10 Things Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets Gets Hopelessly Wrong

10. The City Isn't That Interesting

Alpha, the Thousand-Planet City of the title, is supposed to be one of the marvels of space, a vast melting pot metropolis of thousands of sentient aliens. Those aliens, however, seem perfectly happy living in a drab, mostly dark blue mass of indistinguishable industrial architecture which hurtles by at the speed of Besson's fastest camera dolly anyway.

There's a red light district and a brothel with swanky rococo furniture. They have those on Earth, too. The command centre, where the city's leaders look sternly at each other and announce pieces of the plot, is composed of the same stark white corridors that were old hat when Darth Vader strode down them looking for Princess Leia. The few truly original flashes are of exterior shots, glimpsed on grand flybys that quickly give way to the generic crowded city murk.

The city as promised is a conglomeration of architecture, sights and wonders from a thousand worlds. Instead it all looks depressingly samey, like the Los Angeles of Blade Runner without the character.