{"id":7397,"date":"2017-07-23T02:44:15","date_gmt":"2017-07-23T02:44:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jurn.link\/dazposer\/?p=7397"},"modified":"2017-07-23T02:44:15","modified_gmt":"2017-07-23T02:44:15","slug":"valerian-and-the-city-of-a-thousand-planets-the-locus-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/2017\/07\/23\/valerian-and-the-city-of-a-thousand-planets-the-locus-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets – the Locus review"},"content":{"rendered":"

The venerable science fiction magazine Locus<\/em> sent Gary Westfahl to review the new Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets<\/em><\/a>, and he was enchanted by it, especially the amazing visuals. Although Westfahl mentions that many of the establishment press reviews have been sniffy — especially disliking some corny comic-book dialogue, a lack of politically-correct preaching, some choppy bits of editing, and apparently there’s also a dire cameo from some U.S. singer called Rihanna (never heard of her…) which is said to bring the whole movie to a grinding halt half-way through. But Westfahl’s long review likes the movie as…<\/p>\n

“an enjoyable space adventure, deploying consistently dazzling visuals in support of an involving story that never becomes entirely predictable. … a visual feast”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And he notes favorably…<\/p>\n

“… an apparently sincere effort to make his story seem scientifically plausible.” [and that] “the story does not devolve into a trite fable about virtuous nature corrupted by sinister science.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On Rihanna = Jar Jar Binks…<\/p>\n

[After interrupting what sounds like a good movie, Rihanna] “is written out of the story abruptly and unpersuasively, as if Besson recognized her character was an intrusive embarrassment that needed to be excised as quickly as possible.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So it sounds like she is just there for marketing purposes, a ‘product-placement’ meant to help sell the apparently rather humdrum soundtrack. What a pity. Anyway, apart from that it all sounds like a very fun and stylishly visualised movie, and hopefully we’ll get the ‘Rihanna-free fan-edit’ in due course, in the same way that you can get Star Wars<\/em> with almost all of Jar-Jar Binks edited away (a vast improvement).<\/p>\n

Looking at the other reviews they seem broadly positive when they come from sci-fi people (rather than jaded cynical press journalists, most of whom appear to resent sci-fi and ‘comic book movies’). For instance the Geeks.com review called Valerian<\/em>…<\/p>\n

“a genuinely visionary work of art … a pure-energy delight … There are more ideas in a single chase sequence in this movie than in the entirety of most other films I\u2019ve seen this Summer.” <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So it sound like it’s one of those “you either love, or you hate it, depending on your personality type” movies. It’s definitely on my “must see at the cinema” list, while its run lasts. Sadly it seems we’re unlikely to get a sequel, as the industry trade magazine Deadline<\/em> reports that the early negative reviews killed the movie’s opening at the U.S. box-office. So far as I can tell it opens outside London in the UK on 4th August 2017.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The venerable science fiction magazine Locus sent Gary Westfahl to review the new Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, and he was enchanted by it, especially the amazing visuals. Although Westfahl mentions that many of the establishment press reviews have been sniffy — especially disliking some corny comic-book dialogue, a lack of politically-correct […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spotted-in-the-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7397\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}