Not this year's Jupiter Ascending - or so I hope

After Jupiter Ascending came out two years ago, I didn’t know if there would ever be another Jupiter Ascending again.

I mean, I didn’t want another Jupiter Ascending, per se, because that movie was awful. No sequels necessary. But I did want another “Jupiter Ascending.”

The difference indicated by those quotation marks is as follows: I wanted another movie that took the same risks as Jupiter Ascending, in a genre in which only sure bets are usually green lit. I wanted it still to be possible to have movies that fit that small cinematic niche of “big, imaginative science fiction movie with fantasy worlds and no established characters.” I didn’t want studios only to gamble on Star Wars movies, though that’s obviously no gamble at all. I wanted them to gamble on what might become the next Star Wars.

But after several recent major flops in this arena – Ascending, but more catastrophically, John Carter – it seemed less and less likely that we would see many, or even any, more of these. One cautionary tale is enough for most studios – two, and you have serious cinematic leprosy on your hands. No one wants to go anywhere near it.

So I guess the pressure is really, really on Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.

When I was at the movies on Wednesday, I watched enough of the trailer for Luc Besson’s new movie to know that I didn’t want to watch any more of it. In a good way. I start avoiding a trailer once I get to that point where I say “Yep, I’m hooked, now leave the rest of it as a surprise.”

“Hooked” may be the wrong word for Valerian, because there are a million ways a movie like this could go wrong and only a scarce quantity of ways to do it right. So just because it looks nice – like really, really nice – doesn’t mean that it’s got anything going for it.

But if it’s great, I want to experience its greatness unspoiled.

And if it’s not great … well, we definitely won’t see another Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.