Get ready to explore many, many new intergalactic worlds — a thousand, in fact — in the full, fantastic trailer for director Luc Besson’s Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. The city of the title, which you’ll get a much closer look at here as compared to the film’s teaser last November, is actually a multicultural, inter-species metropolis called Alpha (and the “thousand planets” refers to the city’s major diversity). That’s where space cops Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and Laureline (Cara Delevingne) get an assignment for a new case, which sets the plot of the film in motion.
“Every time I watch footage [from the film] it feels like I’m watching it for the first time, because so much of what we shot was in front of blue screen,” DeHaan told EW.
Besson also touted the film’s impressive visual effects. “Even shots that were in the teaser last year have been upgraded 10 times,” he said. “We have 2,734 special effects shots.”
The female voice in the beginning of the trailer is “like the Siri of the spaceship,” according to DeHaan. And the voice actually belongs to a woman named Alex, who works for Besson. “I think he was intending it as temporary but he liked her voice so much that he kept it,” DeHaan said.
We get another quick glimpse of superstar Rihanna (as an alien who can transform into American singing icons) and also you’ll spot Clive Owen. But still no sign of other cast members, such as Ethan Hawke, John Goodman, or Rutger Hauer. “You’ll have to wait and see them,” Besson said with a jolly laugh. “To be honest, I could have made a hundred different trailers from this one movie.”
We’re happy with the one we’ve got.
Valerian opens in theaters on July 21. Watch the new trailer above.
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