Cara Delevingne and Dane DeHaan on the 'Massive Metal Robot Suits' They Wear in 'Valerian'

One of the most talked-about movies through the first half of Comic-Con has to be the Luc Besson-directed futuristic thriller Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, the filmmaker’s first space flick since his 1997 favorite The Fifth Element. Based on the cultish comic-book series of the same name, the movie stars Dane DeHaan (The Amazing Spider-Man) and Cara Delevingne (Suicide Squad) as Valerian and Laureline, time-traveling space agents charged with a universe-saving mission in the year 2763.

Valerian is drawing interest for its eye-popping visual effects, cool gadgetry, intriguing star-on-the-rise pairing… and kickass suits, which we talked to DeHaan and Delevingne about on the film’s Comic-Con press line shortly following its Hall H panel.

Delevingne and DeHaan at 2016 San Diego Comic-Con (Getty Images)

“Fighting in those suits we were wearing was pretty hard because there was a lot of layers, a lot of unbreathable layers,” Delevingne said. Yet, despite the costumes’ heavy, complex look, she said, “it was so easy to move in compared to what it looks like, this massive metal robot suit. It’s really well done.“

Related: Comic-Con: Luc Besson’s ‘Valerian’ Pops in Hall H

It helped that the suits, made out of a thick plastic, had cooling systems built in, which DeHaan took advantage of, but Delevingne did not. "It’s just like a vest — it has all these tubes in it,” he said. “And then you plug it into a cooler of ice water and the ice water goes in and cools your core.”

The suit’s flexibility and cooling systems made all the "running, jumping, and kicking” the roles entailed a little easier for the leads. “Every day was a new physical challenge,” DeHaan said. “A huge part of these movies is staying physically fit and convincing people you can save the universe.”

And as Delevingne added, “With the amount of physical stuff you’re doing, even if you were naked, it would be tiring.”

Valerian opens July 21, 2017.