10 Things Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets Gets Hopelessly Wrong
7. Bubble's Existence Makes Everything Pointless
Rihanna plays a shapeshifting alien called Bubble, who can take on any humanoid form but chooses to spend most of her time looking like the 21st Century R&B star. She can perfectly mimic any humanoid and even read minds, and that's where the issues start.
Bubble is a problem for the movie so immense it has to get rid of her before she breaks it. Bubble is encountered in a brothel, suggesting the only use anyone can think of for her powers is a bit of really weird hanky panky. But anyone with a squirt of imagination could realise Bubble would make an excellent spy, cop, soldier, infiltrator, interrogator, or any one of a thousand other roles she'd excel at far more than a human.
There's no explanation for why the government doesn't have legions of these aliens working as secret agents, or indeed why Bubble's species hasn't just taken the galaxy over entirely.
The movie realises all this halfway through and kills off Bubble for no real reason or payoff. It could just as easily have cut her entirely, but then who would Rihanna play?