Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017)

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is the kind of big, bright, unashamedly imaginative sci-fi that feels like flipping through a lavishly illustrated comic book that somehow learned to breathe. Luc Besson builds Alpha as a living museum of alien cultures—teeming, tactile, and endlessly curious—so even a simple walk through its districts becomes an adventure in design, color, and invention. The movie moves with restless energy, bouncing from set piece to set piece with the giddy confidence of a filmmaker who’d rather show you something you’ve never seen than explain it twice. It’s not for everyone if you need airtight plotting or a perfectly calibrated romantic spark, but if you’re on the fence and crave sheer worldbuilding spectacle, this is a feast worth taking in on the biggest screen you can find.

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is clearly trying to be a big, candy-colored space opera—part noir-ish mystery, part romantic adventure—built around Luc Besson’s love of imaginative worlds. And to be fair, the production design is often jaw-dropping: Alpha feels huge, strange, and packed with visual ideas that other sci-fi films would kill for. The problem is the human engine doesn’t really start; the plot lurches from set piece to set piece, the characters are thinly sketched, and the two leads never quite sell the partnership or the flirtation that’s supposed to hold it all together. If you can enjoy a movie like a theme-park ride—there for the creatures, costumes, and sheer spectacle—you’ll get your money’s worth, but if you need sharp writing, emotional pull, or believable chemistry, this will likely test your patience.