"If a film like this was working huge in the US, that's a problem for the studios," the prolific director of Lucy, The Fifth Element, Leon The Professional, La Femme Nikita and producer of the Taken and Transporter movies says.

"It's independent. It's not superheroes defending the power of America. It's European - it's different - and they can't accept that."

Besson, who lives in Los Angeles but remains very much a French auteur with a taste for action, strong female characters and visual spectacle, says no other country in the world would have the guts to call a movie the equivalent of Captain America.

"It's their right - and sometimes these films are very good - but I think diversity is the key for everyone," he says. "If on 10 screens we have 10 Marvel [movies] we're losing something.

"It's like eating fast food every day. And I come from France so I'm more for cuisine."

Besson was speaking in Sydney to launch Valerian, a sci-fi extravaganza based on a popular French comic book, which stars Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne as special operatives who maintain order in the universe in the 28th century.

Shot in a Paris studio, the movie reportedly cost more than $225 million and plays like Baz Luhrmann meets Terry Gilliam on ecstasy. In a surreal touch, Rihanna plays a shape-shifting exotic dancer and jazz master Herbie Hancock is a minister who gives the duo their orders.

While as reluctant to read reviews as he is to being photographed, Besson admits to being upset by one prominent American critic who called Valerian "Eurotrash" and declared it a certainty for the Razzie as the year's worst movie.

"You know since the beginning of art that some people will love it and some people won't like it and that's fine," he says. "Every artist accepts that.

"But why insult someone? We worked seven years on this film. There are 2000 people who worked [on it]. Why insult these people?

"We are proposing something that people are not obliged to watch. We're not building weapons so why not use all this hate to defend real causes or put the fingers on people who are selling weapons?"

Often considered the most American of French filmmakers, Besson felt no pressure that Valerian was such a big budget movie,

"Why would I feel the pressure?" he says. "My job is not the money.

"My job is to take care of the actors and be sure the arc of the character or the emotion is there ...

"For my first film, I couldn't pay anyone so I'm happy that now I can pay people and at least the money is on the screen, which is not always the case in films."

Besson fell in love with the comic book Valerian and Laureline when he was a lonely 10-year-old after his parents split up. But he had long thought it unfilmable.

It was only when he saw the technology that James Cameron developed to shoot Avatar that he realised it was possible to film vast imaginative worlds full of aliens in 3D.

"Technology changed since Avatar," he says. "That was a big step. And I had more experience so I felt like I should have the guts to do it.

At 58, Besson's output has included directing Subway, The Big Blue, The Messenger: The Story of Jean of Arc and three Arthur and the Invisibles animated movies, as well as producing TV series spin-offs of the Taken and Transporter movies.

While defiantly French, he has tended to cast international names in recent years, including Scarlett Johansson in the 2014 action hit Lucy, Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer in the 2013 crime comedy The Family and Michelle Yeoh in the 2011 Aung San Suu Kyi biopic The Lady.

"I go where talent is," Besson says. "I'm not looking for the passport. And there are not enough good French actors any more.

"They wake up too late; they wake up at noon.

"The girls - the French actresses - work much more, that is why they're so popular. But the English, the US, their actors are very strong. And the French don't want to learn English."

He might be a fan of American actors but Besson is not enthusiastic about how Hollywood studios operate.

"They have a couple of hits and they have a lot of flops," he says. "If you look at the '70s and the '80s and all the films we had, it was so great.

"It went from Marathon Man to Out of Africa [and so on]. Now it's just branded - number three, number five, number 12.

"There's less and less flavour. I think it's wrong for us as movie-goers because if now if we go to a movie, if we have a little pleasure, we're happy - 'oh, it was a little better than number three but it was less good that number four.'

"That's all we say. Rather than crying and saying 'oh my god, I can't believe that guy'. Rather than being moved and discussing [what we've seen]."

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets opens on Thursday.