If there is one indisputable triumph of the film, it is the visual effects. The titular "City of a Thousand Planets" is Alpha, a massive space station that began as the International Space Station and grew over centuries as more alien species docked and added their own modules.
Besson and his team didn't just create a spaceship; they created a functioning ecosystem. The station is divided into zones with varying gravity, atmospheres, and biomes. From the underwater realms of the aquatic species to the radioactive zones and the glittering commercial districts, Alpha is a character in its own right. The level of detail is staggering, populated by thousands of distinct alien designs—none of which are simple "men in suits."
The original was PG-13, which neutered the "European sci-fi edge" of the source material ( Valérian and Laureline comics are weird, philosophical, and sometimes violent). Valerian 3 should go full Dredd (2012) – a gritty, trippy, vertical siege of Alpha’s lower levels.
Let’s be honest: Luc Besson’s Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017) was a beautiful, chaotic mess. It had the most expensive opening 20 minutes of any film in history (the breathtaking "Space Oddity" sequence) and some of the clunkiest dialogue ever spoken by leads who had zero romantic chemistry.
But after the 2017 failure, EuropaCorp canceled all sequel plans. By 2018, Besson admitted in an interview with Variety :