Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017) is a sci-fi action film by Luc Besson — watch it online on iFILM. The year is 2700. Alpha is a drifting space station the size of a city, home to thousands of species who arrived over centuries to trade, learn, and coexist. Agents Valerian and Laureline are handed a mission that turns into something far bigger than either of them expected.

Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne play the pair as combative equals: she reads the threat faster, he charges in anyway. At the center of their investigation is an extinct civilization and a buried catastrophe that someone with serious power wants kept secret. Rihanna appears as shapeshifter Bubble in a sequence that's part sci-fi, part cabaret. Clive Owen, Ethan Hawke, and Rutger Hauer round out a cast that makes even minor roles count.

Besson based the film on the French comic series Valérian and Laureline by Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières, published since 1967 — a direct inspiration for Star Wars and a dozen other genre classics. The visuals are the main event here; no frame looks like anything else in the genre. Stream Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017) online on iFILM.