Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

In the twenty-eighth century, Earth's former  International Space Station starts cooperating   with extraterrestrial peoples, who each bring  their own station and attach it to Earth's.   Little by little, it grows into a  multicultural city called Alpha,   inhabited by millions of species from thousands  of different planets. It grows so big, in fact,   that it's relocated to deep space, allowing it  to reach even more people and continue growing.   To preserve peace among such a large population,  a police division is created by the UHF,   United Human Federation. Four hundred years  after Alpha is relocated into deep space,   planet Mül lives in peace without any contact  with other races, fishing for pearls containing   enormous amounts of energy and using a special  animal known as the converter to replicate them.   Until one day, wreckage begins falling from the  sky, including various smaller vessels and an   entire huge spacecraft that causes an explosion,  annihilating every being on the planet. The tribe   leaders and a good number of their population  manage to hide inside one of the vessels,   but by closing the door and accidentally  breaking the lock, they leave Princess   Lihö-Minaa outside as the planet dies around  her. Before the explosion takes her too,   she releases her soul in a wave of energy,  hoping to pass on their message. The wave   reaches Major Valerian of the UHF, who had been  taking a nap on a holographic beach in his ship.   He travels with his partner Sergeant Laureline,  with who he wants to be in a relationship but   she continues to turn him down because she  considers him a womanizer with commitment issues.   He asks the ship's AI, Alex, to scan his brain,  and she confirms he's received external waves   that could come from the present or the past and  from anywhere in the universe. The duo travels to   planet Kyrian, where they receive a message from  the Defence Minister, who asks them to rescue   the last converter of its species and take it to  Alpha for a top-secret operation. Once they land   and have changed into clothes that will make  them look like tourists, they meet with Major   Gibson and his team, who will be assisting them  during this mission. Valerian will be infiltrating   a virtual market and meeting Laureline at a drop  point to make the transfer, but before they begin,   Valerian asks Laureline to marry him as proof he  isn't afraid of commitment. Laureline doesn't take   him seriously though, and sends him away without  an answer except for a kiss on the cheek. The big   market is in another dimension, so to access it,  Valerian must wear a special helmet and gloves.   Once inside, he breaks the rules and enters an  area where humans aren't allowed to meet with   Sergeant Cooper, who gives him a pair of glasses  to change for this helmet to access yet another   dimension, plus a gun, a cube to use it and a  quick scan of his body to make him invisible.   Undetected and unseen, Valerian enters a shady  shop where Igon is trying to sell the converter   to two aliens that look like the species from  his dream in exchange for those special pearls.   Igon is greedy and demands more, and since they  can't reach an agreement, everyone present draws   their guns on each other, including Valerian  himself, therefore revealing his presence behind   Igon. Meanwhile, Laureline and the team drive to  the back of the wall that surrounds the market   and shoot the guard in the watchtower with a  special gun that allows them to gain control   of his every move. Then they cut a hole on the  wall so Laureline can go through it and meet   Valerian at the drop point with a special box she  activates next to him, making it appear in the   other dimension. Once Igon has put the converter  in the box, Laureline deactivates it and takes   it back to the van, but Valerian stays another  moment to take the special pearl with him as well.   He tries to leave quietly, but his floating  hand calls the attention of the guards' alien   dog and gets jumped on by it, causing everyone  to start shooting. Laureline notices Valerian is   in trouble and alerts the team, who sends Cooper  for backup and gets attacked by the dog as well.   Thanks to being mostly invisible, Valerian manages  to escape the shop, but the box pad is broken and   he can't leave that dimension. A guard finds him  walking through the market and goes after him,   shooting a series of magnetic metal spheres that  get attached to his box with such a weight that   makes him sink through a manhole. He lands inside  an arcade, where he finds a little kid with a toy   gun. Valerian uses this chance to give him one of  the magnetic spheres, which the child shoots at a   nearby alien, and because of the magnetism,  all the other spheres follow the first one.   Valerian is now free of that extra weight and  can stand again, but he accidentally makes the   kid cry and ends up with the parent chasing him  through the market. He runs away until he bumps   into Laureline, who fixes the box right before  the guards and the dog find Valerian again.   Their troubles aren't over though: they've been  detected and Igon is sending an even bigger   creature after them. The duo rushes out of the  market as the alien under their control shoots the   creature to keep it away until everyone is back in  their vehicle. The monster easily catches up with   them as they drive away and jumps on their van,  so the team opens fire on it to no avail. Valerian   decides to call Alex and make the AI bring their  ship over, so he and Laureline escape through the   window and jump into their vessel safely. The  creature follows them and jumps on it as well,   only to slip and fall when the ship accelerates  to leave exospace. While Laureline puts the   converter in a treatment capsule, Valerian makes  Alex analyze the pearl, discovering it contains   an insane amount of power. When looking up the  planet in the system however, it shows up under   restricted access. After Laureline joins him on  the deck and ignores his marriage proposal again,   they make it to Alpha, where they are granted  VIP access because of the converter they carry.   They meet with General Okto Bar, who tells  them about a radioactive zone discovered in   the middle of the station. They've sent drones and  special soldiers, but nobody has come back alive.   The area is contaminated and growing every day,  so they need to end it before it destroys the   entire station. Commander Arün Filitt arrives  then with his personal army of K-trons droids,   which he will take with him to his meeting with  the security council, but a call from the Defense   Minister makes him take Valerian and Laureline  as his bodyguards instead. Before going to the   meeting though, Filitt stops by to check on a  prisoner of his: it's an alien from planet Mü   being tortured for information. They haven't  gotten anything out of him, so Filitt orders   his men to kill him if he doesn't say anything in  an hour. He also reminds his K-trons what to do   if the operation doesn't go well. Laureline brings  the converter to the meeting because Filitt wants   to have it as a possible bargain card, but she  refuses to hand it to him, keeping it safe with   her. Valerian enters the room with Filitt while he  tells the council about the contamination problem,   and Laureline waits outside, guarding the door.  She's suddenly approached by three small aliens,   the Dogan Daguis, offering their services  to her. She asks them about planet Mül,   and they classify it as a sensitive  subject that Major Samk was an expert of,   but he died three years ago under mysterious  circumstances. They also tell her mercenaries   will try to steal the converter right before an  alarm starts ringing. The attackers are going   through the walls and neither the council nor the  AIs can see them, and when the officers in the   command room try to evacuate, they discover there  is no power and they've been locked up. Laureline   joins Valerian and together they try to get Filitt  out, but the wall suddenly explodes and a group of   Mül aliens enters the room, shooting everyone with  a gooey substance that covers them with a cocoon.   Valerian notices this and puts a capsule in  his mouth before he's covered up as well,   and the aliens leave a few minutes later taking a  cocooned Filitt with them. Once they're gone, from   Valerian's capsule comes out a spider droid that  cuts the cocoon open and allows him to wake up and   escape. Next, he rescues Laureline and gives her  his knife so she can rescue the others while he   goes after the aliens and Filitt. Power returns  to the command room and Laureline tracks Filitt   and his captors on the screen, passing directions  to Valerian through the communicator. The only way   to reach them quickly is going through a wall,  so Valerian breaks through one with his suit   and runs through dozens of different environmental  areas until he's picked up by Alex in their ship,   because the aliens have boarded a vessel as  well. A high-speed chase ensues, and Valerian   opens fire on them, but the enemy's ship simply  splits up into hundreds of smaller vessels.   Valerian follows the one they think Filitty is  in, but his ship is too big to keep up with it   through the narrow paths it's taking, so he takes  the sky jet instead, using its hook to take hold   onto the enemy's ship and follow it whenever  it goes. Unfortunately, this means he loses   control and gets dragged into the dead zone, and  Laureline loses all forms of contact with him.   She wants to go rescue him, but General Bar  forbids it and orders his men to restrain her.   Before she's taken away though, she manages to  plant the seed of doubt in his mind: why are there   aliens from a destroyed planet here? And why did  they spare the council's lives if they're so evil?   Someone has been lying to them. When she's out  of sight, Bar checks planet Mül on the database   and discovers not even he can access that level  of classified information. On the way out of the   command room, Laureline pretends to help the  guards by telling them they should cuff her,   so when they come closer, she grabs them  and beats them up until they're unconscious.   Then she meets with the Dogan Daguis and makes  them take her to Valerian's exact location.   Together the four of them go to see Bob, who is  going to take them fishing for something very   special: a cortex jellyfish. Laureline boards his  submarine, which takes her deep underwater in the   search of bromosaurs, giant creatures that carry  jellyfish on their backs. Bob uses the submarine's   special claws to retrieve the jellyfish from  a bromosaur, which proves to need more than a   strong pull, earning the creatures' rage. Three  bromosaurs begin chasing them through the water,   but thankfully, the submarine is fast enough and  they manage to lose them when taking a narrow   path. Once they're back on land, the Dogan Daguis  explain to her that she must put the jellyfish on   her head and let it show her what she seeks,  but she mustn't do it for more than one minute   or it will start feeding on her memory. Laureline  follows their instructions and pushes her limits,   staying under the jellyfish for one minute ten  seconds until she sees Valerian's location: a   sign that says "L630 ESUL deactivated", which the  Dogan Daguis confirm to be level 630 east. After   she leaves to rescue her partner, the Dogan Daguis  go to see General Bar to sell him the information   about the alien hostage Filitt has kept hidden.  He immediately arrests all the men involved in his   interrogation and tries to help the Mül person,  but he makes his body explode to send a message   as the princess did after telling Bar that they're  attacking them because the UHF has what they need.   When his assistant Sergeant Neza runs the alien's  DNA through their database, they find out this   species isn't there, which means they never  existed or someone deleted them from their files.   Laureline arrives at level 630 east and, after  carefully walking around a rocky area, she finds   Varelian unconscious on the ground. She wakes  him up with special medicine and after a silly   argument, she entertains herself watching the  butterflies while Varelian fixes his vessel. What   she doesn't know it's that not all the butterflies  are real, some are bait, and when she touches one   without knowing, she's fished out by a primitive  tribe, the Boulan Bathors of the planet Goara, and   taken into their restricted area. Valerian touches  a butterfly on purpose so he's fished out too,   but he shoots his captor and hides behind a wall  as he regains contact with Alex. The AI tells him   that the only way to get in without causing a  diplomatic mess would be finding a glamopod.   Now that Valerian is out of the dead zone, the  UHF can track him again. Guards are told not to   hurt him, just to find and assist, so it's easy  for him to threaten an officer and take a special   invisible gun from him before knocking him out and  entering Paradise Alley. There are various human   callgirls offering their services on the street,  but Valerian goes to a special club and asks Jolly   the Pimp for a glamopod, a kind of alien that can  shapeshift into whatever they want. Jolly takes   Valerian to see Bubble's show, who dances while  constantly changing looks, and after she's done,   Valerian takes out his gun, knocks Jolly out,  and makes a deal with Bubble, who is an illegal   inmigrant: if she helps him find Laureline, he'll  get her a legal pass and freedom from the club.   Bubble accepts and takes them out of there by  hiding Valerian in her jelly body and transforming   into Jolly. This is the same trick they use to  enter the area where Laureline is captured, Bubble   simply has to transform into a Boulan Bathor.  Meanwhile, Laureline tries to communicate with   her captors to no avail, they just keep showing  her dresses for her to pick one. She ends up in   a white one with a huge hat that has a hole on the  top of her head and is put on a line of servants   that are taking food to their emperor, where  Bubble and Valerian have sneaked into as well.   The emperor dislikes all the dishes taken to him,  including Valerian's, so he leaves the line and   watches Laureline take her turn from behind the  guards. Laureline's dish is just a lemon, which   the emperor squeezes on top of her head before  taking out a special tool to crack open her skull.   Valerian wastes no time and hits a guard with his  tray to steal his weapons and fight the rest of   the aliens, even jumping on the emperor to kill  him. Now free, Laureline also steals a sword from   a body, and with Bubble, they help Valerian  fight the guards, but they just keep coming.   Valerian decides on a quick plan then: he  grabs Laureline's hand and pretends to charge,   but they actually fall with Bubble inside a  manhole and into a new area. Back in the command   room, General Bar speaks with the Defence Minister  and demands access to Filitt's classified files,   which he gets after some hesitation from the  Minister. The file on planet Mül says it was   destroyed by accident during a war, and that the  planet had not been inhabited, which is simply   false. When trying to find out who was in charge  of such a disastrous operation, Bar finds it is,   again, classified. The other thing that is  starting to irritate him is the constant presence   of the K-trons, who have been programmed by Filitt  and only he can send them away. Valerian and   Laureline fall into a giant trash can and discover  Bubbles has been hurt during the fight. Her final   words for Valerian are asking him to take good  care of Laureline before her body becomes dust.   The duo starts wandering around, although  Valerian swears he does know where he is going,   or at least, kind of. He confesses the princess'  soul that has been inside him has been guiding him   all along. They end up inside the dead zone, but  nothing happens to them: the contamination danger   has always been a lie. Valerian thinks Filitt  actually knows what is truly behind the glowy   wall they encounter: it's the Mül people, who  have been expecting them. They meet the leaders,   who proceed to tell them what happened that  horrible day years ago. After the big explosion,   they drifted in space for many years, salvaging  what they could find in the vessel they escaped in   and learning all the sciences in its database to  restore it. One day they were picked up by scrap   dealers, who eventually sold their cargo to the  Alpha station, and they have stayed hidden here   while gaining more knowledge and building a new  vessel that would allow them to rebuild their home   on a new planet. The only things they're missing  are a converter and a pearl, which is why they   hired Igon to steal them for them so that Filitt  wouldn't find them - sadly Valerian and Laureline   messed up that plan. Now they know their story,  the aliens trust they will do the right thing and   wake up Filitt, who immediately asks Valerian  and Laureline to arrest the Mül people, saying   they're lying and that the planet hadn't been  inhabited when they had been fighting in the area.   They don't buy it though, in fact, they've already  guessed what truly happened: Filitt had been the   soldier in charge that day, and he decided to  send the missiles without caring that there were   people on the planet, the only thing he had to do  afterward was deleting all evidence. This is why   he killed Major Samk and made up the contaminated  zone when the Mül people revealed themselves in   the Alpha. Filitt gives up and admits it's true,  saying he only did it to prevent humans from   losing their credibility and influence in Alpha  before ordering Valerian to arrest the leaders.   Valerian obviously doesn't listen and punches  him instead before gifting the aliens the pearl   he had on him. Laureline wants to give them the  converter as well, but Valerian protests, pointing   out that's government property only to change  his mind when Laureline says this is why she   doesn't want to marry him: he doesn't understand  love. As a thank you for allowing her to do this,   she finally kisses him on the lips. General  Bar's men and the K-trons arrive on the other   side of the glowy wall and confirm there's no  contamination before planting a set of explosives.   Meanwhile, the Mül leader feeds the pearl to the  converter, finally creating the energy they needed   to activate the new vessel they've built, creating  a hologram that simulates their old planet. Now   their mission is over, the princess can rest  in peace, so the leaders remove her soul from   Valerian's body. When they hear about the soldiers  outside, a group of aliens crosses the wall and   talks to them gently, showing they don't mean any  harm. Bar sees this and is further convinced of   the truth when Valerian and Laureline call him and  tell him the whole story, but in order to cancel   the procedure, he still needs confirmation  from Filitt. The duo drags him in and tries   to make him talk, but instead, he gives an order  to annihilate, which his K-trons instantly obey.   The droids begin killing both the people  at the wall and those in the command room,   where Bar orders Neza to stop the countdown.  As Laureline keeps punching Filitt and Valerian   crosses the wall to shoot the K-trons, Neza  sneaks around and opens a control panel,   working directly with the source. He manages  to stop the bombs a second before they explode,   and the Mül people successfully leave Alpha in  their new starship. When a few of the surviving   soldiers find Filitt hanging from the ceiling on  the hole the Mül left behind, General Bar tells   them to arrest him for his war crimes. Valerian  and Laureline have also managed to escape using   the service vessel the Mül have arrived at Alpha  in. While waiting to be rescued, Valerian again   asks Laureline to marry him, and this time  she says maybe before kissing him on the lips.