Valerian and Laureline: Exploring the French Comics - Comic Tropes (Episode 61) 

Our French teacher in 7th grade had a whole bunch of Asterix comics for us to peruse. It definitely didn’t hurt.

Il n'est jamais trop tard pour bien faire ! 😏

Valerian & Laureline did get an animated TV series.

@@ThePreciseClimberYeah I know I think valerian and Laurelin should make a come back maybe in a live action series on showmax or HPO

There was a 2017 production called Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

Still the character of Valerian was infinitely more...manly than what we got on the screen. lol In the film it was like two vapid teenager annoyingly arguing.

Haven't started the video yet but does he say "bahn-DAY DESSI-nay" again lol

Having a brash, hot headed male hero that created the problems they later had to solve wasn't something new. It was very common among both scfi-fi and horror, especially during the 50's and 60's. But probably more in cinema than in comics.

@@havareriksen1004 …. Examples? For sure in the fifties and early sixties, women were helpless victims 2 aliens and monsters. Especially when portrayed as sexually wanting, they wouldn’t make the final reel. Only Tess Trueheart would but she would still need male hero last minute saving. Barbarella was maybe the first space heroine with agency and pluck, but count the times she has to be rescued from fate worse than death/parakeets and killer dolls- by men- ineffectual men but still. Last scene she’s rescued by an asexual male angel-is-love. James Bond? All the hammer babes? The virginal heroines- no agency. One had to wait for Halloween- Alien Ripley and Terminator Linda for the first female action heroes- self rescuing final girls. And that was mostly a late 70’s / 80’s slow revolution.

She is definitely meant to be the most likeable of the two.

stoling?? stole or stolen (not the German fruit cake Stollen,) is normally a past tense of steal (not steel, but sounds the same), in the act of, doing it, or during it, 'stole' is stealing. The '..ing' part of the word suffex (in both past, present and future tenses, differing in contextual grammar to differ the time implications). You intend to mean she stole the plane, that could also be said and written as.. Stealing the Brazilian Presidential plane for her to go to NY in. or She had to travel to NY by stealing the Presidential plane from the Brazilian President. or To travel to NY, the Brazilian Presidential plane was stolen by her. Sorry, I do not wish to offend you. 'English' can have many similar ways of saying things, and many words that can say similar things in a different way with subtle differences in meanings, intent and implications. Also, American English can be slightly more difficult than British, Canadian or Austrailian/New Zealand English as it has some older bits of English from 1500s to 1700s within it still. Plus the many more 'loan words' and 'concepts', ideas' & 'idioms' from other nations peoples that moved to America for a new start over there also added into its American (US) language.

Laureline was the real star, Valerian was the secondary character even if he gave the name to the story.

Merci. In episode 11 I looked at the UK's Judge Dredd. There are many European comics and creators I love and hope to discuss.

Was it proven tho? also it wouldn't be a surprise. Just look how imaginative french comics are huh

Lucas has always been a hack fraud.

spidervenom14 watch Kurosawa's Hidden Fortress. Recognizing all the scenes through Star Wars memory is a bummer. Wish I could have seen Hidden Fortress first.

"Lucas has always been a hack fraud." You're so edgy

I bet you did not know that he said to have been influenced by Canadian movies too. Canada has a tradition of state funded movies that allowed a huge bunch of directors to be very very creative.

The name Laurelin (without an e at the end) was created by Tolkien. Its the name of the golden tree of Valinor in the Silmarillion.

@@OrbusS - Laurel is a tree and herb (its leaves) and is associated to glory by Roman tradition (laurel crown), it is also a men's name. Laureline seems a somewhat natural female version (in French) of it (much more plausible than Tolkien's tree name as inspiration).

Uh ? Suske en Wiske ? De Rode Ridder ? Lol.

And Québécois comics! Ok not really 😃 But we have stuff...

The scene is called Franco-Belgian for a reason.

@@philippenachtergal6077 tintin was first of them all in Europe ;)

​@@roelantverhoeven371 Actually not. Bécassine was there before.

Wow. I doubt I would have thought of it. But yes, the Keepers are similar to the Zul.

The casting was terrible. Valerian himself was the worst choice they could have made.

No, the story did!

@@realcourte "Noble super-genius savages" was kind of a dumb story, I agree. The idea that everyone who has technology is bad and everyone who lives in their underwear on a beach is good is just this asinine Hollywood obsession (Avatar, anyone?) that we can't seem to escape. That's modern cinema's influence more than the source material I believe. The casting sucked too though. The child playing Valerian was too young and the actress playing Laureline was the record-holder of most sucked lemons until Bree Larson took it from her.

lol must be a good feeling

Its very well known - so no surprise there :-)

The casting isn't great, but Luc Besson's writing is a far bigger problem, in my opinion. Besson's Valerian is a wannabe Don Juan, and he comes of as an extremely creepy horndog. That's all Besson. The comic book Valerian doesn't "seduce" his coworker, they're just a great team. Laureline is the one who rescues Valerian, but in Besson's version the gender roles are reversed to the more traditional. Some of the changes in the movie are improvements though. The god-like aliens who look like noble savages and brainwashes people? Yeah that's a bit much.

@@lakrids-pibe I agree. The size difference of the comic that gives this tension between a physically smaller but more responsible and sage Laureline and the Big Valerian is not present in the film. How could Luc do that.

Yeah, I saw the pic and he doesn't look at all like Valerian, the actress doesn't resemble Laureline either but he's totally different.

I wasn't familiar with the comic background of the film which (despite some plot holes and CGI cringe-worthy moments) I really enjoyed and still find visually and imaginatively stunning! But admit it: This film adaptation of a French or Belgian comic still beats the merde out of "Barbarella", n'est-ce pas? (Google "Les Blondes" or Goscinny&Uderzo / "Asterix and Obelix" for some additional wonderful art and humor, if not entirely on the science-fiction/fantasy topic.)

Great comments by the others replying to you. I feel there are three problems with the the movie. The opening scene in the market that you can only see with the glasses has a few problems. It is extremely confusing, because there is no setup. We don't know what they are doing when they go in, and we barely understand it when it is over. It is disconnected from the main plot, and because it is not connected tightly, it is way too long. All of those together make up #1. Second is the casting of DeHaan and Delavigne is bad. Neither really fits the part as seen in the comic books, and they have zero chemistry on screen. DeHaan's flirty playboy is weak and Delavigne cannot pull off Laureline's pragmatism and competence. It is really weird, because I think the casting of the supporting cast is strong, but the leads are weak.Though, I agree with Lakrids Pibe that Besson's interpretation of the character is off. The third major problem, IMO, is that the story is disjointed. A plot like this should be a teaser at the opening, and then building to a denoument where it all makes sense. Unfortunately, that last part never quite works, and we are left with a montage of scenes that are each pretty good, but don't work together. If you think about, much of the same thing happens in The Fifth Element, but that movie is lifted above the problems by the performances of the actors, and here DeHaan and Delavigne cannot bring this up to that level.

Cinebook Ltd Thanks, I didn't know about that.

Lol 😂😂😂

My man! Was gonna say the same thing, maybe the comic artist based the character on Peter Cushing!

Ravian = Valerian?

Yes .≈:•)

It's funny that they felt they had to change their names in different countries. In the Netherlands he his name was Ravian.

Buy it! There is a new edition in print. Three stories in one book.

There was a half-anime produced some years ago called "Time Jam" that one of the guys from Macross worked on, is that close enough? xD

@@fnjesusfreak The problem with Time Jam is that it is far mor childfriendly and by this less mature. Also the CGI aged terribly.

Best thing is he’s family friendly(most of the time), meaning I can listener him in front of relatives

@@joeysopinion4463 Oh yeah for sure

Well thank you. I'm just trucking along, making weekly videos and daily livestreams. Maybe someday it'll get noticed by a larger audience. Maybe it won't. C'est la vie.

johnathan clark I have an episode about Moebius that addresses that.

*Bande dessiné or BD.

Also reminds me a lot of Babylon 5.

I’m not so keen on the Japanese style either. I find their obsession with European facial features pretty dumb. Not to mention the hairstyles ...