The first 'Valerian' trailer docks in 3 days, and we got a sneak peek

LOS ANGELES -- You see a lot of kooky alien creatures in and around Beverly Hills these days, but on a sunny afternoon last week, the wildest, most eye-popping extraterrestrial life forms were confined to the third floor of a bland office building just off San Vicente Blvd.

These are the inhabitants of Valerian: The City of a Thousand Planets -- and in just a few days, when the first teaser-trailer drops, you'll get a chance to see them, too.

Mashable was invited to Wildfire Studios last Wednesday for a preview of the latest creation from Luc Besson, whose return to spacebound sci-fi couldn't come soon enough for fans of his next-level 1997 film The Fifth Element. A few still images have been released to the internet, and Comic-Con got a good long look over the summer at some footage in Hall H, which (thankfully) have somehow not leaked online.

But this is the first true moving-picture taste the public will get of Besson's passion project and follow-up to the ambush smash-hit Lucy.

Also thankfully: What we're getting Thursday is a lot more "trailer" than "teaser." The first Valerian footage is a full-frontal look at Alpha -- the gargantuan space station that hosts hundreds of modules, each a little slice of whatever far-flung planet they hail from, that have accreted since its humble origins as the International Space Station (the real one, as Valerian's timeline stems from actual space-exploration history).

Inside Alpha, a pack of fleshy-headed mutant guards are just a few airlocks away from equally sentient species who live underwater, or hovering 'bots whose comfort zone is inside a network of circuits, or who knows what-all. Honestly, this stuff is all too kookoo bananas to make heads or tails of at this point.

The socio-political implications of such an environment are endless, and someone's got to keep things in order behind the scenes. That's where our heroes come in.

The story and characters are based on the French comic book series Valérian et Laureline, first published in 1967. The pair -- played here by Dane DeHaan (Chronicle) and Cara Delevingne (Suicide Squad) -- are trouble-shooting special agents who travel through space and time to prevent spatial-temporal calamity. And that's about all we know.

Though their personalities (and awesome exosuits -- seriously, these things are an elite cosplayer's greatest challenge) are teased in this first trailer, there's not much revealed about the central conflict or themes. And that's OK -- there's a lot to take in here just from this gazing at this world alone.

In this still image provided exclusively to Mashable, we see their Astroship XB982 flying through a giant scanning device that, if you look closely, resembles the membrane of an eye. "Once they fly through the scanners know everything about the ship and what's inside it," Besson said.

So they can forget using an outdated Imperial code clearance.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Speaking of, if you really blow this image up, you'll get a look at the ship itself, whose saucer-shaped base, angular outcroppings (and special hyper-space capabilities) might remind you of a certain Corellian smuggler's infamous jalopy.

As you ponder those similarities, keep in mind: Valerian's hunk o' junk -- whose design Besson said is mostly faithful to its graphic origins -- was traversing the galaxy a full decade before the Millennium Falcon.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Surely we'll get to see quite a bit more between now and July 21, 2017, when EuropaCorp releases Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets in theaters worldwide. As Besson told us, about 200 VFX shots have been approved so far -- with only another 2,500 or more to go.

Just wait 'til you see what they have cooked up for Thursday.