On its surface, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets has a lot in common with other summer action blockbusters that have seen release this year: It's expensive, it's based on a comic, and it carries a two-hour-plus runtime. (Note to Hollywood: Please—please—make some of these movies shorter.)But Valerian is a different beast than your typical Marvel or DC fare. The latest film from Luc Besson—the French mastermind who, 20 years ago, helmed the iconic action classic The Fifth Element—is a trippy blast of a movie, drawing from the long-running French comic strip series Valérian and Laureline to create its own immersive, thrillingly textured world. And underneath the moneyed veneer of the film's eye-grabbing effects lies a surprisingly affecting and hippie-ish tale about love and peace—a surplus of positive sentiments that nicely rides the recent wave of relatively light-hearted comic blockbuster films (Wonder Woman, Spider-Man: Homecoming).We talked to Besson about reading the comic in his youth, optimism, love, and whether he's a hippie. His answer to that last question may surprise you.VICE: Tell me about your relationship with Valérian and Laureline.
Luc Besson: My dad gave me this little family magazine called Pilot, which had two pages of Valérian and Laureline every week. I was ten years old, and I got totally addicted. I've loved comics since the beginning—my mom tried to give me books, but I could never read them, so my dad would only give me comic books. I was a big superfan of all of the comics at the time.You have to remember that we're talking about the 60s, so at home I had only one TV channel in black and white. There was no internet, no video games, and no portable phone—pretty sober. My parents' generation escaped by reading books, and the way we escaped was by reading comic books. And honestly, when you watch the first album, the first few albums of Valerian, and you see this couple, Valerian and Laureline, going through space and time and dealing with aliens and monsters everywhere, it was a window open to the unknown. It was really my way to escape.There's a lot of nihilism in action films lately, but this movie feels very positive. There's a lot of hope in it.
The present is so depressing sometimes. Let's at least wish—or imagine—that the future can be better, because the future will be what we make of it. Why should the future be so dark all the time? Why are all these superheroes having nervous breakdowns where they're so depressed and life is so dark—why? Let's imagine a future where we can all live together—a future where the problem isn't between black and white and yellow but between the human race and aliens. It's also a funny way to say to people, "What if, tomorrow, there are aliens everywhere?"This movie felt very hippie-ish to me. Do you consider yourself a hippie?
Not at all, I understand the feeling, and there's a bit of the philosophy that I like—but the strongest thing I've ever taken in my life was an aspirin. I'm not into mushrooms and all those things, and in general, I don't like everything extreme. The hippie thing went too far for me in the peace and love department, too—but it actually still is a beautiful idea. [Valérian and Laureline creators] Jean-Claude Mézières and Pierre Christin wrote their first [collections] in the 70s, so they had that flavor, and I tried to stay honest to the soul of those.There's not a ton of exposition in the movie. You're kind of just thrown into the thick of it with these characters. Were you concerned about alienating your audience with that choice?
I was concerned, but I prefer to think that people are intelligent, clever, and curious. If we lose a couple of people because they don't have enough information, I would suggest that they watch the film again. Honestly, as a moviegoer, when everything is explained to me, it's a little boring. I love to go to a movie and have fun but also to be challenged a little bit. I don't want to go to pee during the film—I want to hold in it because I want to know everything, you know?This year has seen smaller, smart films finding great success with American audiences—rather than stupid, big, loud films. Is that something you think about when you're making a film like this?
Yeah, but I'm not thinking about the audience—I'm thinking about me as a moviegoer. There are a couple of big studio sci-fi films that are amazingly made, but they lose my attention after 30 minutes, because I've seen it all before. It's honestly painful, sometimes, for me to stick around for two and a half hours—especially when it's film number three, or four, or five, or six. It's a little boring. So I just want to make the kind of film that I would love to see as a moviegoer.Something that I found refreshing about Valerian is that there were a lot of jokes in the script. I feel like there's nobody's funny anymore in effects-heavy filmmaking. Why do you think that is?
Honestly, I don't know. The technology we have today is so much fun, and your imagination is the limit. You can do whatever you want now. Why not play with these tools? You can make so many practical jokes with aliens. I have so much fun doing that, almost every 15 seconds. Maybe it's the lack of time between the studio greenlighting the film and opening day. You need to take your time to make jokes.Valerian is about love, and you've ruminated on love in a lot of your films. What draws you to love?
It's the only real subject in life. The little story in the middle of Valerian's big story is a man and a girl trying to set it up. That's what I like. Someone who doesn't like sci-fi can still relate to the film, because it's Mr. and Mrs. Nobody. They're just a man and a girl, and they're working together and they try to go through it. It's an insane story in the 28th century, but the question still is, "Is the guy going to get the girl?" That question is the ultimate question.Follow Larry Fitzmaurice on Twitter.
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Luc Besson: My dad gave me this little family magazine called Pilot, which had two pages of Valérian and Laureline every week. I was ten years old, and I got totally addicted. I've loved comics since the beginning—my mom tried to give me books, but I could never read them, so my dad would only give me comic books. I was a big superfan of all of the comics at the time.You have to remember that we're talking about the 60s, so at home I had only one TV channel in black and white. There was no internet, no video games, and no portable phone—pretty sober. My parents' generation escaped by reading books, and the way we escaped was by reading comic books. And honestly, when you watch the first album, the first few albums of Valerian, and you see this couple, Valerian and Laureline, going through space and time and dealing with aliens and monsters everywhere, it was a window open to the unknown. It was really my way to escape.There's a lot of nihilism in action films lately, but this movie feels very positive. There's a lot of hope in it.
The present is so depressing sometimes. Let's at least wish—or imagine—that the future can be better, because the future will be what we make of it. Why should the future be so dark all the time? Why are all these superheroes having nervous breakdowns where they're so depressed and life is so dark—why? Let's imagine a future where we can all live together—a future where the problem isn't between black and white and yellow but between the human race and aliens. It's also a funny way to say to people, "What if, tomorrow, there are aliens everywhere?"
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Not at all, I understand the feeling, and there's a bit of the philosophy that I like—but the strongest thing I've ever taken in my life was an aspirin. I'm not into mushrooms and all those things, and in general, I don't like everything extreme. The hippie thing went too far for me in the peace and love department, too—but it actually still is a beautiful idea. [Valérian and Laureline creators] Jean-Claude Mézières and Pierre Christin wrote their first [collections] in the 70s, so they had that flavor, and I tried to stay honest to the soul of those.There's not a ton of exposition in the movie. You're kind of just thrown into the thick of it with these characters. Were you concerned about alienating your audience with that choice?
I was concerned, but I prefer to think that people are intelligent, clever, and curious. If we lose a couple of people because they don't have enough information, I would suggest that they watch the film again. Honestly, as a moviegoer, when everything is explained to me, it's a little boring. I love to go to a movie and have fun but also to be challenged a little bit. I don't want to go to pee during the film—I want to hold in it because I want to know everything, you know?This year has seen smaller, smart films finding great success with American audiences—rather than stupid, big, loud films. Is that something you think about when you're making a film like this?
Yeah, but I'm not thinking about the audience—I'm thinking about me as a moviegoer. There are a couple of big studio sci-fi films that are amazingly made, but they lose my attention after 30 minutes, because I've seen it all before. It's honestly painful, sometimes, for me to stick around for two and a half hours—especially when it's film number three, or four, or five, or six. It's a little boring. So I just want to make the kind of film that I would love to see as a moviegoer.Something that I found refreshing about Valerian is that there were a lot of jokes in the script. I feel like there's nobody's funny anymore in effects-heavy filmmaking. Why do you think that is?
Honestly, I don't know. The technology we have today is so much fun, and your imagination is the limit. You can do whatever you want now. Why not play with these tools? You can make so many practical jokes with aliens. I have so much fun doing that, almost every 15 seconds. Maybe it's the lack of time between the studio greenlighting the film and opening day. You need to take your time to make jokes.Valerian is about love, and you've ruminated on love in a lot of your films. What draws you to love?
It's the only real subject in life. The little story in the middle of Valerian's big story is a man and a girl trying to set it up. That's what I like. Someone who doesn't like sci-fi can still relate to the film, because it's Mr. and Mrs. Nobody. They're just a man and a girl, and they're working together and they try to go through it. It's an insane story in the 28th century, but the question still is, "Is the guy going to get the girl?" That question is the ultimate question.Follow Larry Fitzmaurice on Twitter.