Movie trailers that make you feel all gushy inside....

Particular instances of similarities between the two series, which the above have cited, include:

* The design of Valérian and Laureline's XB982 astroship and the Millennium Falcon spaceship that appears in Episodes IV–VII of Star Wars.

* A scene in There's No Time Like the Present where Valerian escapes by falling into a laundry washing vat, exits through a portal at the bottom of the vat, and falls out of a hole at the bottom of the space station hanging from a sheet with The Empire Strikes Back where the character Luke Skywalker escapes Darth Vader by falling down a chasm, goes through a vent, and falls out of Cloud City hanging from an antenna.

* A scene in Empire of a Thousand Planets (L'Empire des Mille Planètes) where Valérian is encased in a liquid plastic and a scene in The Empire Strikes Back where the character Han Solo is encased in a substance called carbonite.

* The slave-girl costume worn by Laureline in World Without Stars and the costume worn by the character Leia Organa in the scenes where she is enslaved by Jabba the Hutt in Return of the Jedi

* A scene in Empire of a Thousand Planets where one of the Authorities removes his helmet to reveal his burned and scarred face underneath and a scene in Return of the Jedi where the character Darth Vader removes his helmet to reveal the burned face of Anakin Skywalker.

* The alien Shingouz and the Toydarian character Watto seen in The Phantom Menace.

* The concept of the Clone wars, where a whole army has the face of a cloned single man (Valerian himself) is featured in the final scene of On the False Earths.

Primarily set in the mid-twenty-first century in the fictional Japanese city of Niihama, Niihama Prefecture, otherwise known as New Port City, the manga and the many anime adaptations follow the members of Public Security Section 9, a special-operations task-force made up of former military officers and police detectives. Political intrigue and counter-terrorism operations are standard fare for Section 9, but the various actions of corrupt officials, companies, and cyber-criminals in each scenario are unique and require the diverse skills of Section 9's staff to prevent a series of incidents from escalating.

In this cyberpunk iteration of a possible future, computer technology has advanced to the point that many members of the public possess cyberbrains, technology that allows them to interface their biological brain with various networks. The level of cyberization varies from simple minimal interfaces to almost complete replacement of the brain with cybernetic parts, in cases of severe trauma. This can also be combined with various levels of prostheses, with a fully prosthetic body enabling a person to become a cyborg. The heroine of Ghost in the Shell, Major Motoko Kusanagi, is such a cyborg, having had a terrible accident befall her as a child that ultimately required that she use a full-body prosthesis to house her cyberbrain. This high level of cyberization, however, opens the brain up to attacks from highly skilled hackers, with the most dangerous being those who will hack a person to bend to their whims.

Fandango: So how, exactly, does Dunkirk push IMAX to the next level?

Christopher Nolan: Really, I think Dunkirk represents the culmination of all of these experiences we’ve had over the years [with IMAX]. How to work with that format, and how to really try to give the audience the most visceral experiential two hours that they can hope for.

Fandango: Is this the most you’ve ever worked with IMAX cameras on a film?

Nolan: Yes, there’s absolutely more IMAX [than we’ve ever done]. The entire film is large-format film photography, and I’ve never done that before. Very few people have ever done that before, and no one has ever shot as much IMAX as we’re doing. Most of the film is IMAX. With every film we’ve learned more and more how to maximize our ability to use those cameras, and we found ways to get those cameras into very unusual places for a camera that size, but the image quality speaks for itself. I think it’s going to be an extremely exciting presentation, particularly in those IMAX theaters.

Fandango: What’s something you did on this film that you’ve never been able to do before?

Nolan: I think every kid -- or certainly British kids -- would love to be able to fly a Spitfire. [That was] just an extraordinary experience for me. And then to try to give the audience that same experience, we had to find a way to get giant IMAX cameras into these tiny vintage planes, and really try to be in the experience of a dogfight in a Spitfire above Dunkirk – that was remarkable. It’s an experience I will remember for my whole life.

Fandango: The aerial sequences in this film sound amazing, like the sort of stuff we haven’t seen before on-screen?

Nolan: Oh yeah, I don’t think anyone’s ever tried to do aerial combat the way we’ve done it and photographed it in this film. My DP, Hoyte Van Hoytema, just never gave up. When we would look at how you can’t fit a camera in the cockpit and fly the plane, we would build a special kind of snorkel lens and put the camera there. We’d work with the pilot and plane owners to really just go for it, and do as much of it for real as possible.

Fandango: Was that dangerous?

Nolan: No, because the thing with aviation is that safety is the most important thing. So the difficulty is in planning; the difficulty is in how on earth is it possible to do this safest? The engineering of it; you have to put in months trying to figure out how to balance it. How much wind resistance there will be. All this stuff, it was relentless for months and months. You address the danger on paper, and then these pilots get up in the air and do it safety, but it feels dangerous. It feels extremely exciting, and we’re really working hard to finish the film with our sound and music to really give people the experience of being up there like that.

Fandango: There’s a story out there saying that you bought a real World War II-era plane, rigged it with IMAX cameras and then crashed it. Is that true?

Nolan: Not true. I think the reason that rumor developed was because we did a lot with real planes. We figured out how to get the pilots and these planes to be able to do these dogfights very much for real. We then constructed perfect replicas to be used to crash – and I think the two things got confused. We would never crash a vintage plane; they are far too valuable. And I don’t just mean financially valuable. The Spitfire, for example, is just the most magnificent machine ever engineered. It’s just the most wonderful thing.

the Upper West side IMAX theater