When Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets hits theaters in 2017, expect more than a few familiar sights. The artist from the comic series the movie is based on, Jean-Claude Mézières, already collaborated with the film's director, Luc Besson, on The Fifth Element, an expansive, far future science-fiction film pretty in line with the world of Valerian.
Valerian and Laureline is a long-running French comic, usually serialized sort of like the comics in 2000 AD or Heavy Metal, with installments coming month-by-month before being collected into 21 trade paperbacks. Translations have been hard to come by and only cropped up in recent years. It's the story of Valerian, a hot-headed pilot working as a sort of time cop, and Laureline, a timid time-traveling peasant from medieval times thrust into the 28th century, where she learns to fight as a newly minted temporal agent.
With a space opera involving huge starships and strange space aliens, comparisons to Star Wars are inevitable. But it won't be Valerian's fault. We already know that George Lucas built the Star Wars world as an Akira Kurosawa movie in space, equal parts Toshiro Mifune and Flash Gordon.
But the pastiche doesn't end there. In fact, there seem to be (incredibly) liberal doses of Valerian in the Star Wars universe. Like, say, this:
A little weird, certainly. But theshrillest has even more similarities to point out. Like there's this scene:
Which seems reasonably like it could be "oh, they're just both space operas." But here's the thing ... take a look at that alien. Now look at Ralph McQuarrie's original Chewbacca design:
theshrillest is not the first person to point this out. Shot Glass Digital noted the similarities in 2013. They also pointed out a Clone Army storyline, Vader's unmasking, and a pretty familiar cantina scene. So either George Lucas or McQuarrie was probably reading some Valerian at the time of production.Here's a bit about McQuarrie's production art, which was even more Valerian-like.
Empire of a Thousand Planets features Valerian and Laurielle visiting a desert world, an ice world, a jungle world, and some junky markets full of ilicit goods. A lot of it looks not unlike Star Wars and the worlds of Tatooine, Hoth, and Yavin.
Mezieres, of course, noticed all this, telling a French magazine that he was "dazzled, jealous and angry ... I am convinced that (Lucas) has looked at my books." After some letters went unreturned, Leia and Han had a "cameo" in a Valerian comic from Pilote #113:
It boils down to even Yoda's house not looking entirely unfamiliar to Valerian readers, as seen here (ever so slightly NSFW). And of course, we've seen the basic design of Cloud City in its pages. And the Star Destroyer.
So come 2017, don't be surprised if Valerian looks like a weird pastiche of Star Wars and The Fifth Element. It was published before Star Wars, and "inspired" it in many ways, possibly to the point of strip mining. Because that Slave Leia outfit? Yeah, Valerian did it first.
