Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets director Luc Besson has revealed that the film includes seven easter eggs from The Fifth Element. The brightly-colored sci-fi film opened this past summer with plenty of Fifth Element fans hoping that Besson would deliver another big hit. Unfortunately, Valerian flopped at the box office, and critic reviews were very mixed. Valerian was praised for its visual effects and the world-building that went into it, but the overall response was mostly negative.
Despite this, it's not quite the end of the road for Valerian, which is set for DVD/Blu-Ray release later this month. Although Besson has confirmed that he's not interested in making a Valerian TV series, he's still optimistic about the possibilities for a Valerian sequel. The film did manage to find a fan base despite issues at the box office, and combined with high DVD sales, that might be enough to see a second installment. Besson has also provided fans with an enticing reason to buy the film on DVD or Blu-Ray: to find several Fifth Element easter eggs hiding in Valerian.
Related: Valerian Sequel Still Possible
In an interview with Screen Rant, Besson revealed that the VFX people from Weta Digital added seven easter eggs from The Fifth Element in Valerian, including a few characters who pop up in the big marketplace scene:
SR: The big market scene in Valerian is one of my favorite scene's in the film. It's just amazing to look at. How many different aliens and creatures did you have in that sequence and did you sneak any familiar characters that know one caught?
Luc Besson: Oh yeah. There’s a few. There’s even characters from the 5th Element.
SR: I assuming I can pause that blu-ray and I’d be able to find them?
Luc Besson: Yeah. In fact, the people from the special effects, from Weta, they told me that they put seven easter eggs, but I found 5, and there is 2 that I still don’t know where they put it.
SR: You can’t even find them.
Luc Besson: [Laughing] No. No. Because I’ll wait for the DVD. I don’t have the DVD.
SR: Which ones were you able to catch?
Luc Besson: I’m not telling you.
If Besson himself hasn't found all the easter eggs yet, it's clear that some of these are going to be blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameos, but those are all the more fun to find! Fans of both series are sure to enjoy trying to track down all seven, although there are a lot of background characters in both movies to try and compare. Valerian's poster itself has already given one away; a sign for a place called Korbens, but there are still more to be found. A couple of eagle-eyed redditors managed to notice a couple of other nods, including a compliment of someone's "nice hat" and a search for parasites before a ship takes off, but these are subtle nods, rather than full character cameos.
While the fun of searching for these cameos won't be enough to tempt some into buying the movie on DVD, finding them will definitely be a great reason for fans to give Valerian a re-watch.