dhampyresa (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dhampyresa) wrote2017-07-27 10:40 pm
dhampyresa) wrote2017-07-27 10:40 pm
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City of a Thousand Planets
Saw it VOSTFR 3D.
Way back when I first saw the trailer for this movie, I went HOLY SHIT THEY'RE ADAPTING L'AMBASSADEUR DES OMBRES? THAT'S MY FAVOURITE. Well. I was right, but also, I was wrong.
It has a lot similarities with L'ambassadeur des Ombres, but some major changes make it a story with a different theme/message. I'm not saying the new story has a bad theme/message -- it's a good message and I can understand the reasoning behind the changes -- but it is 100% a different message. Idk, the original Ambassadeur des Ombres comic (especially the ending!) blew my tiny mind when I read it as a child and this movie would not have. Although these changes gave us the opening scene, set to Bowie's Space Oddity, which is pretty lovely.
It's a decent movie, I guess, but it's a bad adaptation.
For example, the movie implies Laureline is from the future, which NO. The really cool thing about Laureline is that she's from the mid-Middle Ages, circa 1000CE, and used Valérian as her ticket out of that hellhole. Then she becomes a space-time cop. She is the best.Also she's a redhead.
Not sure why the Shingouz go by a different name. That seems like a pointless change.
In a way the changes -- Laureline's hair colour, the names (not how you say Valérian, Alpha vs Point central), etc -- made it easier to think of this as its own thing, rather than an adaptation.
I came out of the movie shipping Laureline/Bubble the most out of everything. I did not ship Laureline/Valérian at all. I would ship Laureline/Neza first (he recognised her temper, hahaha).
I was kind of really disappointed that Laureline seemed to be one of only two women in the Earth military. Nice future there :/ There are some vaguely sexist moments that rubbed me the wrong way, as well. (Also the comic is SO MUCH MORE Laureline's story.)
GOOD STUFF:
Way back when I first saw the trailer for this movie, I went HOLY SHIT THEY'RE ADAPTING L'AMBASSADEUR DES OMBRES? THAT'S MY FAVOURITE. Well. I was right, but also, I was wrong.
It has a lot similarities with L'ambassadeur des Ombres, but some major changes make it a story with a different theme/message. I'm not saying the new story has a bad theme/message -- it's a good message and I can understand the reasoning behind the changes -- but it is 100% a different message. Idk, the original Ambassadeur des Ombres comic (especially the ending!) blew my tiny mind when I read it as a child and this movie would not have. Although these changes gave us the opening scene, set to Bowie's Space Oddity, which is pretty lovely.
It's a decent movie, I guess, but it's a bad adaptation.
For example, the movie implies Laureline is from the future, which NO. The really cool thing about Laureline is that she's from the mid-Middle Ages, circa 1000CE, and used Valérian as her ticket out of that hellhole. Then she becomes a space-time cop. She is the best.
Not sure why the Shingouz go by a different name. That seems like a pointless change.
In a way the changes -- Laureline's hair colour, the names (not how you say Valérian, Alpha vs Point central), etc -- made it easier to think of this as its own thing, rather than an adaptation.
I came out of the movie shipping Laureline/Bubble the most out of everything. I did not ship Laureline/Valérian at all. I would ship Laureline/Neza first (he recognised her temper, hahaha).
I was kind of really disappointed that Laureline seemed to be one of only two women in the Earth military. Nice future there :/ There are some vaguely sexist moments that rubbed me the wrong way, as well. (Also the comic is SO MUCH MORE Laureline's story.)
GOOD STUFF:
- BUBBLE WAS GREAT. Bring back Bubble for the sequel!
- The heist was pretty cool.
- THE VISUALS ARE AMAZING.
no subject
Sure. The movie is very much about the refugiee crisis (despite the fact they iirc never say refugiee, which kind of bugged me), while the original comic was not, being from the 1970s. The theme of the comic that really stuck with me was, in essence, "just because you're sorry doesn't mean people owe you forgiveness" and it's also about how Earth/Humanity is just a small part of a wide and varied universe, not the center of it.
I think a good way to illustrate the difference between the two is the opening scene from the movie. It starts of with the Apollo-Soyuz docking, then jumps to iirc 2020 with a Chinese module docking onto the ISS, then more and more Earth countries docking/attaching to the Station, until an alien spaceship shows up and attaches as well. Then more aliens! Then they detach "Alpha" from Earth orbit and set it adrift to explore space. This is all dialogue-less, set to Bowie's Space Oddity. It's a lovely scene.
Unfortunately, it's also antithetical to the comic. As is the fact they have super detailed maps in the movie -- the comic explicitly says no one has a complete map of Point Central. It's too big. In the comic, the equivalent of Alpha, Point Central, does not originate from Earth. Hell, Earth is one of very newest species/planets aboard (and they get kicked out over the course of the comic, because they done fucked up). Idk, that really stuck with me when I read it (I was, like, 6).
Does that make sense?
no subject
That does make sense and suggests I would be much better served reading the comic than watching the movie. I think I would like the non-Earth-centric-ness much better.