Luc Besson

On Saturday, French director Luc Besson was accused of rape around the same time Asia Argento was delivering her fiery Cannes speech.

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets proved that perhaps not all passion projects are meant to come to fruition. Director Luc Besson may be pleased with how his ambitious (and horribly miscast) sci-fi epic turned out, but it was a total bomb at the box office, effectively nixing any plans for a sequel…for that film, anyway. The French filmmaker has apparently entered the rebound stage of his big-budgeted heartbreak, returning to his last successful cinematic relationship in the hopes of rekindling that box office magic.

Luc Besson’s Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, his passion project that he’d been wanting to make since before The Fifth Element, didn’t do so well in theaters. Did you see it? Probably not. And if you did, you’re in a depressingly small minority of people who saw perhaps the one movie of the year that makes a case for seeing big-budget sci-fi blockbusters entirely in IMAX 3-D.

No movie this summer will leave your jaw on the floor and your eyeballs as wide as saucers like Luc Besson’s latest will. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, the latest from the French filmmaker, is a dazzling feast of spectacular visuals and exhilarating set pieces. It’s the most original big-budget adventure you’ll see on screen this season and Besson at his most ambitious. But such ambition doesn’t always come without its flaws.

Luc Besson’s new sci-fi movie looks absolutely gorgeous, mostly due to the insane amount of worldbuilding it took to create the giant spaceport-like city of Alpha, which houses around a thousand species from all over the galaxy. A new clip introduces us to the City of a Thousand Planets, which is more like the City of a Thousand Weird-Looking Aliens, providing some exposition for our two heroes, Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and Laureline (Cara Delevingne).

Everything’s gone haywire this summer at the box office. Big studio-fronted franchise movies are faceplanting, creator-driven products without brand-name stars are raking it in, nobody knows which way is up, and it’s only the second week of June. As with every other facet of life in 2017, it appears that anything goes at multiplexes nowadays, so hey, who’s to say that Luc Besson’s bananas-looking Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets won’t be a smash? The trailers have promised something between the colossal fantasia of The Fifth Element and the CGI wonderland of Jupiter Ascending, and I, for one, am here for it.

Luc Besson’s passion project, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, arrives in theaters less than two months from now, but that doesn’t mean it can’t still add a member to its cast. Production officially wrapped last June, but Elizabeth Debicki has now joined the film for a voiceover role.

Luc Besson has already dropped two fantastic trailers for his new space opera, but the final trailer for Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is the most jaw-dropping yet. The first look looked super fun, and second trailer, which I was lucky enough to watch twice in 3D in theater before chatting with Besson himself, was totally dazzling. But this third trailer secures the Fifth Element filmmaker’s latest project as one of the most anticipated movies of the summer.

Could this be the year that Bruce Willis is the key to cinematic universes? M. Night Shyamalan recently announced that he would be making a crossover sequel for both Unbreakable and this year’s Split, and with Luc Besson’s upcoming sci-fi film Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets about to hit theaters, more than a few people  —  myself included  —  have wondered if Valerian would make any passing references to Besson’s The Fifth Element. Another small cameo by Bruce Willis at the end, and suddenly he’s the man holding two separate franchises together.

Free Comic Book Day is a fun time of the year for anyone even remotely interested in comics. Companies and stores pick out some select stories that customers can get for free, and some artists and writers even make comics especially for Free Comic Book Day. Luc Besson and the folks behind Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets have put together a sneak peek of their new movie in the form of a preview comic that introduces us to the characters of Valerian and Laureline and details a few of their adventures.