Category Archives: Crossposted

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is easily the least enjoyable film I’ve seen this year. It started off pretty well, and then our main characters took the screen and the movie began to plummet through my ratings, landing squarely at the bottom long before the final credits rolled.

At least two people walked out of the showing early and did not return. Perhaps they could no longer stand the embarrassment of continuing to watch the movie, or maybe they stepped out to use the restroom, and found that the smell of disinfectant was such a refreshing change they prolonged their excretory lounging by an hour.

Harsh? Yes, that’s pretty harsh. The movie earned it.

I really wanted to enjoy this movie. I was prepared to ignore major failings in order to get an awesome space opera fix. I brought my extra-strength suspenders of disbelief, and tried to pretend I didn’t care about character motivation, but it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough. I found myself actually cringing in my seat, physically curling up in a sort of full-body wince, over and over, right up until the last scene, which was one of the worst of the film.

Here is a quick list of the movie’s top failings:

  • Infodumps! And not just maid-and-butler dialog, either. There were scenes that played out like a bored kindergarten teacher reading a Wikipedia article to a room full of robots.
  • Dane HeHaan¹, who played Valerian, sounded like he was doing a Keanu Reeves imitation, except he left out all the emotion.
  • Cara Delevingne², the actress who played Laureline, totally convinced me that Laureline was an android.
  • Half of the film’s dialog was throwaway lines like “bring thrusters up to full” or “scanning for DNA now.”
  • The romantic arc was obviously written by somebody who has never been in love, but who has heard lots of nice things about it, and maybe read a saucy book once.

There were some things that the film did well, of course:

  • The special effects were nice.
  • It was projected in an establishment that serves popcorn.
  • It was about the right length for a movie.
  • The colors were vibrant, and were on the screen instead of in my lap.

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets deserves top billing in a future season of Mystery Science Theater 3000. It was only slightly less painful to watch than Cry Wilderness or Starcrash. It clears my Threshold of Disappointment³, obviously, and does so with such aplomb that I almost feel like apologizing to Transformers: The Last Knight.


¹ Dane Dehaan is a fine actor. I can only surmise that the director very vehemently demanded the most wooden performance possible.
² Cara Delevingne was one of the best things about Suicide Squad. Again, it’s my theory that Besson⁴ required her to pretend to be a replicant with poor social camouflage, and trouper that she is, she nailed the performance.
³ Some people will love this film, and will be quite angry at how disappointed I am with it. It’s important to realize that our reactions to art are mostly due to what we bring with us. The art only activates what’s already in our heads and hearts. I really wish I had a bag full of “You’ll love Valerian” with me in the theater, but I did not.
I have loved some of Besson’s other work, particularly The Fifth Element, which is still one of my all-time favorite films. 

War for the Planet of the Apes

On Saturday I watched Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes back-to-back. I enjoyed both of those movies quite a bit more now than I did when I first saw them, and the refresher course made War for the Planet of the Apes much more enjoyable. I hadn’t realized just how much character continuity we have among the community of apes before. That alone helps the story along a lot.

This film is best considered as part III of a trilogy, and that entire trilogy functions as a prequel to 1968’s Oscar-nominated Planet of the Apes. Or rather, as a prequel to a potential remake, which we don’t actually need but will almost certainly get (I’m giving the 2001 film a wide miss. It doesn’t seem to fit here.)

I’m amazed at how Caesar, Luca, Rocket, Maurice and the other apes have crossed the Uncanny Valley and become real-world people to my eyes. The actors behind the motion-capture did fine work, and the animators are obviously sorcerers who have made some sort of dark pact with an eldritch god of cinema.

War for the Planet of the Apes doesn’t quite clear my Threshold of Awesome, but it’s a very near miss.

Spider-Man: Homecoming

I am quite glad to have a Spider-Man movie that doesn’t tell us the Uncle Ben story. Spider-Man: Homecoming clears my Threshold of Awesome, and comes in at #5 for me for the year.

This film does what the best YA books do—it gives us a story in which young people are the focus (right down to the various tropes whereby grown-ups can’t or won’t help out) without depending on that focus for appeal. Young people and old people alike will enjoy the movie not because of the young cast, but because of how the characters drive a great story.

Is it the best Spider-Man movie we’ve ever had? I don’t know. The first two Spidey films of this century are still close to my heart, and Captain America: Civil War remains my favorite concentrated dose of Spidey, probably because of the wide variety of opponents and the delightful back-and-forth banter.

I’m absolutely not dissing Spider-Man: Homecoming, however. Like I said, it clears my Threshold of Awesome.

Planet Mercenary is Shipping!

If you backed the Planet Mercenary role playing game on Kickstarter, your rewards (books, cards, dice, tokens, etc) are on their way. Many of you have already gotten packages, but many more of you are waiting on things that are still stacked at the Hypernode Media shipping center awaiting their turn in the “shipping and handling” portion of this process.

It’s a complex process, and Sandra is running it brilliantly. A decade ago we ran things like this with the help of an ad-hoc team of volunteers.

Not pictured: 75% of the team, and 95% of the contents of the warehouse…

These days we have a warehouse¹ and a press-ganged team of minors². The biggest limiting factor is that we’re shipping in the summer, and the warehouse is not air-conditioned. Shipping days begin at 8am, and end by noon, just before the team begins dripping sweat onto the merchandise.

My role in this is pretty simple: stay out of the way, and make comics. I’m leaving for four weeks of travel on July 26th, and must fill the buffer with at least five weeks of comics by that time, so while Sandra and her crew endure the heat and heavy lifting, I’m enjoying the A/C and my collection of art supplies³.

It is not fair, and I do feel a bit guilty about it, but it’s the only way through.

On that note, today is Friday, and I need to create an entire week of comics between now and late Saturday night, so it’s time for me to go to work…


¹ The warehouse costs almost twice as much per month as our first house did. Running a business is expensive.
² It’s not entirely comprised of minors, and everybody is paid at least minimum wage, with all of the accompanying paperwork. Again, running a business is expensive. 
³ Sometimes I draw on the couch in front of the TV, enhancing that air-conditioned, seated feeling of guilt.