This was the movie I waited to see because I thought seeing it at the theater would be a truly great experience. As far as the special effects were concerned it was. I had seen all 40 episodes of the anime on Crunchyroll.com. I had read that George Lucas used parts of the graphic novels and "borrowed" quite a bit from those original stories from the 1960's for Star Wars, and that intrigued me. But there were several problems with this movie that I thought should be a summer blockbuster. First of all, bad casting for the main characters. I have nothing against Dane Dehaan and knew nothing about him till I saw this movie, but immediately felt that he was miscast. His acting was flat and there was no sexual chemistry between him and Cara Delevingne's character Laureline. Why did they not have the title called "Valerian and Laureline" and also their title is too long. Cara Delevingne looks angry for the bulk of the film and I couldn't help but think maybe they should put her in Nikita or some action flick where she could independently kick someone's ass without getting the approval of a male character. There was nothing of the time travel theme that the anime characters experienced in almost every episode. The cartoon Valerian and Laureline deny their love, which makes it seem more real. In the anime, neither character wants to settle down, but in the movie, Valerian speaks often of his love and getting married to her. Also, the main unifying theme for the whole show is that the earth has disappeared and Valerian is trying to find out why this happened. In the anime, Laureline, being from the middle ages, has to catch up with the latest technology and is more concerned with surviving in the world than finding Earth and she has been saved by Valerian from certain death. She is highly intelligent and quick witted, surpassing Valerian in her common sense and intuition. If the writers had perhaps given more of a background story for this movie to those who had NOT watched all 40 episodes of the anime or read the graphic novels, I think this movie would have done a lot better at the theater. Casting better actors for the main characters would have assured the movie success. Its tricky casting the right people for any movie, and know this was a hard decision casting for these particular roles, but my top picks for Valerian are Vincent Caso, Robbie Amell, Luke Mitchell, Jensen Ross Ackles, and John Harlan Kim (he's Aussie) and for Laureline are Emma Stone, Jennifer Lawrence, Adelaide Kane and possibly Ellie Kemper if they wanted more of a comic approach to her character. As far as the villains are concerned I wish they had kept those in the anime and that guy who wanted to marry Laureline. In the universe that Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières created, Laureline and Valerian were known as hero's and the last humans of their kind in the universe. It would have been nice if the screenwriters had kept more of the original story line instead of recreating already beloved French characters into "acceptable" American spies. It sure would have helped if they had given more of the anime background story for those unfamiliar with it.
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