Welcome back to Movie Recaps. Today I will show you an action, adventure, fantasy film from 2017,
titled Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. Spoilers ahead! Watch out and take care.
In the twenty-eighth century, Earth's former International Space Station starts cooperating
with extraterrestrial peoples, who each bring their own station and attach it to Earth's.
Little by little, it grows into a multicultural city called Alpha,
inhabited by millions of species from thousands of different planets. It grows so big, in fact,
that it's relocated to deep space, allowing it to reach even more people and continue growing.
To preserve peace among such a large population, a police division is created by the UHF,
United Human Federation. Four hundred years after Alpha is relocated into deep space,
planet Mül lives in peace without any contact with other races, fishing for pearls containing
enormous amounts of energy and using a special animal known as the converter to replicate them.
Until one day, wreckage begins falling from the sky, including various smaller vessels and an
entire huge spacecraft that causes an explosion, annihilating every being on the planet. The tribe
leaders and a good number of their population manage to hide inside one of the vessels,
but by closing the door and accidentally breaking the lock, they leave Princess
Lihö-Minaa outside as the planet dies around her. Before the explosion takes her too,
she releases her soul in a wave of energy, hoping to pass on their message. The wave
reaches Major Valerian of the UHF, who had been taking a nap on a holographic beach in his ship.
He travels with his partner Sergeant Laureline, with who he wants to be in a relationship but
she continues to turn him down because she considers him a womanizer with commitment issues.
He asks the ship's AI, Alex, to scan his brain, and she confirms he's received external waves
that could come from the present or the past and from anywhere in the universe. The duo travels to
planet Kyrian, where they receive a message from the Defence Minister, who asks them to rescue
the last converter of its species and take it to Alpha for a top-secret operation. Once they land
and have changed into clothes that will make them look like tourists, they meet with Major
Gibson and his team, who will be assisting them during this mission. Valerian will be infiltrating
a virtual market and meeting Laureline at a drop point to make the transfer, but before they begin,
Valerian asks Laureline to marry him as proof he isn't afraid of commitment. Laureline doesn't take
him seriously though, and sends him away without an answer except for a kiss on the cheek. The big
market is in another dimension, so to access it, Valerian must wear a special helmet and gloves.
Once inside, he breaks the rules and enters an area where humans aren't allowed to meet with
Sergeant Cooper, who gives him a pair of glasses to change for this helmet to access yet another
dimension, plus a gun, a cube to use it and a quick scan of his body to make him invisible.
Undetected and unseen, Valerian enters a shady shop where Igon is trying to sell the converter
to two aliens that look like the species from his dream in exchange for those special pearls.
Igon is greedy and demands more, and since they can't reach an agreement, everyone present draws
their guns on each other, including Valerian himself, therefore revealing his presence behind
Igon. Meanwhile, Laureline and the team drive to the back of the wall that surrounds the market
and shoot the guard in the watchtower with a special gun that allows them to gain control
of his every move. Then they cut a hole on the wall so Laureline can go through it and meet
Valerian at the drop point with a special box she activates next to him, making it appear in the
other dimension. Once Igon has put the converter in the box, Laureline deactivates it and takes
it back to the van, but Valerian stays another moment to take the special pearl with him as well.
He tries to leave quietly, but his floating hand calls the attention of the guards' alien
dog and gets jumped on by it, causing everyone to start shooting. Laureline notices Valerian is
in trouble and alerts the team, who sends Cooper for backup and gets attacked by the dog as well.
Thanks to being mostly invisible, Valerian manages to escape the shop, but the box pad is broken and
he can't leave that dimension. A guard finds him walking through the market and goes after him,
shooting a series of magnetic metal spheres that get attached to his box with such a weight that
makes him sink through a manhole. He lands inside an arcade, where he finds a little kid with a toy
gun. Valerian uses this chance to give him one of the magnetic spheres, which the child shoots at a
nearby alien, and because of the magnetism, all the other spheres follow the first one.
Valerian is now free of that extra weight and can stand again, but he accidentally makes the
kid cry and ends up with the parent chasing him through the market. He runs away until he bumps
into Laureline, who fixes the box right before the guards and the dog find Valerian again.
Their troubles aren't over though: they've been detected and Igon is sending an even bigger
creature after them. The duo rushes out of the market as the alien under their control shoots the
creature to keep it away until everyone is back in their vehicle. The monster easily catches up with
them as they drive away and jumps on their van, so the team opens fire on it to no avail. Valerian
decides to call Alex and make the AI bring their ship over, so he and Laureline escape through the
window and jump into their vessel safely. The creature follows them and jumps on it as well,
only to slip and fall when the ship accelerates to leave exospace. While Laureline puts the
converter in a treatment capsule, Valerian makes Alex analyze the pearl, discovering it contains
an insane amount of power. When looking up the planet in the system however, it shows up under
restricted access. After Laureline joins him on the deck and ignores his marriage proposal again,
they make it to Alpha, where they are granted VIP access because of the converter they carry.
They meet with General Okto Bar, who tells them about a radioactive zone discovered in
the middle of the station. They've sent drones and special soldiers, but nobody has come back alive.
The area is contaminated and growing every day, so they need to end it before it destroys the
entire station. Commander Arün Filitt arrives then with his personal army of K-trons droids,
which he will take with him to his meeting with the security council, but a call from the Defense
Minister makes him take Valerian and Laureline as his bodyguards instead. Before going to the
meeting though, Filitt stops by to check on a prisoner of his: it's an alien from planet Mü
being tortured for information. They haven't gotten anything out of him, so Filitt orders
his men to kill him if he doesn't say anything in an hour. He also reminds his K-trons what to do
if the operation doesn't go well. Laureline brings the converter to the meeting because Filitt wants
to have it as a possible bargain card, but she refuses to hand it to him, keeping it safe with
her. Valerian enters the room with Filitt while he tells the council about the contamination problem,
and Laureline waits outside, guarding the door. She's suddenly approached by three small aliens,
the Dogan Daguis, offering their services to her. She asks them about planet Mül,
and they classify it as a sensitive subject that Major Samk was an expert of,
but he died three years ago under mysterious circumstances. They also tell her mercenaries
will try to steal the converter right before an alarm starts ringing. The attackers are going
through the walls and neither the council nor the AIs can see them, and when the officers in the
command room try to evacuate, they discover there is no power and they've been locked up. Laureline
joins Valerian and together they try to get Filitt out, but the wall suddenly explodes and a group of
Mül aliens enters the room, shooting everyone with a gooey substance that covers them with a cocoon.
Valerian notices this and puts a capsule in his mouth before he's covered up as well,
and the aliens leave a few minutes later taking a cocooned Filitt with them. Once they're gone, from
Valerian's capsule comes out a spider droid that cuts the cocoon open and allows him to wake up and
escape. Next, he rescues Laureline and gives her his knife so she can rescue the others while he
goes after the aliens and Filitt. Power returns to the command room and Laureline tracks Filitt
and his captors on the screen, passing directions to Valerian through the communicator. The only way
to reach them quickly is going through a wall, so Valerian breaks through one with his suit
and runs through dozens of different environmental areas until he's picked up by Alex in their ship,
because the aliens have boarded a vessel as well. A high-speed chase ensues, and Valerian
opens fire on them, but the enemy's ship simply splits up into hundreds of smaller vessels.
Valerian follows the one they think Filitty is in, but his ship is too big to keep up with it
through the narrow paths it's taking, so he takes the sky jet instead, using its hook to take hold
onto the enemy's ship and follow it whenever it goes. Unfortunately, this means he loses
control and gets dragged into the dead zone, and Laureline loses all forms of contact with him.
She wants to go rescue him, but General Bar forbids it and orders his men to restrain her.
Before she's taken away though, she manages to plant the seed of doubt in his mind: why are there
aliens from a destroyed planet here? And why did they spare the council's lives if they're so evil?
Someone has been lying to them. When she's out of sight, Bar checks planet Mül on the database
and discovers not even he can access that level of classified information. On the way out of the
command room, Laureline pretends to help the guards by telling them they should cuff her,
so when they come closer, she grabs them and beats them up until they're unconscious.
Then she meets with the Dogan Daguis and makes them take her to Valerian's exact location.
Together the four of them go to see Bob, who is going to take them fishing for something very
special: a cortex jellyfish. Laureline boards his submarine, which takes her deep underwater in the
search of bromosaurs, giant creatures that carry jellyfish on their backs. Bob uses the submarine's
special claws to retrieve the jellyfish from a bromosaur, which proves to need more than a
strong pull, earning the creatures' rage. Three bromosaurs begin chasing them through the water,
but thankfully, the submarine is fast enough and they manage to lose them when taking a narrow
path. Once they're back on land, the Dogan Daguis explain to her that she must put the jellyfish on
her head and let it show her what she seeks, but she mustn't do it for more than one minute
or it will start feeding on her memory. Laureline follows their instructions and pushes her limits,
staying under the jellyfish for one minute ten seconds until she sees Valerian's location: a
sign that says "L630 ESUL deactivated", which the Dogan Daguis confirm to be level 630 east. After
she leaves to rescue her partner, the Dogan Daguis go to see General Bar to sell him the information
about the alien hostage Filitt has kept hidden. He immediately arrests all the men involved in his
interrogation and tries to help the Mül person, but he makes his body explode to send a message
as the princess did after telling Bar that they're attacking them because the UHF has what they need.
When his assistant Sergeant Neza runs the alien's DNA through their database, they find out this
species isn't there, which means they never existed or someone deleted them from their files.
Laureline arrives at level 630 east and, after carefully walking around a rocky area, she finds
Varelian unconscious on the ground. She wakes him up with special medicine and after a silly
argument, she entertains herself watching the butterflies while Varelian fixes his vessel. What
she doesn't know it's that not all the butterflies are real, some are bait, and when she touches one
without knowing, she's fished out by a primitive tribe, the Boulan Bathors of the planet Goara, and
taken into their restricted area. Valerian touches a butterfly on purpose so he's fished out too,
but he shoots his captor and hides behind a wall as he regains contact with Alex. The AI tells him
that the only way to get in without causing a diplomatic mess would be finding a glamopod.
Now that Valerian is out of the dead zone, the UHF can track him again. Guards are told not to
hurt him, just to find and assist, so it's easy for him to threaten an officer and take a special
invisible gun from him before knocking him out and entering Paradise Alley. There are various human
callgirls offering their services on the street, but Valerian goes to a special club and asks Jolly
the Pimp for a glamopod, a kind of alien that can shapeshift into whatever they want. Jolly takes
Valerian to see Bubble's show, who dances while constantly changing looks, and after she's done,
Valerian takes out his gun, knocks Jolly out, and makes a deal with Bubble, who is an illegal
inmigrant: if she helps him find Laureline, he'll get her a legal pass and freedom from the club.
Bubble accepts and takes them out of there by hiding Valerian in her jelly body and transforming
into Jolly. This is the same trick they use to enter the area where Laureline is captured, Bubble
simply has to transform into a Boulan Bathor. Meanwhile, Laureline tries to communicate with
her captors to no avail, they just keep showing her dresses for her to pick one. She ends up in
a white one with a huge hat that has a hole on the top of her head and is put on a line of servants
that are taking food to their emperor, where Bubble and Valerian have sneaked into as well.
The emperor dislikes all the dishes taken to him, including Valerian's, so he leaves the line and
watches Laureline take her turn from behind the guards. Laureline's dish is just a lemon, which
the emperor squeezes on top of her head before taking out a special tool to crack open her skull.
Valerian wastes no time and hits a guard with his tray to steal his weapons and fight the rest of
the aliens, even jumping on the emperor to kill him. Now free, Laureline also steals a sword from
a body, and with Bubble, they help Valerian fight the guards, but they just keep coming.
Valerian decides on a quick plan then: he grabs Laureline's hand and pretends to charge,
but they actually fall with Bubble inside a manhole and into a new area. Back in the command
room, General Bar speaks with the Defence Minister and demands access to Filitt's classified files,
which he gets after some hesitation from the Minister. The file on planet Mül says it was
destroyed by accident during a war, and that the planet had not been inhabited, which is simply
false. When trying to find out who was in charge of such a disastrous operation, Bar finds it is,
again, classified. The other thing that is starting to irritate him is the constant presence
of the K-trons, who have been programmed by Filitt and only he can send them away. Valerian and
Laureline fall into a giant trash can and discover Bubbles has been hurt during the fight. Her final
words for Valerian are asking him to take good care of Laureline before her body becomes dust.
The duo starts wandering around, although Valerian swears he does know where he is going,
or at least, kind of. He confesses the princess' soul that has been inside him has been guiding him
all along. They end up inside the dead zone, but nothing happens to them: the contamination danger
has always been a lie. Valerian thinks Filitt actually knows what is truly behind the glowy
wall they encounter: it's the Mül people, who have been expecting them. They meet the leaders,
who proceed to tell them what happened that horrible day years ago. After the big explosion,
they drifted in space for many years, salvaging what they could find in the vessel they escaped in
and learning all the sciences in its database to restore it. One day they were picked up by scrap
dealers, who eventually sold their cargo to the Alpha station, and they have stayed hidden here
while gaining more knowledge and building a new vessel that would allow them to rebuild their home
on a new planet. The only things they're missing are a converter and a pearl, which is why they
hired Igon to steal them for them so that Filitt wouldn't find them - sadly Valerian and Laureline
messed up that plan. Now they know their story, the aliens trust they will do the right thing and
wake up Filitt, who immediately asks Valerian and Laureline to arrest the Mül people, saying
they're lying and that the planet hadn't been inhabited when they had been fighting in the area.
They don't buy it though, in fact, they've already guessed what truly happened: Filitt had been the
soldier in charge that day, and he decided to send the missiles without caring that there were
people on the planet, the only thing he had to do afterward was deleting all evidence. This is why
he killed Major Samk and made up the contaminated zone when the Mül people revealed themselves in
the Alpha. Filitt gives up and admits it's true, saying he only did it to prevent humans from
losing their credibility and influence in Alpha before ordering Valerian to arrest the leaders.
Valerian obviously doesn't listen and punches him instead before gifting the aliens the pearl
he had on him. Laureline wants to give them the converter as well, but Valerian protests, pointing
out that's government property only to change his mind when Laureline says this is why she
doesn't want to marry him: he doesn't understand love. As a thank you for allowing her to do this,
she finally kisses him on the lips. General Bar's men and the K-trons arrive on the other
side of the glowy wall and confirm there's no contamination before planting a set of explosives.
Meanwhile, the Mül leader feeds the pearl to the converter, finally creating the energy they needed
to activate the new vessel they've built, creating a hologram that simulates their old planet. Now
their mission is over, the princess can rest in peace, so the leaders remove her soul from
Valerian's body. When they hear about the soldiers outside, a group of aliens crosses the wall and
talks to them gently, showing they don't mean any harm. Bar sees this and is further convinced of
the truth when Valerian and Laureline call him and tell him the whole story, but in order to cancel
the procedure, he still needs confirmation from Filitt. The duo drags him in and tries
to make him talk, but instead, he gives an order to annihilate, which his K-trons instantly obey.
The droids begin killing both the people at the wall and those in the command room,
where Bar orders Neza to stop the countdown. As Laureline keeps punching Filitt and Valerian
crosses the wall to shoot the K-trons, Neza sneaks around and opens a control panel,
working directly with the source. He manages to stop the bombs a second before they explode,
and the Mül people successfully leave Alpha in their new starship. When a few of the surviving
soldiers find Filitt hanging from the ceiling on the hole the Mül left behind, General Bar tells
them to arrest him for his war crimes. Valerian and Laureline have also managed to escape using
the service vessel the Mül have arrived at Alpha in. While waiting to be rescued, Valerian again
asks Laureline to marry him, and this time she says maybe before kissing him on the lips.