It’s easy to see why Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is bombing hard. For starters, it’s called Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, a name that means nothing to American audiences. Like other high-profile, auteurist, director-driven science fiction flops such as Sucker Punch, Chappie, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and Jupiter Ascending, Valerian is audacious, original and ambitious to a fault. From a commercial standpoint, Valerian shares a problem with the aforementioned films that, creatively, at least, should be a virtue: it’s too original. These oddball science fiction flops are original in sometimes perversely derivative ways.

Source: The Guardian August 04, 2017 09:56 UTC