Judging from the epic first and second Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets trailers, I was fully expecting to be wowed by today's third and final preview of Luc Besson's vivid and epic space opera. As you can see in the final trailer below, "wow" is definitely the right word.
Based on the classic French sci-fi comic Valérian and Laureline, written by Pierre Christin and illustrated by Jean-Claude Mézières, the undertaking has been a dream of Besson's for at least 25 years. The film's human stars include Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne as a squabbling team of space-and-time-traveling special operatives, who are tasked with safeguarding the City of a Thousand Planets from a dark and mysterious planet-gobbling force. But human stars are really only half the fun.
When you have a thousand planets getting together in one utopian, intelligence-sharing city, you're going to get a lot of aliens. And that's one thing this new trailer definitely delivers, and at incredible scale at that. As The Fifth Element and Lucy director told us at Comic-Con last year, he's shooting for a healthy mix of "15 percent human, 85 percent alien."
I think it's safe to say he nailed it, certainly in this trailer. Check out all the alien (and DeHaanian) goodness below, and then have a look at some of the highly screengrabbable visual highlights below that. There are a ton of incredible images to choose from, so let us know which ones made you say "wow" too.
28th Century seashell collecting
It appears that seashell collecting is far more exciting in the 28th century. And yes, that's an alien with an alien on her shoulder, staring at giant alien conch shells, which are likely inhabited by aliens. But what kind of dark, doomsday aliens are lurking out on the horizon?
Under the sea in an alien's garden
Cut to underneath the gloomy sea, far below yet connected to what appear to be giant generators, a blue-hued alien picks Avatar-esque phosphorescent flowers, while sending juice up to the mother ships.
The City of a Thousand Planets
See all those ships heading to Alpha? Those are likely filled with aliens, heading to the "center of peace and prosperity."
An Alpha party don't stop
Ain't no party like an Alpha party, where alien species have converged for centuries on end, to bask in the intelligence and cultures of other alien species.
An unknown force
How come unknown forces can't just keep to themselves? Unfortunately for that non-stop Alpha party, there appears to be more than one unknown force on the horizon! But who will stop them?
Our heroes emerge
With the stakes drearily raised, our team of space-and-time-traveling agents, Valerian and Laureline, are called to action, and heroically rocket out of a tight squeeze and into the fray, Falcon style.
Clive Owen sets the clock
Valerian and Laureline's commander, Arün Filitt (Clive Owen!) sets the ticking clock, telling his agents they have "less than ten hours to find the threat, and eliminate it."
Time to get to work
Laureline's voiceover let's us know it's time to get to work. And then Valerian's mad running begins, from one incredible game-play-redolent world to the next, with ever increasing visual, audio and alien intensity.
Run away!
They saved the most impressive aliens for the trailer's end. These glorious creatures are just begging to be viewed on the big screen -- the bigger the better -- which you can do July 21, when Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets opens wide.
