Film
It is the 28th century, and the ever expanding space city Alpha is under threat. A dark force at centre of Alpha threatens the peaceful City of a Thousand Planets, the place where species and creatures from across the universe have come together over centuries to share their knowledge and culture, and to maintain peace.
A team of special operatives, Major Valerian (Dane DeHaan – The Amazing Spider-Man 2) and Sergeant Laureline (Cara Delevingne – Suicide Squad), are tasked by the Minister of Defence with solving this mysterious dark force, saving Alpha, and perhaps the universe.
The film starts off with some character development, focusing on the multi-layered relationship between Valerian and Delevingne. These first few minutes do feel a little empty, and slow, but once the film gets near the end of the first act, things speed up, action and mystery set in, and things become a lot more interesting.
Some of the science fiction concepts are a little alien, pun intended, but not too strange and different that one can not get one’s head around them, and cheer on the good guys. The story also builds, choosing to avoid the cliche of many others in this space genre, and keep the viewer guessing with an intriguing plot.
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, based on the comic book series, and helmed by director Luc Besson (Lucy), is a thinking persons film, at least upon first viewing. It throws many a character, concept, and location at the viewers, including many alien cultures and rituals. Once you get past these, there is a ton of sci-fi to enjoy, along with some remarkable set pieces, and stunning cinematics.
Valeria is enjoyable, begs subsequent viewings, and is sure to strike a chord with fans of the comic books, sci-fi, and adventure. Certainly one to add to a movie collection.
Disc
Overall the disc is of a decent technical quality, if devoid of any additional content. You get what is on the box, the movie Valerian, and nothing else. But, this is an enjoyable movie.
Front Next Entertainment, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is available now, to purchase on disc, in South Africa.
Video
Video is encoded at a high average bitrate. There are almost no visible artefacts on-screen, save for very fine detail not being distinct in some scenes (e.g. the small dots of stars in space). This would be more a limitation of the lower resolution of the DVD media, rather than an encoding issue.
There is also no perceivable colour bleed. Details in darker scenes, of which there are many, remains good.
Video in the menu system is also good, with artefacts only visible here in smaller details, but again this would be more the limitations of DVD than the compression. The menus are, however, at a lower bitrate than the main feature, but this would leave more room on the disc for the main feature to have a higher bitrate.
Viewers with the necessary hardware or software could scale up to a larger or higher resolution screen, should they wish.
Audio
Audio is encoded at a high average bitrate, and encoded as a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack. There is an alternate stereo soundtrack to choose from.
Dialogue is clear via the centre speaker, with a fair amount of usage made of the surround channels. Owing the genre, and nature of the film, this greatly expands the on-screen world, further drawing the viewer into the story. The front channels also carry the weight of the films music, greatly adding to the emotion and enjoyment of the feature.
Navigation
Navigation is simple, and easy to follow. Highlights are clear on the text menu buttons. The main menu is static, with an area that contains a selection of small, non-spoiler clips from the main feature. There is accompanying background music. The main menu has options to play the main feature, scene selection, and setup.
The scene selection sub-menus each contain ten small, desaturated, still thumbnails, for a total of twenty chapters. These thumbnails however are very indistinct, due to compression, and the lower resolution of the DVD media. While these are numbered, they are not labelled on-screen or as part of the disc packaging, meaning navigation to a particular part of the main feature would require an amount of guesswork. Viewers would be better off bookmarking favourite scenes via their own hardware or software players.
The setup sub-menu contains text items to choose between surround or stereo soundtracks.
Bonus Features
There are no bonus features in the disc at all. Not even the usual trailers that autoplay at the beginning of many a DVD or Blu-Ray.
Packaging
Packaging is pretty standard, with poster and title on the front. The back of the DVD case has a paragraph synopsis, along with all the relevant technical details one would find on a DVD case.
