2017 is one of the worst movie years in recent memory, and big reason for that is the constant failure of major franchises. New and old series alike have consistently disappointed, critically and commercially. While there are many excuses for why these films fail, and many increasingly obvious trends that don’t seem to go away (as presented with gusto in Alien: Covenant) the simplest explanation is often the best – they simply aren’t that good.
The past month has brought us two more huge bombs: Luc Besson’s Valerian and the City of Thousand Planets and Nikolaj Arcel’s adaptation of Stephen King’s epic literary saga, The Dark Tower. Despite both being blockbusters with clear aspirations for sequels upon sequels (and even TV show for one that, let’s face it, won’t happen), they both come from entirely different places – one’s a $200 million+ labor of love, while the other is a ~$60 million flop made by a studio committee banking solely on brand recognition. Yet each ended up in the same garbage pile. Why? How? Let’s compare.
Pedigree
Valerian – Luc Besson, who wrote and directed the film, clearly has a genuine love for the source material, a French graphic novel Valerian and Laureline that ran from 1967 to 2010 (though never really made waves in the United States). His best film, The Fifth Element, is clearly and admittedly a test run for this specific property. With so many filmmakers and producers fraudulently trying to convince us how much each property means to them, it’s refreshing to believe that this is Besson’s lifelong passion project. His unconventional approaches towards funding the ridiculously expensive film puts it more in line with an independent film than a conventional blockbuster.
Unfortunately, there can also be too much love for source material. There are a lot of elements in the film (maybe most of the elements of the film) that would probably make sense if we had context from the actual comics. Technology, alien races, and planets probably have an extensive history within the Valeriverse, but Besson throws in so much so quickly that without a background, it’s hard to get a firm grasp on any of it.
The Dark Tower – Hollywood has attempted to make a version of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower since the 1990s, and with the length of that gestation time, it’s not altogether surprising that this film feels like something cobbled together just so they could finally get it done. (Similar to 2015’s Fant4stic.)
With constant behind the scenes meddling and many masters to serve, it was more than predictable that the movie lacks any sort of vision. At some point Ron Howard was slated to direct, and he’s still listed as a producer. One of the co-writers is Akiva Goldsman – best known for Batman and Robin, but also the undeserved Oscar winner for Best Adapted Screenplay for Ron Howard’s A Beautiful Mind. Over the past decade, he has been responsible for forgettable fare such as Winter’s Tale (which he also directed), The 5th Wave, Rings, and Transformers: The Last Knight. It’s hard to believe he has a genuine connection to any of those properties, and his lack of personal investment is evident in The Dark Tower as well. Maybe director Nikolaj Arcel (the original The Girl with Dragon Tattoo, A Royal Affair) read The Dark Tower at some point, but its clear that the source material didn’t resonate with him, or if it did, it stopped doing that a long ago.
While Besson might have put in too much of Valerian, the people behind The Dark Tower took too much out. (Though I should note that I am only passingly familiar with the story.) This is a movie without identity of its own and lacks any indication of why this franchise is supposed to be a big deal. For a book series with legions of fans, it’s remarkable how nothing about the adaptation feels at all distinctive.
Winner – Valerian
Characters
Valerian – The weakest part of Valerian is the characters, namely the titular character, Valerian (Dane DeHaan). Yes, it’s been commented on in pretty much every article written about the film, but DeHaan is such poor casting choice that almost single-handedly brings down the entire movie. The character of Valerian needed to be brash and fun, with just the right amount of stupid luck – not a character who is more blasé than a mumblecore darling. No one else in the film is as bad as DeHaan (though Clive Owen is a distant second), but without a pivot around which to center the fantastical movie, it’s hard for anyone (or anything) to excel. Cara Delevingne, as his sidekick Lorelei, fairs somewhat better. She has a greater ability at interacting against entirely CGI backdrops and characters and at playing to the goofiness of the situations, but she’s detrimentally hamstrung by her co-lead and their lack of chemistry.
Unexpectedly, Battleship‘s Rihanna, as a shape-and-clothes-shifting alien named Bubbles, gives the movie’s most notable performance as an alien prostitute. She feels a natural part of this world, as does Ethan Hawke as her pimp. Unfortunately, they are both underused (particularly Hawke) and their sequence is in a side mission that detracts way too much from the main plot.
The Dark Tower – The biggest strength of The Dark Tower is probably its characters, or rather, character. Idris Elba brings a world-weary solemnity to the gunslinger Roland Deschain that he gives the movie a depth and history it does not have anywhere else. Too bad it takes nearly a half hour to get him on screen.
The main character is really a young boy, Jake Chambers (Tom Taylor), who has persistent dreams about Mid-World (the alternate universe housing the titular Dark Tower) because of his psychic powers. Making an adolescent the main character in a nightmare world can work; we have countless movies from the 1980’s proving this is so. Unfortunately, The Dark Tower isn’t done in the style of Return to Oz, Labyrinth, The NeverEnding Story, etc. It’s not ‘seen’ from a child’s point of view, nor does it play on the fears of youth – as the upcoming It movie seems to be attempting – it has no real point of view.
It’s easy to believe that Matthew McConaughey as Walter O’Dim, the Man in Black might have been intimidating in a longer cut. However, with a 95-minute running time, he struts in, drawls something vaguely menacing, and struts out. He is given no time to measure a situation, play out his sadistic mind games, or really relish chewing the scenery.
Winner: The Dark Tower
Ramblings on Plot and Visuals on Page 2.
Plot
Valerian – Outside of DeHaan, Valerian‘s biggest problem is being way over-plotted, which isn’t surprising for a 137-minute movie, which could have easily lost 20 minutes. There’s a core plot – a quasi-mystery about what happened to an extinct alien civilization – but it’s overwhelmed by so much filler. There’s a side quest in the beginning and a side quest in the middle. The side quest in the middle (the aforementioned segment with Rihanna and Ethan Hawke) lasts for so long that it’s easy to forget what the actual main story is. (It also doesn’t help that the main story is the least interesting of the three plots.) Maybe this movie would have worked better as a series of vignettes, where each of the three stories was its own unconnected chapter. Without such a long distraction in the middle, maybe the alien genocide would have been able to maintain an emotional core.
The Dark Tower – While Valerian suffered from overplotting, this movie suffers from severe underplotting. Your basic ‘must stop bad guy with vague world domination plans’ that leads to a rushed, horribly unsatisfying final confrontation. This needn’t be a bad thing if the movie was used for world building, but it wasn’t. There’s a small ramshackle town (not Tull, for book fans), a tech-y lair used by the Man in Black, and New York City where there’s nothing in Jake’s real life worth caring about. There’s little sense of the geography or history or horror that made Mid-World unique, nor is there any sense of mystery that should make us want to know more about this universe. Any of the overarching story that makes The Dark Tower books considered a legitimate epic is not there. When Walter is finally defeated in a clumsy, haphazard fashion, you don’t get a sense that there’s anything left to do in Mid-World. They should stay on Earth with the antibiotics.
The film also cheats with its world building by making regular use of Easter Eggs and references to some of Stephen King’s other works. (Jake’s psychic powers being called “The Shine” is the biggest one.) The Dark Tower book series might call upon bits and pieces of King’s entire oeuvre, and you can believe they are part of the same universe or multi-verse. But in our world of interconnected cinematic universes, it feels like the film is trying to hornswoggle us into thinking The Dark Tower is grander than it has any right to be. “The Shine” is clearly meant to make us think about The Shining, as though Jack Torrance and the Overloook are part of this world. But they aren’t, they can’t be because that property is owned by Warner Brothers and this is a Sony production. Capitalizing on our positive memories of actually good films does not make your film better, it’s rather insulting actually.
Winner – Valerian
Visuals
Valerian – This is obviously where the movie shines the most. Some of the CGI isn’t great, but for the most part the movie remains a visual wonderland throughout. Creatures and worlds look distinctive and colorful, and it would have been nice to dwell on some of them for longer than the film allowed. That, perhaps, is the highest compliment you can pay to Valerian. When all movies essentially have great effects, it’s rare to find a film that actually does something unique and memorable with them. But fantastic visuals and massive CGI don’t sell movies anymore, nor do they make up for a movie’s others shortcomings. We got over Avatar syndrome years ago.
The Dark Tower – Obviously this wasn’t going to top Valerian in scope, but that didn’t mean the movie had to be so bland. Building up atmosphere and some creatively done effects could have allowed Dark Tower to succeed in ambiance where Valerian succeeds in extravagance. Disappointingly, Dark Tower has no real visual flair. The franchise has roots in spaghetti Westerns, where scenic vistas and amazing cinematography turned relatively cheap films into Cinemascope classics respected nearly half a century later. Unfortunately, none of that inspiration is present here. Monsters, what few there are, are cheap and unimpressive. Portals are simply generic blue lightning portals, not the far more distinctive image of a lone standing door, as presented in the books. The film was relatively cheap with a reported production budget of only $60 million (which should indicate the lack of care Sony actually had for this property), but that didn’t mean what little they had to work with, had to give us so little in return.
Winner – Valerian
Conclusion
Too much love vs. studio coldness. Over plotting vs. under plotting. Visual glut vs. visual dearth. Characters no one cares about vs. … characters no one cares about. Although Valerian was more successful in comparison, it still failed overall. (It’s barely made $100 million worldwide, while The Dark Tower has yet to hit $60 million worldwide.) Unsurprisingly, the many problems – while not necessarily shared between these two films – are not altogether uncommon with most modern blockbusters.
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