After dabbling with cerebral science fiction in 2014’s Lucy, writer-director Luc Besson is set to introduce moviegoers to a brand new, and wildly ambitious space opera later this year.
It’s called Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, an effects-laden blockbuster that has already drawn comparisons to Jupiter Ascending and, perhaps most exciting of all, The Fifth Element, Besson’s cult sci-fi that’s set to ring in its 20th anniversary in 2017 – how very apropos. But in tapping into the French graphic novel by Pierre Christin, Luc Besson is engineering a fairly different cinematic experience with Valerian, which can essentially be pitched as an intergalactic road trip movie concerning two cops (Cara Delevingne and Dane DeHaan) who fight to protect a utopian 28th century Earth and its neighboring planets from the baddies.
Expect themes of time travel and other sci-fi conventions to rear their head in Valerian, one of which being peculiar alien creatures to flank the film’s human leads. Thanks to Empire Magazine, today we are introduced to one such being: Dan Makta, a high-ranking alien ambassador stationed on Alpha. It’s the core hub that anchors that aforementioned array of planets, and here, Besson tells Empire that the City of a Thousand Planets is one thriving with science and culture.
“Most of the time when you see aliens in a film, they’re trying to destroy things. But Alpha is the city of science and culture: everybody is exchanging knowledge. It’s a very rich world.”
Valerian, also starring Clive Owen, Ethan Hawke, Rutger Hauer and 10 Cloverfield Lane‘s John Goodman, will light up theaters across the planet on July 21, 2017.