MovieChat Forums > Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017) Discussion > So... it just ended...

So... it just ended...

posted 6 years ago by MinaVladimir (4077)
5 replies | jump to latest

Is it just me, or is the ending a bit... off? It didn't feel like a proper ending.

I mean, it's a two hour movie, and I guess most of the story was wrapped up with the Mul people fucking off to wherever, and Clive Owen dangling from whatever he was dangling from. But from the way the final scene was going, I assumed Valerian and Laureline were still on the Mul ship, and that we're going to get a bit more of a conclusion to the story. But nope, we get "Maybe I'll be you wife", *kiss*, shot of the tin can, The End. What?

As a viewer I can certainly fill in the blanks. But it just ended. It felt abrupt.

Am I alone in this?

[–] HAL 9010 (903) 6 years ago

But everything in the story was very superficial and so supports an ending like this, no? We never got any real insight into the characters and the whole story seemed a bit random and sort of a frame by frame kind of telling style. So really, I think the ending is befitting. Ended as it started and as it was....

But to scrutinize the plot a bit further: The Mul seemed very rushed. Firstly the dead princess connects shortly after Valarian is to pickup the Converter creature.... did she wait for 30 years until this connection ? Did this ghost know of this future meeting and just waited until then to do anything? Perhaps, but not very good story telling.

And also the Lui peps spend 30 years to build a space ship to create a virtual-reality-holodeck thing which we know was already a technology of this time (standard issue in agent space ships for example) and so I ask; what was so speciel here? The converter and the pearl was apparently crucial for their spaceship to come to life and extremely rare... but would it not be better to just steal a holodeck, instead of hoping for the last Converter in the universe .... idk, if scrutinized the story seem far fetched.... but then again, it should not be scrutinized. It is a fast paced superficial space adventure, and so the ending is befitting for what it was ... :)

[–] MinaVladimir (4077) 6 years ago

So basically, a half-arsed movie got a half-arsed ending lol.

I don't think much, if anything, was properly developed in this film. As you said, it was all superficial. But it was also complicated. So, not very satisfying on any end, for me at least.

Re the Mul princess. One of the other Mul people (I forget who it was) told Valerian that the spirits of Mulians can travel both in space and time. So the spirit of the princess time traveled to get into Valerian at that time, because she knew, _somehow_ (don't remember how) that he can help her people. They didn't go in much detail on anything surrounding the Mul plot.

As for the Mul ship, I think the pearls from the Converter didn't create so much a VR, but a real place in the ship? Like the TARDIS almost. Those pearls were very powerful, so I think they basically made another planet in the ship, but not in a VR kind of way. Does this make sense?

I thin it should be scrutinised, because they put all this stuff in there, and didn't explain any of it properly. They could've kept it simple, but they made it overcomplicated, so if they were going for just a superficial space adventure, they did a poor job of it IMO.

[–] HAL 9010 (903) 6 years ago

If they created a real place well then this makes sense, and I think you are right. It is just that when they activated their machine it looked totally VR with never-ending horizons over the ocean etc. and not like a remodeled football-field-sized-hangar. Also the way it materialized was exactly (as I remember) how Valerian's VR did it in the beginning of the movie, so perhaps the storytellers should have visualized it differently....respectfully the story should rather just have taken their machine to an uninhabited planet or moon and turned it on there; this would have been more convincing imo.

For what is was, I enjoyed it. And I would like to see more adventures from them... It was just what it was. Cool ideas for aliens though.

[–] Bing987 (9) 6 years ago

> idk, if scrutinized the story seem far fetched.... but then again, it should not be scrutinized. It is a fast paced superficial space adventure

Well, there were a lot of things in the movie that just didn't make sense. I mean, if a Converter can poop out hundreds of copies of whatever you feed it, they'd have an unlimited supply of anything they want, especially those pearls. There's no need to harvest more pearls -- just make more.

And what was up with that virtual marketplace? Was it actually there or not? Were the people shopping and selling really there? I can't think of any rational reason why a marketplace would be invisible like that, especially since everyone knows that it is there.

And, probably hundreds of other strangely illogical stuff.

[–] HAL 9010 (903) 6 years ago

Brilliant point, why harvest pearls at all? Could be explained with the copies being second grade or something.... but then it would not help their final spaceship much, as this only has converted pearl (or just one real, which was consumed). Good point.

Regarding the marketplace. I loved this idea. The market place was not virtuel. It was to a parallel world. A real world, but parallel. So when you walked that big round sandbox in our world, you were walking in a parallel world with all those shops, at an equal size to this sandbox. So in fact, the once's virtuel were the shoppers.... but virtuel to this parallel world.

This is also why anything they bought, needed to go through some sort of converter that would bring it to our world. Sort of through a small wormhole, I guess. When Valarian runs around, his arm is through this converter thing, just opposite - that one brought stuff from our world to the parallel world. Meaning, his arm held a gun that was real in the parallel world, but the rest of his body was still a virtuel representation there.... so if they had caught him there, he would have lost his arm, but only his arm. luckily Lauraline fixed it in time, so he could take his arm back to his own world before someone cut it off..... hmmm, not easy to explain. But do you get it now?

Many of the aliens we briefly saw were a refreshing new style to those we otherwise often get from Hollywood (no offence meant). I liked that too. In fact this intro with ISS becoming TCTP (The City of a Thousand Planets) was my favorite part.