even with film technology having advanced so far, Valerian still required the combined might of special effects powerhouses Industrial Light and Magic (Star Wars) and Weta Digital (The Hobbit) in order to bring all strange creatures, lavish settings, and futuristic tech to life onscreen. That’s no small feat, and as you can see, the results are pretty eye-catching.
Hopefully, the detective mystery storyline and chemistry between DeHaan and Delevingne help bolster the visual experience. Fans could use a sci-fi blockbuster as creative and unique as Fifith Element – if only to break up the monotony of Star Wars and superhero films (both of which will be released in close proximity to Valerian).
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets will be in theaters on July 21, 2017.
