WIRED: Valerian, though, will be an order of magnitude stranger. For starters, there’s the source material, a French series of bandes dessinées (graphic novels, literally “drawn strips”) called Valérian et Laureline, a moderne sci-fi title not well known in the US. Then there’s the Avatar-level amount of alien that Besson is pumping in—far more than anything else he has made. The movie has visual effects from both Weta (The Lord of the Rings) and Industrial Light & Magic (basically everything else). Where The Fifth Element had just under 200 effects elements—that flying-car chase through Manhattan, the luxury-cruise starship—Valerian has about 2,500. Finally, weirdest of all, there’s the fact that the movie is getting made at all. With few exceptions—Interstellar or Passengers, maybe—nobody makes hugely expensive science fiction movies out of unrecognizable or original intellectual property. It’s too much of a financial risk. No matter how big the cult of Besson is, it’s fair to ask: How the hell did he get to make Valerian? […]
When Besson was developing The Fifth Element, he turned to bandes dessinées creators for production-design help. Jean Giraud, who under the pen name Moebius had ruled ’70s sci-fi comics in Europe, illustrated characters. And for Bruce Willis’ flying taxicab—a full-size version of which sits in Cité du Cinéma’s cathedral-like lobby—Besson turned to Jean-Claude Mézières, cocreator of Valérian et Laureline. According to Besson, adapting Valerian was Mézières’ idea. “I said, ‘We cannot do Valerian,’?” Besson says. “‘There’s too many aliens and robots and spaceships. It’s impossible.’”
Besson had a point. The series follows the titular characters, far-future space cops who get around in a time–traveling flying saucer. The first issue sends them back in time to fight a mad scientist under a flooded, post-apocalyptic Manhattan. Before long it’s off to a hollow planet, where men wage war against women in galleon-like airships. (Laureline spends a lot of time in a metal bikini in this one.) So yeah, good luck filming all that. […] Besson and his longtime producer (and wife) Virginie Besson-Silla bought the rights anyway, thinking conditions might change. And they did: Avatar came out. Big enough computers fueled by large enough bank accounts could make anything look real. “Suddenly, only imagination became the limit,” Besson says. MORE
VALERIAN PREMIERS IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ON JULY 21ST