Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-Review by Professor Popinjay

—–Better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. No matter how much I ponder this concept I can’t seem to shut up. Well I’m happy to loudly and shirtlessly proclaim it was not I eating my own feet, as the saying goes, it was the film Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. Feet eating did not occur in this film but I almost wish it had as it would have been much more interesting than what was coming OUT of the main character’s mouths, namely, words. Boring words, cliché words, bourgeois words, 5 cent words instead of 15 cent words. I really feel this would have been a much better movie if the main characters just didn’t speak. George Lucas wrote better dialogue. GEORGE LUCAS! The man who made Darth Vader hate sand!

—–I really liked this movie………..’s trailer. I liked the trailer so much I anticipated the film for a month. Eventually, though, something caught my eye that gave me pause: the phrase “a project a lifetime in the making” or some epic sounding bs like that. I know of too many projects that were a lifetime in the making and they all lost relevance before they came to fruition. In some cases sets and costumes were horribly dated or had even been repurposed for other movies before being retro-purposed back to the original project. Many times the project is a wild hare of an idea the director had since childhood. Sometimes the only reason a project is a lifetime in the making is because the directors can’t get the funding to finish this wacky childhood idea so it drags on, repeatedly replacing actors, writers and the like throughout production. Ultimately directors end up pouring their own money into the project and go bankrupt in the process.

—–Valerian is visually stunning and I’m glad I saw it in 3-D. I can’t think of a Luc Besson film that isn’t visually stunning. Obviously that’s where his strength is. He made The Fifth Element instead of Valerian years ago because he felt Valerian’s monster to human ratio was too overwhelming on a technical level. Its was James Cameron’s Avatar that brought Besson to the realization that his dream of making Valerian was a possibility but he also felt that Avatar raised the bar extremely high storywise and his script for Valerian wasn’t compelling enough so he rewrote it. He rewrote it and generated this. In my experience, rewrites generate something more polished. If Valerian was polished I can only imagine the monstrosity that was the original script. Yikes!

—–Besson has an impressive directorial filmography with equally impressive writing credits. He seems to be able to produce a decent plot. However, I’ve noticed repeatedly dialogue is not his strong suit especially when it comes to romantic interactions.

—–I highly recommend watching the trailer for Valerian. It’s one of the best trailers I’ve seen this year. If you’re into being stunned visually then see this film but keep the mute button on and have someone read Pride and Prejudice to you.

I don’t do movie reviews.

-Professor Popinjay