Valerian Quotes

We were so ready [with Valerian] that we were early, which is unheard of in the history of the sci-fi film.

That's a KORTAN DAHUK. That's the first alien we see in the film [Valerian]. That's another artist. The first one was Chinese, the one with the space station. This one is American. Personally, that's my favorite alien. I love him. I love his profile and his face. There is such a sweetness and almost a sadness in his face.

Be humble and say okay, all right, I have to prep myself. So everybody prepped, and we finished the film [Valerian ] four days before the end.

We have [in Valerian] a bible that's 600 pages. There are five pages on each alien and where they come from. Even the address you can check on the map. On the star map. It's real numbers.

I was kind of surprised that, about 99 percent of the people grabbed the thing [in Valerian].You know it's their thing. And I'm very impressed by that.

For example, in your house, you have the heater on the ground itself. Here, it's the gravity. No matter where you are, that's where the gravity is coming from. It's almost like a carpet that you put down. If you're on the other side, it doesn't matter to us because we're still walking on the ground. Actually, at the beginning of the film [Valerian], we see when they install the gravity system.

My biggest surprise is probably the level of involvement of all the artists [in Valerian] who participated at every level.

I wrote the entire history of Alpha because the space station was around for 500 years. I have 30 pages on the history of Alpha. Every ten years what happens. They took control and what happened. Every 80 years, they have to change the communication system because it doesn't work anymore. Some aliens come with new technology, and suddenly you can change the electric system. We wrote the entire story [for Valerian]

I did The Fifth Element and [Jean-Claude] Mezieres, the artist of Valerian; he was working on Fifth Element. And he's actually the one who say, why don't you do Valerian? And I said because we can't make it. And you really have to wait for Avatar and to suddenly think oh okay, maybe we can think of it. But before Avatar, just forget it.

I know 'Valerian' didn't do very well in America, but I think it's because of the lack of knowledge of these graphic novels which came out in the mid-60s.

I knew how incredibly rich 'Valerian' was visually and the adventures the heroes go through. They are one of a kind. They have nothing that you can compare with DC or Marvel. They're not superheroes they're just heroes but they're also human beings. And there was also something there that I always liked. In these novels, there was a lot of humor.