My Thoughts on “The Fifth Element”
I honestly never thought that I would review this movie, but after I mentioned it in my Weekend in Taipei review, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I had to rewatch it and write a review of it. So, indulge me as I take a trip down memory lane and review this sci-fi action comedy classic. Now, this is a childhood movie of mine, I first saw it at a very young age and I instantly fell in love with it. It was one of my favorite movies growing up, and even after all these years, I still enjoy it, it still holds up.
It is easily Luc Besson’s best movie by far, at least of the ones that I’ve seen that he’s directed. It’s better than Lucy, it’s better than Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, and it’s better than Anna. I’ve never seen La Femme Nikita, Leon: The Professional, Arthur and the Invisibles, or The Lady ♀︎, so I can’t I can’t comment on those. I am planning on watching and reviewing Leon: The Professional and The Lady ♀︎ sometime in the future though. If only I had reviewed it on its 25th anniversary, but that was back in 2022. I didn’t have a blog yet, and I wasn’t even thinking of doing a retrospective review of this movie, so better late than never. The 30th anniversary won’t be until 2027 (which is coincidentally the 25th anniversary of Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones and many other movies and video games that came out in 2002), which is two years, so I’m guess I’ll ahead of the curve on that one. Late for the 25th anniversary, early for the 30th.
This is a very stylistic movie, it’s dripping with style. You could almost say that it’s a style over substance kind of movie, but you know what? Sometimes that’s fine, sometimes is okay, and even desirable. The action is well done, the comedy is on point, the pacing is smooth, the movie moves at a great pace (you’d never know that it was a 2 hour and 6 minute long movie), the special effects are amazing, a great mix of CGI and practical effect as was pure usual in the late 90s (CGI wasn’t quite advanced enough to do everything so practical effects still had to be used to a great extent).
The editing is top notch, I love how certain scenes in the movie are edited how two different conversations are cut together as if they’re happening at the same time (like one side of one conversation is cut together with the side a completely different conversation to make it seem like those characters are talking to each other even though they aren’t). I haven’t seen any movie before or since do that, I call it “Fifth Element-style editing.” The costume design is extraordinary, normally I don’t talk about costume design in my reviews, but here I’m willing to make an exception because the costume design is a big aspect of why this movie is so good, the costumes look amazing. Some of the best costume design I’ve seen in any sci-fi movie. Leeloo’s bandaged look in the beginning alone is iconic, and who can beat Korben Dallas’s orange tank top with black pants.
(This is some fan art by an artist called Otacon212 depicting Leeloo in her bandaged look after being revived.)
Luc Besson hired an actual fashion designer, Jean Paul Gaultier to design the costumes for the movie, so that explains why they look so good.The funny thing is that almost every woman ♀︎ who has done a reaction video to this movie on YouTube knows who Jean Paul Gaultier is, they know him by name, and he’s the one person who’s name they actually recognize in the opening credits. If you’re someone who cares a lot about costume design in movies, or just fashion in general, you’ll get a kick out of this movie. Luc Besson’s movies (at least the ones that I’ve seen) usually good costume design. Even though I didn’t like Valerian, I gotta admit that the costumes looked fantastic in that movie as well.
Another thing that Luc Besson’s movies excel at, and this especially excels at is the music. I love the music in this movie. It’s a big reason why I enjoy this movie so much. It was composed by Éric Serra, who has composed some of Luc Besson’s other movies besides this one, including La Femme Nikita, Leon: The Professional, Arthur and the Invisibles, The Lady ♀︎ (which he composed with Sade of all people), Lucy, and most recently, Anna.
When it comes to The Fifth Element specifically, my favorite song is the song used in the end credits, “Little Light of Love ❤️,” which is the song that everyone and remembers the most from the movie. I also like the theme used for the Mondoshawans, the guardians or protectors (perhaps even creators) of the four elemental stones and the fifth element, I like the track called “Akta” which is used during the scene where the police catch up to Leeloo in Korben’s cab and are about to arrest her, and Korben is at a crossroads deciding whether or not he should comply with the police and let them take her into custody or help her escape. He makes his choice, and the true adventure begins.
I even liked the song used during the taxicab chase which was not composed by Éric Serra, but was a song by an Arab artist called Khaled that they licensed for the movie. It’s called “Alech Taadi” and it’s entirely sung in Arabic. I don’t know what the song means, I don’t know what the lyrics are, but it’s a great song, it works for a car chase (or I guess flying car chase in this case) especially one that is a bit more on the comedic side of things like the taxicab chase in this movie. I even like that little funny music that plays whenever something comedic in the movie happens, like when a character does something really dumb (which happens a lot in this movie) or when an absurd situation is happening. That particular song or theme is no where to be found on the movie’s official soundtrack album, and no one has been able to identify it or has uploaded it anywhere on YouTube or on the Internet 🛜 at large. That song is officially lost media.
The acting is fantastic, Bruce Willis fit the role as Korben Dallas perfectly, you can tell that Luc Besson wrote that character with him in mind and he was lucky to actually get him on. Korben as a character is kind of like John McClain but with more indifference, who’s a bit more of a burnout and has kind of stopped caring after a while. He’s this guy who used to be a special forces operative, an honorable soldier defending the Federation from any threat that came its way, until one day he decided to retire for the sake of his relationship with his wife, perhaps believing that he’d be able to get a good high paying job to provide for the both of them, but he ended up working a dead end job as a cab driver in New York City (in a cab company that’s owned by one of the movie’s main villains, Zorg), which he loses towards the midway point of this movie. On top of that, his wife (the reason he left the military in the first place) ends up divorcing him for his lawyer around the same time, and his mother is a narcissist who verbally abuses him on the phone on a daily basis, and only calls him for him give her stuff, if she thinks she can get something out of him. Why would he care anything?
It’s only when he meets Leeloo and gets involved in this adventure that he starts caring again. It kind of has that element of middle aged romance ❤️ where an older middle aged man ♂︎ in his 40s or 50s (perhaps going through a midlife crisis or just completely burnt out like Korben is) falls in love with a younger woman ♀︎ in her 30s or 20s, usually her 20s. You see this a lot in real life where a middle aged man ♂︎ goes to find some hot young thing in Eastern Europe, based on the belief that Eastern European women ♀︎ are more beautiful, loyal, and “traditional” than “Western” women ♀︎, and being with that beautiful young Eastern European woman ♀︎ ends up somehow reinvigorating him (in more ways than one 😉).
That’s kind of like what Korben and Leeloo’s relationship is like, except it’s the sci-fi version of that, and Leeloo’s not technically a young woman ♀︎ in her 20s, she’s actually 5,000 years old, meaning that Korben is technically the young one in the relationship. It couldn’t be anymore obvious by the fact that Bruce Willis is an American 🇺🇸 and Milla Jovovich is an Eastern European (she’s a Ukrainian 🇺🇦 to be exact), and he is way older than her and was older than her at the time they filmed this.
It makes sense that Luc Besson wanted Bruce Willis to play a very John McClain type character considering the third act of the movie just becomes Die Hard but on a space cruise. There is a part in the movie, during the taxicab chase, where Korben says, “if they don’t chase you after a mile they don’t chase you.” If any other actor had said that line exactly how it was written, people would’ve clowned on it 🤡 for years, but because it was Bruce Willis who said, they accept it. He makes that line work, along with the myriad of other stupid, cheesy, and weird lines in the movie.
He’s great with the comedy too, he started out as a comedian in the world of sitcoms, so it makes why he’d be so good at comedy. There’s a more than a few funny moments with him, but one of the funniest parts is that in the middle where the police show up to arrest Korben (which is all a scheme by Zorg and his henchman to try to get rid of the real Korben Dallas so they can take his place on the flight to Fhloston Paradise and retrieve the stones from the diva Plavalaguna), he puts his hands on the yellow circles 🟡🟡 in his apartment, and the police ask him “sir, are you classified as human?” And he answers, “uh negative, I am a meat popsicle.”
Then the police check another apartment that somehow has Korben’s business card on the front door (despite it being in Leeloo’s possession), and they’re fully convinced that it’s him, so they tell this guy ♂︎ who they think is Korben to put his hands on the yellow circles 🟡🟡, and this guy ♂︎ gets angry and stops what he’s doing and says, “Smoke you! 🖕” Korben then whispers to himself, “Wrong answer,” while the police bag the guy ♂︎ and take him away just before the Mangalores show up and kill them all and then take the guy ♂︎ that was framed to use his likeness as disguise to carry out their own plan for revenge against Zorg because, like the cops, they think it’s the real Korben. The fact that the guy ♂︎ said “Smoke you” instead of “Fuck you” made that scene a lot of funnier. The limitations of the PG-13 rating made that scene funnier 😂.
Gary Oldman is a chameleon, any role you give him, he just disappears into it. Like, you can watch a movie with him in it, and not even know it was him. I bet that happened to a lot of people with this movie especially if their only exposure to Gary Oldman was the Dark Knight trilogy, he’s completely unrecognizable from how he was in the Dark Knight films as Commissioner Gordon. And that was a conscious decision on Christopher Nolan’s part, he wanted to cast Gary Oldman as Jim Gordon (a police lieutenant at first in Batman Begins, not the commissioner yet) because he was used to playing the villain in movies at that point in his career, and Nolan wanted to put him in a role that he wouldn’t normally play and that people weren’t used to seeing him play. Have him play a good guy for once. It’s the same reason why he cast Liam Neeson as Ra’s al Ghul because he usually plays the good guy in movies, and Nolan wanted to see him play a villain for once.
Milla Jovovich nails it as Leeloo, the titular fifth element, the supreme being herself, perfection personified. This was her first major role, and it was the one that put her on the map. It opened at least a few doors for her, he ended up being stuck with the live action Resident Evil film series, where she played Alice, a character who was not from the games and was created specifically for the movies. She mostly got tied down by the Resident Evil movies because of Paul W.S. Anderson, who she would end up marrying (presumably after she divorced Luc Besson who she was married for a brief time), so it got to the point where she was only doing those movies for him, for her spouse. It was a husband and wife affair, and those movies probably wouldn’t have continued for long as they did had they not been together. Especially hardly anyone liked them, at least in an unironic way.
She’s done a few roles outside of the Resident Evil series in-between the films and after them, but none of them really went on to be that big. The movie I remember her being in was The Fourth Kind, that alien abduction movie 👽 that tried to convince people that it was based on real events and had real “archive footage,” but actually wasn’t and didn’t. It was a complete work of fiction masquerading as a “based on a true story” type of movie. I am planning on reviewing that movie for the blog along with Fire in the Sky 🔥, another alien abduction movie 👽 that was based on an actual reported case (even if the case’s veracity is dubious at best), because both movies were part of my childhood and I have fond memories of. I plan on reviewing both of those movies for this blog. She was in the 2019 Hellboy reboot that hardly anyone liked, where she played the main villain the Blood Queen 🩸.
She was also in the Monster Hunter movie from back in 2020 which got a lot of hate, especially from Monster Hunter fans, but that I enjoyed quite a bit. I liked how it mixed fantasy elements with modern technology, modern day soldiers using modern day weapons against these big fantasy creatures, even if those weapons ultimately prove to be useless and most of the soldiers die. And just in Predator, Milla Jovovich’s character is the only one left standing as she was the leader of that team of soldiers that just got wiped out, and she ends up teaming up with Tony Jaa and Ron Perlman’s characters as they teach her how to kill these monsters using the weaponry that is commonly used throughout the Monster Hunter games.
But, Leeloo is still one of the roles that she’s best known for besides Alice from the Resident Evil movies. Some people have said that it’s her only good role and that she’s a bad actress outside of everything else, which I disagree with. I think Milla Jovovich is a good actress and I think she can be in a good role if one comes her, it’s that the roles she’s been offered throughout her career have been for movies that weren’t always that great. If anyone needs a new agent, it’s her. Something that I didn’t know about Milla Jovovich until a few years ago was that she’s Ukrainian 🇺🇦.
I guess I should’ve figured that she was some kind of Eastern European given her name, but I didn’t specify know that she was Ukrainian 🇺🇦. I figured that she was probably of Russian descent 🇷🇺, most people outside of Eastern Europe assume that anyone with names like Jovovich is Russian 🇷🇺. I didn’t know she was Ukrainian 🇺🇦 until the Russian invasion 🇷🇺 in 2022 happened, and she put out a video talking about how she’s Ukrainian 🇺🇦 and she was saddened by what was happening to her country of origin 😔. She was born in 1975, and is 49 years old at the time of me writing this, so she was born during a time when the Soviet Union ☭ was still a thing, and when Ukraine 🇺🇦 was still apart of it, the Ukrainian SSR ☭.
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This was also back when Kiev was the only spelling used for that city, before Ukrainians 🇺🇦 started using Kyiv instead as part of a wider initiative to de-Russify 🇷🇺 their country and differentiate themselves from Russia 🇷🇺 by using the Ukrainian spelling 🇺🇦 for every city, town, oblast, and raion name. Though they didn’t really start doing that in earnest until after Russia 🇷🇺 invaded in 2022. Putin has done more for Ukrainian nationalism 🇺🇦 and Ukrainian identity 🇺🇦 than any Ukrainian leader 🇺🇦, at least up until Zelenskyy, who has embraced Ukrainian identity 🇺🇦 along with the rest of the country.
When he did that interview with Lex Fridman on The Kyiv Independent a week ago, he chose to do it in the Ukrainian language rather than the Russian language like Fridman wanted to do, even though Zelenskyy (like all Ukrainians 🇺🇦) does have a command over the Russian language. It was a conscious decision on his part to show his defiance towards Russia 🇷🇺 and Putin specifically, who is his main adversary right now, while Fridman of course showed his allegiance to and admiration of Russia 🇷🇺 and Putin by choosing to do the interview in Russian. He showed it in other ways too, the fact that he chose to conduct the interview in Russian while Zelenskyy chose to speak Ukrainian for the interview was a big way of showing which side he was really on.
Ian Holm is great as the priest Vito Cornelius. He’s much more understated and not as over the top as some of the other characters in the movie, but it works. You need a character like him to balance things out. He’s also the one character who is purely good, and wants to the do the right thing and save the universe from Mr. Shadow AKA the Great Evil. That being said though, he isn’t completely serious all the time. There are moments where they play a bit fast and loose with him, where they allow him to be funny. Cornelius gets some of the funniest moments of the movie.
Chris Tucker was also great in the movie as the eccentric, flamboyant, and horny radio talk show host Ruby Rhod. He shows up much later on in the movie than the other major characters, but once he does show up the entire vibe of the movie completely changes. Not to say the movie was serious or dark before he shows up, it wasn’t, it was pretty lighthearted and funny, but once he shows the movie becomes even less serious and even crazier than it was before. This is a pretty well known fun fact about the movie, but Prince was originally supposed to be in the role as Ruby Rhod. The role was practically written for him. But, for whatever reason, Prince declined the role. I think he said it was because he didn’t like the costumes for Ruby Rhod, he thought they were too flamboyant and effeminate, and he didn’t want people to think he was gay ⚣. I don’t know why he would think that given the way he usually dressed, but that is the fact usually given by people when they talk about this. So, the role ended up going to Chris Tucker instead.
Even though Chris Tucker proved to be perfect for the role, and nailed it, it kind of change the way people perceived him, and it changed the roles he was offered, and it changed the direction of his career forever. Because of his role as Ruby Rhod, from then on out he was just seen by many people as the annoying guy ♂︎ who yells everything. I remember the guys at Spill.com (you remember Spill.com?) reviewed Rush Hour 3 and they joked about Chris Tucker being the human version of Daffy Duck and meant it as an insult. And I think that did affect him quite a bit. It changed his calculus about which roles he would accept in movies, and his career kind of slowed down and then tapered off at the end, and he really hasn’t been in a movies recently. He didn’t want to be typecast and pigeonholed into just playing Ruby Rhod type roles or playing James Carter type roles, which I’m sure is what the majority of the roles he was offered in the 2000s and 2010s were.
Plus, he had that whole born again Christian ✝️ thing going on where he refused to do anymore R rated movies after Jackie Brown, and only wanted to do more family friendly movies that were either rated PG-13 or PG or even G. That’s he did Rush Hour 3 because it was a PG-13 rated movie. All of the Rush Hour movies are rated PG-13. The Fifth Element is also rated PG-13 for the record, although it was made before Chris Tucker was in Jackie Brown and then completely swore off R rated movies entirely. He’s been associated with Jeffery Epstein, he met him multiple times, and was pretty close friends with him, which is pretty suspect 😬. I’m not accusing Chris Tucker of anything, but being associated with Epstein in anyway and being friends with him at any point in your life is a huge stain on your reputation.
Maybe that’s why his career has remained dormant and why he’s been mostly lying low and hasn’t been in the public eye except to maybe tease a Rush Hour 4 which is definitely not going to happen. Especially because Brett Ratner’s career has fallen apart due to sexual assault and harassment allegations levied against him during the MeToo era. Plus, Jackie Chan’s pretty old now, but apparently not too old to be in a new Karate Kid movie 🤷♂️?
I doubt he’ll doing much fighting or death defying stunts in that movie, the guy ♂︎ is 70 years old, he can’t move like he used to and do all things he used to do in his older films. Maybe that’s why Ruby Rhod being a womanizer, sexual harasser and maybe even rapist, given how he treats every woman ♀︎ he encounters, came so naturally to him. I think Chris Tucker’s connections to Epstein should be looked into more, just to prove he’s not guilty of anything vile or heinous.
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(These are the flags of France 🇫🇷 and the United Kingdom 🇬🇧.)
There are other great actors in this movie, many of whom are more famous in France 🇫🇷 and Europe as a whole, such as Mathieu Kassovitz who plays the mugger, the funny tweaker guy ♂︎ with the hat that has a picture of the hallway on it, wields a Z-140 (which Korben tricks him into disarming and then confiscates from him, easily prying it from his hands with little resistance), and acts like he’s going through withdraws. He’s a very famous actor and filmmaker in France 🇫🇷, but he’s not really known in the US 🇺🇸 or North America as a whole, in fact this is probably the only thing he’s known for, and people here don’t know his name. For a lot of you, this is probably your first hearing about Mathieu Kassovitz.
There’s also Lee Evans who plays Fog, the head of security on the Fhloston Paradise cruise, he’s a very famous comedian in the UK 🇬🇧, but he’s not very well known outside of the UK 🇬🇧 or internationally. He’s not very well known in the US 🇺🇸. Although he was in an American film 🇺🇸 with Jackie Chan called The Medallion which is usually considered by many to be one of Jackie Chan’s lesser movies. Even amongst his Hollywood movies, which are usually considered by hardcore Jackie Chan fans to be his weakest films and not truly representative of his skills as an actor and as a martial artist.
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(This is the flag of the United States 🇺🇸.)
A few actors that Americans 🇺🇸 would probably recognize include Brion James, Tom Lister Jr., and Luke Perry. All of whom have passed away in the years after this movie came out. It’s crazy to think that a good chunk of the main cast of this movie is no longer with us 😔, not just those three that I mentioned but Ian Holm as well. He passed away too after this movie came out years later. Even Bruce Willis, even though he hasn’t died (at least not yet), he has retired from acting entirely due to health reasons, his frontotemporal dementia diagnosis.
There’s very little way we could do a sequel to The Fifth Element, especially a legacy sequel, when at least a quarter of the cast is either dead 💀 or retired. Not that Tom Lister Jr.’s character President Lindberg would even have to return in a sequel since he’s presumably a democratically elected leader and would probably be out of office by the time a sequel takes place, especially a legacy sequel set years after the first one. So, a completely new character would have to be president in a Fifth Element sequel if one was ever made. Maybe that woman ♀︎ that’s always hanging around Lindberg and is like his personal assistant, maybe she can become President of the Federated Territories.
Speaking of sequels, I do like that Luc Besson has so far stuck to his guns about not making a sequel to The Fifth Element. Would a Fifth Element sequel be interesting? Maybe, depending on what kind of story they went with it, and I would like to see this world again and see more of it. But it could also be really bad and contrived, and give off this feeling of ‘why are we here? Why are we doing this?” Plus, I don’t trust current day Luc Besson to pull it off.
He made Valerian, which was kind of supposed to be like a spiritual successor to The Fifth Element in a way, being a direct adaptation of one of the things that inspired The Fifth Element, but it wasn’t very good. Given how his career has gone since Valerian, I’m surprised Luc Besson hasn’t tried returning to well and just making a sequel to The Fifth Element, his most successful and popular movie by far. I mean, Lana Wachowski returned to the well and made The Matrix Resurrections, after her and her sister Lily Wachowski tried to make a new and original IP in the form of Jupiter Ascending and that failed. But given how The Matrix Resurrections turned out and how other attempts by filmmakers to make sequels (or prequels) to the movies that made them famous have gone, it is admirable that Luc Besson hasn’t caved to the pressure and chosen the money grubbing route 🤑 and made a sequel to The Fifth Element. We’ll see if he holds out for the rest of his career.
An animated series would’ve also been pretty interesting, I’m kinda surprised that it didn’t get one. Almost every other blockbuster movie from the 80, 90s, and early 2000s got animated series made out of them, like Beetlejuice, Ghostbusters (Ghostbusters got two), Jumanji, Men in Black, Starship Troopers, Ultraviolet, RoboCop (RoboCop had two also), The Mummy (1999) (but it was really more of an animated series for The Mummy Returns) and Godzilla (1998). Even Evolution (2001) that sci-fi comedy by the same director as Ghostbusters Ivan Reitman about a bunch of alien microbes that land on Earth 🌎 and start evolving rapidly into various different creatures (big and small), even that got an animated series, Alienators: Evolution Continues.
The Fifth Element did get a video game on the PS1 and on Windows PC, which I hear wasn’t very good, but that wasn’t a sequel that continued the story from the film. It was more of a direct adaptation of the film, albeit slightly altered. But, I am satisfied with where the movie leaves off, and I’m fine with it being on its own with no sequels or prequels or reboots or remakes. Even if let’s face it, it’ll probably get remake someday by somebody 🙄. It works as a stand alone movie. It took a complete story from beginning to end, it had a satisfying conclusion that left no loose ends untied. There’s no where for a sequel to logically go from there.
There is this common narrative you’ll hear about this movie is that it bombed at the box office 💣 in North America, and that it was barely even a blip until it hit home video and then gained wider audience in North America and gained a strong cult following. It’s what Luc Besson said, it’s what Mila Jovovich said, it’s what pretty much everyone who was ever involved in this movie has said. But it’s not exactly true. The Fifth Element was not a bomb 💣, in fact, it was box office success. It made over $263.9 million 💵 worldwide and remained the highest grossing French movie 🇫🇷 internationally until a movie called The Intouchables came out in 2011. Not The Untouchables, The Intouchables, there is a difference.
From what I understand, a lot of that money 💵 from that box office total was made from markets outside the US 🇺🇸, like 75% of the movie’s profits were made from markets outside the US 🇺🇸, I’ll give you that. But that being said, this movie was by no means a failure in the US 🇺🇸, it did pretty good here as well. It opened in the #1 spot in its opening weekend, and held the #1 spot the following weekend. If you knowing about box office performances and opening weekends, you’ll know that’s a good thing.
I mean, it had Bruce Willis in the lead role, back during a time when having a big movie star like that in the lead role of your film actually meant to something and actually mattered, so of course it did good here. It helped that the movie only cost $90 million 💵 to make. They were much more able to make back their budget because the budget was only $90 million 💵 and not $205 million 💵 like Valerian’s budget was. Or maybe $177 million 💵, or $209 million 💵, or $223 million 💵, I don’t know, I’ve seen all of those amounts listed on the Wikipedia page, which tells me that no body actually knows how much Valerian actually cost to make. But it is likely in the $200 million range 💵, with the lowest estimate being $205 million 💵 and the highest estimate being $223 million 💵.
The point is Valerian was a really expensive movie, much more expensive than The Fifth Element. That’s why Valerian is considered a box office bomb 💣 while The Fifth Element is considered a box office success despite them both making a similar amount of money 💵. Valerian’s budget was much higher, so it needed to make a lot more money 💵 than $226 million 💵 worldwide to be profitable or even just to break even and make its budget back. The Fifth Element’s budget was still pretty big, especially for the time, but not as big as Valerian’s would end up being, it cost way less, and because of that, $263.9 million 💵 was a good box office take.
This wasn’t like with a lot of John Carpenter’s films where they complete financial failures and only gained an audience once they hit home media. The Fifth Element already had an audience, a lot of people had already seen by it by the time it hit home media. Of course, it became even more popular once it was on home media and did develop this strong cult following that’s still going strong and growing to this day. But, The Fifth Element was already a success, it was already popular when that happened.
I guess it’s just easy to sell the movie on that narrative if people think it was an underdog, that it was ignored and overlooked until it was discovered on DVD 📀 and VHS 📼. But, it is a false narrative, and I feel it should be dispelled now in this review no one else is doing it. Everyone else who has reviewed this movie, positively or negatively, has pushed this narrative that the movie was a flop and only had success when it was on home media and gained the following it has now. But, it’s not true, it is false.
Speaking of reviews, the movie has mostly had a positive reviews. It was a bit more mixed when it initially came out in 1997, but it was still mostly positive. Most people today adore this movie, and think it’s a classic and is as close being to being a masterpiece as you can get or even is a masterpiece, and contrary to my usual contrarian nature, I mostly agree with them. I wouldn’t go as far to say that it’s a masterpiece, but it is pretty close. It is a very entertaining movie that has an infinite amount of rewatchability.
That’s why there’s so many people out there saying that this is a movie they watch once a year. I don’t think I could personally do that, I don’t think that I could watch the same movie once a year. I tried doing that with Cowboy Bebop: The Movie on every Halloween 🎃 since that movie takes place on Halloween 🎃 and is a Halloween movie 🎃, but I just couldn’t do it. I even tried the same thing with Independence Day on every Fourth of July 🇺🇸, but I also couldn’t do it for much the same reason. I have to space out my rewatches so that I don’t get tired of that movie and it becomes stale and boring to me. The same thing applies to video games I’ve played before, I have space out my replays so that I don’t get tired of it. But, I do understand the sentiment, I understand why people would make a tradition of watching this movie at least once a year.
That being said, there are people out there who don’t like this movie. They aren’t as numerous or as vocal as the people who love it (probably because they know they’ll get hate for it), but they’re out there. The ones that immediately come to mind are James Rolfe from Cinemassacre and Martin from Spill.com, where he went under the name Leon since everyone who was on that show and website was playing a character, and Double Toasted, the review channel, website, podcast, and show that Korey created after Spill went under.
James Rolfe I would say doesn’t so much hate The Fifth Element, he just “doesn’t get it,” he even said in a video once that he didn’t get it and he thought the movie was weird and it didn’t appeal to him. Which I mean, fair enough. Even if I don’t like him that much, or agree with him on most of his film opinions, and don’t watch him anymore, I do understand where he’s coming from and he’s entitled to his opinion. I do respect the fact that he doesn’t just go with whatever the popular opinion about a movie is (most of the time) and isn’t afraid of having his own opinion regardless of whether it’s the popular opinion or the unpopular opinion. Like, he famously doesn’t like Pulp Fiction, or The Matrix, or Donnie Darko among others, which fair enough. I don’t like Pulp Fiction either (the music’s the only thing I like about it), and I’ve never seen Donnie Darko, so I at least agree with him on that opinion.
Martin on the other hand, does actually hate The Fifth Element. He’s talked about it numerous times, every time him and Korey have reviewed one of Luc Besson’s movies, and he’s always been dismissive of the fact that Luc Besson came up with the idea for this movie when he was a teenager. He’s always been super dismissive of any filmmaker who says they came up with the idea for their movie when they were a child. I kind of hope that him and Korey do a Retro Review of this movie someday so that Martin can finally explain why he doesn’t like the movie, and him and Korey can have contrasting opinions since I think Korey does like The Fifth Element and so does everyone else who works at Double Toasted.
So, Martin’s in the minority on this movie even at his own company that he helped start with Korey. It started out as a podcast with just the two of them and then it grew from there to include a lot more people, and is now a full on machine, not too dissimilar to JoBlo, or The John Campea Show, or Roger Ebert. Yes, Roger Ebert has his own website, and yes, people write reviews on there as contributors to the website long after the actual man ♂︎’s death. Martin would probably get all kinds of heat from the regular viewers for his opinion on the movie, he’d get roasted and hate from them. Which is probably why it hasn’t happened yet, they’re probably hesitant to do it for that reason. Double Toasted are okay with controversy but only to a certain extent, so long as the hate is not directed at them.
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Another reviewer who I’d love to see do a video of this movie is Brandon Tenold, the Canadian cult movie reviewer 🇨🇦 on YouTube. You might ask, “why am I even mentioning his nationality?” And normally you’d be right to ask that, but he makes a point of saying that he’s Canadian 🇨🇦. Every other video he mentions the province he grew up in and currently lives, Saskatchewan, the coldest place on Earth 🥶🌎 apparently. I don’t doubt that Saskatchewan is cold 🥶, Canada 🇨🇦 is pretty much just a nicer Russia 🇷🇺 (parts of Canada 🇨🇦 might as well be like Siberia), but coldest place on Earth 🥶🌎? Antarctica 🇦🇶 and Yakutia (AKA Sakha) would like a word with you. I know that Yakutia is a Russian republic 🇷🇺, but you know what I mean, my point still stands. Kentucky was briefly the coldest place on Earth 🥶🌎 last week, or one of the coldest 🥶, as they recorded temperatures there in the teens, colder than even Anchorage, Alaska 🥶. And I don’t know about you, but Anchorage and Alaska as a whole is pretty damn cold 🥶. He does an event or series every few years called “Canuxsploitation-A-Thon 🇨🇦” where he reviews nothing but Canadian cult films and exploitation films 🇨🇦. He also stopped talking about his band since he’s pretty much made YouTube his full time job.
(These are the flags of Russia 🇷🇺 and Yakutia AKA Sakha.)
Brandon usually sticks to Z grade schlock that hardly anyone’s ever heard of, and sometimes does Godzilla movies on occasion (whenever he feels like it), but he has been doing a lot more “mainstream” cult movies, movies that people have actually heard and are genuinely well made, not the amateurish slop he usually reviews. Like, he did a review of Super Mario Bros. (1993) around the time that The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023) came out, he’s reviewed Johnny Mnemonic, he’s reviewed Virus (1999), he’s reviewed Night of the Creeps, he’s reviewed Killer Klowns from Outer Space 🤡, and he reviewed In The Mouth of Madness, a John Carpenter movie (the last good Carpenter movie according to some people), so he isn’t reviewing more popular movies that people have heard of.
He could easily review The Fifth Element if he felt so inclined. It’d probably have to be for a special occasion like he could do it for his 400th episode. He did Lifeforce for his 100th episode, he did Godzilla: Final Wars for his 200th episode, and he did Godzilla (1998) for his 300th episode, so it would only be fitting for him to do The Fifth Element for his 400th episode since it would be by far the biggest and popular movie he’s ever done on his show. It’d be the first (and probably only) Bruce Willis he’s ever done. I doubt Brandon is even reading this, but on the off chance that you are reading this Brandon, please consider The Fifth Element for your 400th episode…or you can just do it as a regular episode, that works too.
(This is a fan made poster for The Fifth Element.)
Now, there is something that I would like to address about this movie and its various inspirations because believe it or not, there is some controversy surrounding it. This is definitely a movie that wears its inspirations on its sleeve. Like, Star Wars and The Matrix, The Fifth Element was inspired by many things that were thrown into a melting pot and mixed together to make something new and original. One of the primary inspirations for the movie was the Valérian and Laureline comic book series, the same comic book series that the Valerian movie (also written and directed by Luc Besson) was based on, as well as other works by Jean “Mœbius” Giraud and Jean-Claude Mézières. In fact, Luc Besson was so inspired by their work that he actually brought the two of them on as production designers.
That’s why this movie has that Mœbius and Mézières look that a lot of other science fiction movies have, because it had the actual guys working on it, designing the city, the technology, the weapons, the vehicles, the spaceships, Mr. Shadow, and even some of the aliens 👽. BTW, did you know that Korben’s name was originally going to be Zaltman Bleros? The whole movie was even supposed to be called Zaltman Bleros.
I don’t exactly know why the name was changed, maybe Luc Besson thought it was too weird for audiences, that they wouldn’t accept a name like Zaltman Bleros especially for the main character and title of the movie. He was supposed to be a factory worker, Zaltman worked in a spaceship or jet factory, instead of a cab driver like Korben ended up being. Probably to make him seem more down on his luck. I just thought it was an interesting to bring up about this movie while we’re here. I think Zaltman Bleros is a cool name. If it’s not copyrighted ©, I might use it in a sci-fi work of my own, or maybe just include it as an Easter egg or something.
But, it wasn’t just inspired by that, it was also inspired by Star Wars, at least to some degree, most sci-fi space movies made after 1977 were inspired by Star Wars in some way or another, American action movies 🇺🇸 like Die Hard as I mentioned earlier (hence why Bruce Willis was cast in the lead role), Blade Runner (which was heavily inspired by the work of Mœbius), 2000 AD (specifically the Judge Dredd stuff), Judge Dredd Megazine, RoboCop a little bit (RoboCop itself was inspired by Judge Dredd and one of the early designs for RoboCop bared an even stronger resemblance to the judge himself), Total Recall (1990) definitely, a little bit of the 1981 Heavy Metal movie, specifically the Harry Canyon story, which is where we start getting into a little bit of controversy. Some people think that Luc Besson ripped off the Harry Canyon story to make this movie, that it went beyond simple inspiration. I have seen the Heavy Metal movie (the first one everyone likes), and while there are certainly similarities, I wouldn’t they verge into plagiarism territory, I think people who say that are exaggerating or lying about that.
That brings me the big one of all, the one inspiration that caused the most amount of controversy, The Incal. The Incal is a graphic novel written by Alejandro Jodorowsky and illustrated by none other than Mœbius himself that is a sprawling sci-fi space opera epic that explores a lot of political and philosophical themes, mixing fantasy and sci-fi elements in a futuristic space setting across multiple different planets and even another galaxy. Jordorowsky is a Chilean-French avant-garde filmmaker 🇨🇱🇫🇷 who is most famous for the fact that he tried to make a Dune movie in the 1970s but failed because his vision for it was far too big and far too complicated to pull off with the money 💵, and most importantly, the technology that was available at the time. They even made a documentary about it called Jordorowsky’s Dune, which you can purchase on DVD 📀, Blu-Ray 💿, and on YouTube, and probably on streaming somewhere probably on Amazon Prime (but only to buy or rent).
(This is the poster for Jodorowsky’s Dune.)
That’s one of the reasons why he made The Incal so that he use some of the ideas he came up with for his Dune adaptation but didn’t get to use since that project fell through. The plot of The Incal is a little bit hard to describe, like it is a little bit hard to follow, but from what I could gather, it takes place in a dystopian world controlled by a human-dominated empire that has taken over the entire galaxy, and that empire is in conflict with an alien race from another galaxy called the Bergs which resemble flightless birds.
It has to do with this guy named Difool who receives this ancient crystal called the Light Incal which has infinite power ∞ and can grant the user abilities beyond their wildest dreams so long as they believe in it from a dying Berg. It’s the Macguffin basically, and everyone is after it. The Bergs are after it, a rebel group called Amok is after it, the corrupt government of the great pit-city is after it, and a technocratic cult called the Church of Industrial Saints AKA the Techno-Technos or the Technopriests (I think Technopriests is the better name) are after it, they worship the Dark Incal. So there’s a Dark Incal and a Light Incal, and I guess if they’re combined, they can be used to conquer the galaxy or even the entire universe. A character called Animah (an allusion to anima, a dualistic Jungian archetype that represents the unconscious feminine side of men ♀︎♂︎; its natural counterpart is animus, the unconscious masculine side of women ♂︎♀︎) also wants the Light Incal because they are the Keeper of the Light Incal and it is their duty to protect it. Sound familiar?
Well apparently someone thought it because as soon as The Fifth Element was released in theaters, Luc Besson was immediately accused of plagiarizing The Incal and was sued over it by the publisher of the graphic novel. The publishers lost the case because there simply wasn’t enough evidence to prove that Luc Besson did plagiarize the graphic novel. Plus, Mœbius actually worked on the film as a production designer, so it kind of hurt the publisher’s argument that Luc Besson plagiarized the graphic novel. How could it be plagiarized when the artist who drew it worked on the film as a production designer? Why would he work if he thought it was plagiarized? Jordorowsky has gone on record saying that neither him nor Mœbius pursued any legal action against Luc Besson, and that it was all the publisher’s doing.
Plagiarism or not, it is clear that the movie was at least partially inspired by The Incal, having some story similarities and a lot of visual similarities. Korben bares a striking resemblance to Difool, the main protagonist of The Incal. The visual similarities can easily be explained by the fact that Mœbius worked on the film, so his visual style bled into the movie and he ended creating stuff that looked very similar to things he drew for The Incal. I’ve never read The Incal, so I can’t exactly say where I fall on the argument, but I’d probably more towards the side that Luc Besson didn’t plagiarize and The Fifth Element is not a ripoff of The Incal.
BTW, did you know that Taika Waititi (the director of Thor: Ragnarok, Thor: Love and Thunder, and Jojo Rabbit 🐇) was hired to direct an Incal film adaptation a couple of years ago? There’s been no updates or any word whatsoever about that movie’s development, I don’t know if it’s still on. I kind of hope it isn’t because I hate Taika Waititi, I think he’s an overrated director, and he shouldn’t direct half of the project he’s offered or hired to direct, including The Incal and the live action Akira movie, which I’m sure will get off the ground and get made anytime now.
It’s crazy to think that this whole Incal situation was once the only thing Luc Besson was controversial for since he’s been accused of sexual assault, sexual harassment, and maybe even rape by multiple women ♀︎. It’s not hard to believe that Luc Besson is a creep considering the movies he’s made (almost all of them involve sexy women ♀︎ who are treated as sex objects by their male counterparts ♂︎), and how he’s treated women ♀︎ in real life, and he just kind of looks like a guy ♂︎ who would do that kind of stuff. Nothing has really come of these allegations since Luc Besson is still working today, he’s still producing and directing movies, and all this remains alleged for legal purposes. But it has kind of tainted my image of him. It kind of makes it hard to talk about any movie of his, including this one. But, with him, I am somewhat able to separate the art from the artist. Some filmmakers I’m just unable to separate the art from the artist, but with him I am somewhat able to do it. I wouldn’t have rewatched this movie or wrote this review if I didn’t.
Are things that haven’t aged well about this movie? Absolutely. The movie is a bit misogynistic in how it depicts women ♀︎ and how it treats women ♀︎ though it has a strong female character as the lead. They’re portrayed as sex objects, or they’re portrayed as weak or unimportant. In other words, women ♀︎ in The Fifth Element are either meant to be looked at or ignored. Almost every woman ♀︎ in this movie is dressed in a skimpy or revealing outfit, outfits that are meant to look sexy rather than be comfortable or practical. The McDonald’s employees look sexy, the flight attendants look sexy, the woman ♀︎ that one Mangalore disguises himself as looks sexy, Leeloo looks sexy, the only women ♀︎ who’s outfits aren’t explicitly made to look tantalizing or sexy are the president’s assistant, Major Iceborg (that female special forces soldier ♀︎ with the Princess Leia buns that General Munro wants to send on the mission to Fhloston Paradise with Korben but Korben refuses to go with because she’s too fat and isn’t hot enough), that female hotel staff member ♀︎ who leads Korben to his room, that one woman ♀︎ who’s apart of Plavalaguna’s personal security detail and tells Leeloo to wait until after the concert to get the stones from Plavalaguna, that one princess that Ruby is implied to have had sex with in the past, Plavalaguna herself, and some other background characters. A lot of the male characters ♂︎ in the movie don’t seem to value most of the women ♀︎ in this movie as anything more than sex objects. When General Munro finds out that Leeloo is a woman ♀︎ and not a man ♂︎, he immediately wants to take all kinds of pictures of her when she’s nothing but thermal bandages (you know, for the archives 😉), and Ruby Rhod of course is a horn dog who seemingly hasn’t found a vagina that he didn’t want to fuck.
Even Leeloo, even though she’s arguably the main protagonist of the movie (the whole story is centered around her), and is said to be the Supreme Being (they keep saying that she’s perfect throughout the film) and the key to saving the universe, she still has to be saved by Korben (a man ♂︎) at the end after she gets taken out by a few gunshots from Zorg’s ZF-1, and isn’t even able to stand for the rest of the movie. And also has to do is kiss Korben, and the Great Evil is destroyed, and then in the very last scene her and Korben are having sex in the very reactor that Leeloo was revived in.
I mean, that on its own probably wouldn’t mean anything, some people would say that it’s good writing that Leeloo isn’t completely invulnerable and that she can get hurt and does need help, but when you combine it with everything else I mentioned, it all adds up. This movie isn’t exactly a bastion or shining example of feminism ♀︎. The Fifth Element is definitely not what I would call a feminist movie ♀︎, even I’m sure Luc Besson would try to argue that it is feminist ♀︎ as he has all of his other movies with female protagonists ♀︎.
But dated as some of the stuff in this movie is, it isn’t enough to completely detract from the experience for me. I can look past those aspects, and enjoy the parts that do still work about the movie, that have aged well. The movie’s kind of too nostalgic for me to completely give up and denounce. Besides, there are plenty of women ♀︎ out there who have enjoyed this movie and maybe even consider it one of their favorites, and might even consider themselves feminists ♀︎. Feminism ♀︎ is not a monolith, and not all feminists ♀︎ think the same or agree on everything. So, just keep that in mind when having these sorts of conversations.
I would like to take this time to clarify some other misconceptions about the movie’s plot and characters and explain some things that people may have missed or overlooked. This is not really a movie that people really think about the plot too much, and I’m not entirely sure if you’re even supposed to think that much about the plot. I kind of lean towards not given how little thought was put into the worldbuilding, the character development (most of it), and some of the individual plot points. I mean it is a pretty simple plot, it really isn’t that complicated of a movie once you break it down. You know, this isn’t TENET, Chris Nolan’s worst movie.
There’s this big fiery ball of energy, the sum of all evil in the universe, that shows up out of nowhere (it shows up every 5,000 years) to try to end all life in the universe, and our heroes need the find these four stones that correspond with the four elements (fire 🔥, water 💦, air 💨, and earth 🪨) to combine with the power of the fifth element, a supreme being created by an alien race called the Mondoshawans to protect all life in the universe, to defeat this Great Evil. That’s really about it. It’s not anymore complicated than that.
The elemental stones are pretty much the Macguffin in the movie, they’re the thing that everyone is after. Once Korben wins that contest and gets tickets to Fhloston, almost every major character converges on that floating resort to try to get the stones from this mysterious diva called Plavalaguna who is performing at that resort for a charity event. The movie also has three main antagonists, there’s Mr. Shadow or the Great Evil, the evil fiery planet that is coming to Earth 🌎 to activate the weapon to destroy all the life in the universe. He’s the main antagonist of the film, and the reason why our heroes need to find the stones and use them along with Leeloo (who is the fifth element) to activate the weapon created by the Mondoshawans to defeat him. Mr. Shadow wants the stones because he can use them to activate that same weapon to destroy all life in the universe by standing in the center where the fifth element would normally stand.
It’s never explicitly stated in the film, but I like to think Mr. Shadow is an amalgamation of all the evil in the universe, like all the evil in the universe just converged into this one singularity of pure evil. That’s why he grows whenever he’s exposed to anything evil. Weapons are evil and war is evil, so you’re just piling on more evil, you’re adding more evil into the mix and you’re making him stronger. It’s also why the five elements are the only things that can stop him because they are purely good. If Mr. Shadow is the sum of all evil in the universe then the five elements are the sum of all good in the universe. Even though it’s a weapon, it’s a weapon of peace, you’re defeating evil with peace and love, the only things capable of actually destroying evil.
They refer to him as a planet through the film, like at the end when they say, “the dark planet, dead” after the five elements (including Leeloo) are used against Mr. Shadow, and Mr. Shadow is vanquished; turned into a burned out cinder (in the words of Klaatu from the original 1951 Day the Earth Stood Still), looking a lot like Mercury. But I don’t know, can you even really call him a planet if he’s even smaller than the Moon 🌕? I mean, Pluto is no longer considered a planet and hasn’t been considered a planet for a long time, and the reason why it’s way too small to qualify as a planet, at least according to astronomers. So, why should Mr. Shadow be considered a planet if he looks to be smaller than both Pluto and our own Moon 🌕?
I mean, I understand that Pluto was still considered a planet when Luc Besson when he wrote the script for this movie, and Luc Besson himself is not known for doing his due diligence when it comes to making sure his science fiction films are scientifically accurate. I mean I just look at Valerian, that movie’s full of scientific inaccuracies, and don’t get me started on Lucy. But still, I question why Mr. Shadow is considered a planet when according to conventional wisdom, he shouldn’t be. Especially in the year 2214 when this movie takes place, when science presumably is far more advanced and scientists presumably have a greater understanding of the cosmos than they do now.
Then there’s Jean-Baptiste Emmanuel Zorg, who is the secondary antagonist of the film. It is funny that he has quite possibly one of the most French names 🇫🇷 ever, and yet he has an American Southern accent 🇺🇸. It’s one of the beautiful contradictions about this character and one of the beautiful contradictions about this movie. Some people think that he’s the main antagonist (including Gary Oldman himself), but he isn’t, he’s the secondary antagonist. He’s working directly for Mr. Shadow, obeying his every command and doing everything he can to please him and get him what he wants. He’s his henchman basically.
It’s never explained how or when this relationship between the two happened, they just have this relationship. No other other character in the movie is even aware of this relationship, that these two characters have a connection, not even Cornelius, who is the priest who knows everything about the Great Evil, the stones, and the fifth element. He has a scene with Zorg in his office (which is where the cherry scene 🍒 is from), telling him that he serves his life while he only wants to destroy life, and he never makes the connection. Maybe this is something they could’ve explored in a prequel or an animated series if they made one. I don’t know if this movie ever had a novelization (I kind of doubt it), but if it did, maybe explained it there.
But, why would an arms dealer, a ruthless capitalist and fascist, want to help an evil ball of fire destroy all life in the universe? Doesn’t he know that he’ll be destroyed too if Mr. Shadow succeeds in his plan? Well presumably, he doesn’t know the full extent of Mr. Shadow’s plan. He doesn’t know that he plans on ending all life in the universe. He probably just assumes that he plans on taking over the universe, and ruling over everything and everybody.
Mr. Shadow for his part probably promised Zorg riches or promised ultimate power if he helped him succeed in his plan by retrieving the four stones and then using them to activate the elemental weapon in Egypt 🇪🇬. Perhaps, Mr. Shadow even helped Zorg build his corporate empire, propped him up to be bigger than he would otherwise be, to where he controls all of New York City or perhaps a good portion of the planet Earth 🌎, and just hire and fire anyone he wants on a whim, and controls the arms industry, making him the sole supplier of weapons and ships to the Federation. So, maybe Zorg is working for him because he owes him something, he’s beholden to him, he wouldn’t have all this power and influence without him and him manipulating events and people behind the scenes. In essence, he made a deal with the Devil 😈.
It is definitely clear that Zorg fears him, he’s the only character that Zorg shows any fear towards. Zorg is always shown to be confident and in control in almost every situation, and is never shown to be afraid of anything, he never shows any fear, except for when he’s talking to Mr. Shadow, his real boss (and also when he choked on that cherry 🍒 in his water 💦 for some reason but that’s beside the point). When talks to Mr. Shadow, all of that confidence completely melts away, he is scared witless 😰.
It is the only time when he isn’t in control, and I think it’s because he knows that Mr. Shadow is this powerful otherworldly being (something completely inhuman) who could easily snuff out his existence with very little effort, without a single thought really. He has no power when he’s around Mr. Shadow, he’s completely powerless in his presence. So, he does everything he can to please him and stay on his good side (even though there’s nothing good about him he’s literally pure evil) because if he gets on his bad side then he’s a goner. Mr. Shadow reminds Zorg of this during their phone conversation in the middle of the film, showing him that he can kill him very easily without even trying if he fails his mission yet again by causing that black ooze to drip from his forehead.
Which brings me to the first major misconception or confusion about this movie, what is that black ooze coming out of Zorg and Staedert’s foreheads? I’ve seen so many people online ask about this, or look visibly confused 😕 when these two scenes come on. Most of the time they just assume it’s blood 🩸 dripping down from their forehead but it’s very clearly not blood 🩸. This movie does show blood 🩸 on characters’ foreheads and faces, and it’s always the red color that people associate with blood 🩸. It’s never this jet black color that we see the ooze dripping down Staedert and Zorg’s foreheads.
I think the black ooze is very clearly from Mr. Shadow. Think about it. This black ooze only shows up whenever Mr. Shadow is around, when General Staedert was exposed to him, staring directly at him (almost as if he was in a trance 😵💫), and when Zorg is talking to him on the phone. It’s like some of Mr. Shadow’s evil essence that’s coming out of them, showing that he’s killing them from the inside. Or it’s showing up to signify his presence, like that black ooze comes out of you, then you know he’s near and he intends to kill you. It’s pretty straightforward, I don’t know why everyone would be so confused by this black goo, it’s so obvious where it’s coming from.
Zorg also never interacts with Korben at any point in the movie. He interacts with Cornelius and Leeloo on two separate occasions, but never Korben even though Korben is arguably the main hero (I say it’s more Leeloo but that’s just me). That’s like the other big fun fact that people like to name about this movie, the fact that the main hero and the main villain never interact on screen, even tough neither one is really the main hero or the main villain. They’re supporting players in a bigger story than themselves. It’s really a story of Leeloo and her fight against Mr. Shadow the Great Evil. I do kind of wish that they interacted, at least once, just to see what their interactions would be and their personalities would’ve contrasted and bounced off each other.
But even though they never meet on screen, Korben is directly affected by Zorg’s decisions and actions. Not just because of he does to Leeloo, but also earlier on in the movie when he’s one of the 1 million people who Zorg Zorg decides to fire on a whim as a cost-saving measure. The guy ♂︎ who tells Zorg he has to fire people even suggests firing people from one of the cab companies, which he does but goes even further than what that guy ♂︎ suggested by firing 1 million people as opposed to 500,000. Firing 500,000 people is bad, that’s literally half a million people losing their jobs and being out of work (unemployed), but not as bad firing a whole 1 million. Korben lost his job because of Zorg. This isn’t the thing that gets Korben directly involved in the adventure to find the stones, he probably would’ve joined Leeloo and Cornelius on their journey regardless, but his firing by Zorg was one more motivating factor. He lost his job, he lost his only mode of transportation, he got mugged. He’s got nothing to lose by helping the woman he loves save the universe.
Zorg also tried to get Korben arrested and thrown in jail by framing him for uranium smuggling, so that he can send his goon to take his place on the flight to Fhloston to get the stones from Plavalaguna. A plan that fails spectacularly thanks to the intervention of both Leeloo (who might’ve put the business card on the other apartment) and the Mangalores (who kill all the police after they arrest the imposter guy ♂︎ they got tricked into arresting by Leeloo’s quick and clever thinking), forcing Zorg to have to go to Fhloston to try to get the stones himself resulting in his death.
Oh, and about the fascism thing, Luc Besson has stated that Zorg was directly inspired by Hitler, so he is indeed a fascist. Certainly a Social Darwinist (aspects of Nazism were inspired and influenced by Social Darwinism), given how he talks about how life comes from destruction, disorder, and chaos, and you need to cause destruction in order to encourage the promulgation of life. It’s sort of like the idea that you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. An omelet in this case meaning life and breaking a few eggs meaning killing people and destroying things. You can’t have life without death, and you can’t have prosperity without suffering.
It’s pretty much a justification for war and genocide by saying that those things are necessary for the advancement of civilization, and for that reason, those things are good and should be desired and sought after. People should want to kill and destroy because hey, life can’t exist without it. People won’t have babies if there isn’t a population decline caused by extreme poverty and violence. People like Zorg would probably say that the Baby Boom of the mid-20th century was caused by the Great Depression and World War II, and that the Baby Boom wouldn’t have happened if either of two events didn’t occur.
It is possible to be a capitalist and a fascist, just look like Elon Musk or Peter Thiel. Even down to the fact that Zorg is an art dealer or at least claims to be (it’s possibly a cover for his real business which is arms dealing, but it is clear he’s an art collector to some degree), Hitler was famously an artist (an obscure artist) before entering politics and taking over Germany and becoming a dictator (the Fürher). Only instead of a toothbrush mustache like Hitler, Zorg has a soul patch. It’s even suggested that he’s a bit racist because when Aknot is wearing his human face (which looks like a black man’s face), Zorg calls it an “ugly face,” and tells him that it “doesn’t suit him” and tells him to take it off.
In addition to Zorg and Korben never meeting on screen, Zorg’s fancy new weapon, the ZF-1, introduced early on in the film, hardly gets used at any point in the film. Besides that demonstration scene where Zorg is showing off the gun and its capabilities to the Mangalores so he can sell it to them as a reward for getting him the stones (until he pulls back the sale after he finds out the stones weren’t in the case and the Mangalores had failed their mission), ZF-1 is barely seen again and is hardly used by anyone. Zorg is the only character who uses it any sort of combat scenario. I don’t understand why they would introduce a gun as cool as the ZF-1, a gun that is pretty much a futuristic Swiss Army knife that has all the weapons and gadgets you can think and could ever ask for in a gun, and then hardly use it at all.
Maybe it was one of those subversion of expectations things that Luc Besson did in this film where he’d do the opposite of what is usually expected. Like, this is a subversion or a parody of Chekhov’s gun, an old trope in fiction and unwritten rule in writing where if you introduce a weapon in the first act of a movie (or play), you better use it in the third. While, he did technically use it in the third act, he only used it a few times with one character, and it proves to be not very important despite how impressive the gun is. It’s not the fait accompli, the thing that resolves everything and kills the bad guy or the good guy for that matter.
Another interesting tidbit about this movie is that it features two characters that we never see but only hear, we never see their faces, we just hear their voices. Those two are characters are Finger, Korben’s boss at the cab company and his only real friend that he talks to or can talk to (since all his military war buddies are all dead), and Korben’s narcissistic and somewhat abusive mother who only calls him to insult him and complain about everything. We never learn her name, she’s only referred to as Korben’s mother. It is interesting to have two characters in a movie who we never see, but we just hear their voices on the phone. Bullet Train 🚅 almost did that, but then they actually showed the person on the other end, so they didn’t go all the way with it. So, I guess the only movie that has done that and went all the way with it is Phone Booth, that movie about a guy ♂︎ who gets held hostage in a phone booth (remember when those were a thing?). We only hear the hostage taker’s voice, we never actually see his face as far as I know. Imagine you get cast for a role in a live action movie, and all you have to do is provide your voice. You probably just have to show up for one or two days of recording and that’s it, you just grab your paycheck and go home. Doesn’t sound too bad actually.
Now we come to our third main antagonist, Aknot, the leader of the warlike Mangalores. They only want the stones so that they can use them as bargaining chips to use against Zorg after he pretty much stabbed them in the back. That’s about as far as their involvement in the story goes, they’re just out for revenge. And they’re there so that we can have action packed climax with lots guns and shooting and explosions 💥, and so that Korben has something to fight and give one-liners to. “Anybody else wanna negotiate?” But, Zorg isn’t the only one the Mangalores are trying to get revenge on. They’re also trying to get revenge on the Federated Territories.
It is implied by that they maybe refugees or externally displaced people as Zorg mentions something about how the federal government “scattered their people to the wind.” Meaning that the government that controls the galaxy or this sector of space called the Federated Territories (or just the Federation) forced the Mangalores off their own planet (like an alien or space Trail of Tears 👽) to colonize it and make room for someone else, repopulate the planet with a different race of people or make into a multiracial cosmopolitan type of planet with multiple different species.
Why would the Federation do this? Probably because Mangalores are a warrior race, most of the galaxy probably doesn’t like them already, they think they’re ugly and repulsive (they aren’t exactly a cute or attractive race), and no one would actually care about their plight or make a big fuss about it (at least not enough to make a difference) if they forced them off their planet. They were an easy and convenient target that wouldn’t cause any controversy if they committed ethnic cleansing against them.
Regardless of whatever the Federation’s reasons were for evicting the Mangalores from their own planet, they had a grudge against them for that reason. Because they were a warrior race, a warrior culture, a lot of them couldn’t really fit anywhere else in the galaxy, they couldn’t fit in the society that was had formed on many of the Federation planets, and a lot of them chose to become mercenaries, working for anyone who went against the Federation, such as Zorg, who was working for Mr. Shadow AKA the Great Evil. Because well, that was the profession where they could put their skills to work, where they could actually make use of their skills as warriors; warriors with honor.
This does kind of make the Mangalores seem a bit more sympathetic, they’re probably the most sympathetic out of any of the major villains in this movie I wish that they emphasized this a bit more in the actual film instead of painting the Mangalores irredeemable thugs and killers, or as just really stupid. Even their reasons for wanting to go after Zorg are completely reasonable. Sure, their methods are horrible. Hijacking a cruise ship and taking all the crew and passengers hostage was absolutely the wrong way of going about it since they were targeting innocent people who had nothing to do with Zorg and his betrayal (most of the people on that ship didn’t even know Zorg was on board) and weren’t involved, but their reasoning for doing (at least on paper) are sound. Zorg screwed them over just because they didn’t give him what he wanted. He tricked them into blowing themselves up 💥 by not explaining to them what the little red button on the bottom of the ZF-1 did.
It’s not just them either as it is heavily implied that all aliens in this world are discriminated against. We hardly see any aliens at all besides the Mondoshawans, Mangalores, and Zorg’s weird alien pet Picasso, that creature that he keeps in a cabinet in his desk that looks like a mini brightly colored elephant with claws. The Federation, from what we see of it, seems to be pretty human dominated. Sort of like the galactic empire in The Incal or the Galactic Empire with a capital G in Star Wars. The airport has an alien detector that sees through the Mangalores’ disguises and finds that that they’re aliens, and they call the police on them because they’re considered dangerous. And the police responds to them simply on the basis that they’re aliens rather than them being terrorists. Alien discrimination might also explain why the Strykers went on strike 🪧. If only they were in the movie.
They were going to appear in the airport scene, and that was supposed to explain why there was garbage pile on the side of the wall. The Strykers were responsible for garbage disposal at the airport (they were garbage guys), but went on strike 🪧 for unknown reasons, and the garbage just piled up because they weren’t disposing of it, they refusing to until their demands (whatever they were) were met. They came up with designs for them, they had build puppets for them, and they had shot test footage of them to see what they would look like in the scene, but they were for whatever reason cut out of the movie. Likely for time, but there be another reason for why they removed from the film.
The only proof of their existence is the behind-the-scene featurette focused on them on the second disc 📀 of the Ultimate Edition release (more on that later). I wish that the Strykers were in the movie just we could have another alien race 👽, another alien species 👽, in the movie besides the Mondoshawans, Mangalores, and Picasso. Plus, I really like their designs, they look really cool. Some of the most unique looking movie aliens 👽 I’ve ever seen, as are all the aliens 👽 in The Fifth Element.
It kind of pokes a hole in that image of an optimistic and bright future that Luc Besson was trying to paint. Which brings me to another misconception or debate about this movie: is the future shown in The Fifth Element supposed to be optimistic and utopian or pessimistic or dystopian? Luc Besson has always maintained that the future world depicted in the film is supposed to be optimistic, bright, colorful, and aspirational, and he wanted it to be this way as was contrasting it to the future world depicted in Blade Runner and other cyberpunk and dystopian movies (not all dystopian movies are cyberpunk movies, but all cyberpunk movies are dystopian movies).
Blade Runner’s future is very dark, cold, and uninviting. Almost that entire movie takes place at night, and when it came to depicting the city (the future Los Angeles), they used a lot of cooler colors like blacks, grays, blues, greens, silvers, and purples. The hottest colors they used is probably pink, red is hardly used in that movie. And in the sequel Blade Runner 2049, the future is even more bleak, even more cold, and even more uninviting. The city suffered a major blackout caused by rebels (Replicant rebels) in-between movies, so when the events of 2049 take place, there are parts of Los Angeles that are just in complete darkness at night. There only pockets of light here and there throughout the city. It’s a city in decay, it’s a city in decline, and it’s been reduced to a dying husk where people just barely make it by, their only concern is survival, and they are doing enough to merely exist rather than live comfortably.
The future New York in The Fifth Element, on the other hand, is very bright, warm, vibrant, and inviting. They used a lot more warmer colors to depict the city, a lot of reds, oranges, and yellows. It looks like a city that you would actually want to live in, whereas the Blade Runner version of Los Angeles very much does not. As for how the world got this way, sort like Blade Runner (or rather, the book 📖 it was based on, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep 🐑?), a world had suffered a major world war in the tail end of the 20th century or beginning of the 21st century. World War III had occurred. However, unlike in Blade Runner where the war just caused the world to become a lot worse, in The Fifth Element, the war caused the world come together as one, renouncing war and embracing peace, allowing for the creation of a one world government of some kind, which eventually paved the way for the creation of the Federated Territories, a interstellar government that controls a significant part of the galaxy.
We aren’t told or shown how exactly this government works, what the politics of it are like, and whether nation-states as we know them still exist in this world or not, David does refers to Egypt 🇪🇬 by name as if it’s still a distinct country or place, rather being apart of a one world government per se. Also, climate change is apparently not a thing in this world because as Luc Besson stated as is shown in the film itself, the sea levels are receding, sea levels are falling rather than rising.
That’s why Manhattan looks high up and like it’s on top of a cliff or a mesa (like a Sky City if you will 😉), why the Statue of Liberty 🗽 is even taller, and why the airport down below, all the water 💦 that was there is gone now, New York Harbor has completely dried up, they just build more city where all that water 💦 used to be. The airport’s down there for god’s sake. It’s never explained why the oceans receded instead of rose we don’t know what environmental catastrophe caused this why it happened instead of global warming, melting ice caps, and rising sea levels. It just is, and that’s how a lot of the worldbuilding in this movie is like, things are the way they just because, you just have to accept it and move on.
This is the lore as it’s shown to us in the film, and as it has been explained by Luc Besson and ancillary material related to this movie that I haven’t seen. So it is supposed to be an optimistic future, it’s supposed to be a hopeful future, it’s what Luc Besson wishes the future will be and thinks it will be (or at least that’s what he claims), even if it’s not likely to ever happen. War will not completely disappear, there will always be war, people won’t just embrace peace, come together, hold hands and sing kumbaya, there will never be a one world government. That’s not how human nature works, Luc Besson doesn’t understand human nature and grossly overestimates humanity’s capacity to come together and work as one species. He did the same shit in Valerian, which also tried to depict an optimistic future where humanity put aside their differences, renounced war, embraced peace, and worked together towards a common goal: getting into space, and communicating with aliens 👽.
But not everyone agrees that The Fifth Element’s future is an optimistic or hopeful one. Matt Groening, the creator of The Simpsons, Futurama, and Disenchantment, once lumped The Fifth Element in with Blade Runner as examples of sci-fi movies with bleak and undesirable futures. There’s a quote from him I heard from a video talking about Futurama’s future world and how it differs from other sci-fi works (I can’t for the life of me remember what the name of that video was) where he said as much. In fact, the words Matt Groening used in that quote was that the future worlds in Blade Runner and The Fifth Element were “scary,” “grimy,” and “gross.” While Futurama’s future world was more like today’s world, neither a utopia, neither a dystopia, but somewhere in the middle of those two extremes. He said it as way to explain why his future was more realistic and more true to life than any other science fiction work.
But, I disagree with Matt Groening on his description and characterization of the future world depicted in The Fifth Element. It is clear from everything Luc Besson has said in relation to this movie and its depiction of the future, and everything that’s shown on screen in the film itself, this future is supposed to be optimistic, it’s supposed to be aspirational and desirable. You are supposed to like this future, you are supposed to want this future. How Matt Groening could come away from the movie thinking that its future world is indistinguishable from that of Blade Runner is beyond me. But, the intention was an optimistic and somewhat utopian future.
That being said, there are things in the movie that would suggest that this future isn’t as hopeful or optimistic as it appears on the surface. There are things that would suggest that this world is at least a little bit dystopian, and not everyone benefits. I mean, Korben Dallas, the character who’s the audience avatar and our eyes into this world, is living a pretty miserable life at the beginning. You can tell that is unfulfilled by the life he’s living in this tiny apartment, or by the job he has, which is driving a flying taxi in New York City.
If this future was great as Luc Besson kept insisting that it was, then why wouldn’t Korben have a better job or be in a far better position in life? He was Special Forces after all, a highly decorated war hero by all accounts. So, why he is living in a small shitty apartment and working a shitty job as a cab driver? It would suggest that this world despite how much progress had been made technologically, there is still income inequality and a pretty significant class divide between the rich 🤑 and the poor. If a guy ♂︎ like Korben can’t even live the high life despite everything he did for the Federated Army, what hope does the rest of the society have?
You might say that maybe it’s just the influence of Zorg, but I don’t think it’s just him. He’s just one evil capitalist, one evil CEO among many, this is clearly a world dominated by corporations, a world where corporations have just as much, if not, more power than that of governments. He just happens to be the one in control of New York City, the only who Korben and the rest of the city works for (whether they know it or not). There’s the discrimination of aliens 👽. The society of the Federation seems to be very human dominated, with very few aliens 👽 living and working amongst humans. And the ones who do are treated poorly, they were not treated as equals, and were treated more as second class citizens.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a lot of speciesism and xenophobia towards aliens 👽 amongst the human population. And as mentioned they weren’t above committing ethnic cleansing against entire alien species 👽 they didn’t like or didn’t respect such as when they deported the Mangalores from their own planet. Give how the police is portrayed in this movie, I don’t think it’s much of an accident that the uniforms the police officers wear resemble that of the judges from Judge Dredd, a work of post-apocalyptic dystopian science fiction that comments on the danger of police brutality and making police officers judges, jurors, and executioners. If the treatment of women ♀︎ in this galaxy throughout this movie wasn’t any indication, it’s clear that as “optimistic” and “aspirational” as this future is or Luc Besson claims it to be, gender equality clearly had not been achieved.
Was this intentional or was it bad writing on Luc Besson’s part this optimistic future he tried to create just looked pretty bad from the outside looking in? Given how much he has insisted over and over that the future in The Fifth Element is supposed to be optimistic and desirable, I’m thinking that it was more latter. I think he just put things in the movie that he thought would be cool, or funny, or “sexy,” without really thinking about how it would hurt the internal consistency of this world he was trying to create.
It’s a world that contradicts itself, we’re giving very conflicting information about it by what’s shown on screen and what the filmmakers themselves say about it. This is a common criticism that’s often levied at Zack Snyder and his films, when it’s a criticism that I think applies more to Luc Besson and his films. Snyder’s films are actually internally consistent and actually have intelligent things to say most of the time. What you get out of these contradictions is a future world that leans dystopian, but hasn’t gone full dystopian, it’s not quite there yet but it is getting close. In fact, ironically, the future in The Fifth Element is a lot closer to Futurama than a lot of people would think (including Matt Groening), where neither is really utopia or even a dystopia but somewhere in-between.
I do think it was smart of Luc Besson to set this movie in the 23rd century, in the year 2214. The problem with a lot of futuristic sci-fi movies is that they don’t set them far enough in the future that it ends up becoming dated when the year does finally come. That’s why everyone was having a laugh about Blade Runner 😂 when the year 2019 came around because that movie is set in 2019, and the world in 2019 in real-life looked nothing like that movie. Same thing with Akira, that movie was also set in 2019, but less people made jokes at that movie’s expense. People have made all sorts of jokes about Destroy All Monsters and the fact that it’s set in 1999, and the actual 1999 looked nothing like the movie and its retro-future looking ass.
The 1995 Ghost in the Shell movie was set during the 2020s, in the year 2029, so I guess we’ll see if anyone makes jokes about that movie and the world not looking anything like that movie when 2029 comes around. So, Luc Besson was wise to set the movie two centuries from now and in a year that’s far enough that he could do whatever he wanted without people saying that it’s dated and completely far off (it was a wrong prediction) in a few decades. I guess people in the 23rd century, and in the year 2214 specifically, will get to look at this movie and see how much this movie got right if anything. And if not, then I guess they can have a good laugh about it 😂.
One plot point I often see get overlooked and I see a lot of people get confused about it 😕 is the whole Gemini Croquette contest, the contest held on the radio by Ruby Rhod that Korben wins and becomes the catalyst for the entire second half of the movie. The part that people overlook or get confused about is whether or not Korben actually won for real, and won it fair and square. Most people probably assume that his win was legitimate and that he genuinely got lucky, that’s what I thought for the longest time. But, that’s not the case.
The Federated Army rigged the contest in Korben’s favor so that he would win so that he go on the mission to retrieve the stones from Plavalaguna. It was supposed to be a covert operation and he was supposed to be working undercover. So by winning the tickets to a Fhloston in a contest on the radio and going there as a tourist, he’d have the perfect cover story. Korben even figures out that it was rigged in his favor and even says so in the film when General Munro gives him the tickets, almost giddy about what he did.
Of course, by rigging the contest and making him the winner, the Federated Army unknowingly painted a target on his head. As soon as Korben’s announced the winner on the radio, every party involved tries to either kidnap him or kill him so that they can steal the tickets and pretend to be him so they can go on the flight to Fhloston and claim the stones for themselves. Even Cornelius does this, he knocks Korben on the head, and then steals the tickets so that he can send David and Leeloo on the flight to retrieve the stones. Of course, Korben gets up, catches up to them, and Cornelius’s plan fails, forcing him to have stow away on the plane, but that is what he tries to do.
Another plot point that gets overlooked and no body really thinks about is the reason why the Mondoshawans arrive on Earth 🌎 to take the stones and the fifth element away in the prologue scene. Most people who have seen this movie or reviewed it really don’t think about it that much and accept it and then move on. When the priest talks to the lead Mondoshawan and tries to explain why he hadn’t killed the archaeologist, the lead Mondoshawan tells him that they’re there to take the stones and the fifth element away because of a coming war. The war he was talking about and the war that the Mondoshawans were so worried about is World War I. They knew World War I was going to happen. It’s even hinted at that it is World War I before the lead Mondoshawan even says it, by the fact it’s 1914, the year World War I started, and the archaeologist studying the hieroglyphics in the temple is German. He even asks one of the Mondoshawans if they’re German when he’s face-to-face with them.
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Why were the Mondoshawans so worried about World War I (and by extension, World War II) that they wanted the stones and the fifth element off the planet 🌍? Probably because they were worried that they would be discovered and people would figure out how to use them and weaponize them to use for their own purposes, or people would just loot them and keep them as treasures. A lot of antiquities were stolen and kept as souvenirs during the world wars, the Germans were especially guilty of this in World War II, but also World War I as well.
Keeping the stones and the fifth element on Earth 🌍 was too much of a risk, a risk the Mondoshawans were not willing to take. So, they took them away, and decided to only bring them back in 300 years when they were actually needed the most, when Evil returned. Which they did, only for their ship to get ambushed and blown up by the Mangalores who were hired by Zorg to steal the stones for Mr. Shadow, the Great Evil himself. I know the Mondoshawans are a peace loving race and they’re pacifist by nature (most of the time; they did kill the archaeologist after all because he knew too much about the weapon to defeat Evil), but wouldn’t kill to have some defenses on their ship to avoid such a scenario?
Speaking of that scene though, I think it’s important to note that the Mondoshawans exist outside of the Federation. Their planet (whatever its name is) is not apart of the Federated Territories. That’s why in that scene when they return 300 years later, in the 23rd century (in the year 2214), to deliver the fifth element (the stones weren’t aboard the ship and were already in Plavalaguna’s possession by this time), they have to pass through this checkpoint, and have to be granted permission to enter the Federation’s territory. They’re not apart of it. It makes sense, it fits their characters certainly, that they didn’t want to be apart of the Federation because they wanted to be neutral and be involved in politics, or pledge loyalty to any one political entity.
They’re ancient beings, they’re been around longer than any of the major political entities in the galaxy including the Federation, they’ve seen it all, and they see themselves as above politics. Their only concern is the preservation of all life in the universe, and keeping Evil at bay whenever it shows up. Plus, I think the Federation may done things in the past that the Mondoshawans disagreed with and made them not want to join. Which adds to my point that the Federation is not as good or as morally just as we’re led to believe on the surface, and this future is not as perfect as we’re led to believe on the surface. It also shows that the Federation doesn’t control the entire galaxy, that they only control a fraction of it, and there are parts of the galaxy that are not under their control, and are perhaps under the control of different political entities or no political entities at all and some of these planets are fully independent and self-governing.
There’s also some confusion about whether or not the Mondoshawans are robots. I’ve seen a lot of people who did reaction videos to this movie asking what these things really were, were they robots or were organic beings simply wearing space suits? I think that they’re robots. I think it’s pretty clear from their design that they are robots and there’s nothing organic about them. There’s no flesh and bone underneath that metal. But regardless of whether they are meant to be robots or not, they are still clearly an ancient race, they’re the most ancient alien species 👽 we see in this film.
They look like they’ve been around a long time, for thousands of years, maybe even millions or billions. Because Cornelius says that the language Leeloo speaks, the Divine Language was the first language invented and spoken throughout the universe. The Mondoshawans created Leeloo, so they probably spoke the Divine Language too and probably taught it to Leeloo. Them being robots I think makes them cooler, the fact they’re these ancient beings who have been around longer than humans have are robots, a race of sentient robots is pretty interesting (not too dissimilar in a way to the Cybertronians in Transformers). Even if I doubt Mondoshawans themselves would describe themselves as robots just like many Cybertronians don’t consider themselves robots. They’re easily my favorite aliens 👽 in this movie, no other movie alien 👽 before or since looks anything like them, their designs are great.
The last thing I want to cover in this review before I wrap it up are the various home media releases that this movie has had over the years. This has always had a presence on home media, it’s been re-released multiple times, re-issued multiple times, and it’s been on pretty much every physical media format that has existed, except for maybe HD-DVD 💿. HD-DVD 💿 was only used for Universal releases whereas Blu-Ray 💿 was initially used for Sony releases. The Fifth Element is a Sony movie (it was distributed by Sony in North America and they still own the distribution rights to this day), so it got to be on Blu-Ray 💿 when it made the jump to HD.
There was the VHS release 📼 which was barebones and just had the movie obviously. There was the initial DVD release 📀 back in the 1997 to 1998 timeframe, which was fairly barebones, it only came with the movie and no special features, that was the one my family had for a while. Then in 2004 or 2005, maybe even 2006, there was the two-disc Ultimate Edition release which came with special features, all of which were on the second disc 📀, except for the audio commentaries which were on the first disc 📀 with the movie obviously. It’s largely because of the special features on the second disc 📀 that we know as much about the making of this movie that we do.
Then there was the first Blu-Ray release 💿, which was also pretty barebones just like the initial DVD release 📀. That is the one I currently own. There some other Blu-Ray releases 💿 after that, a lot of steelbook releases, not much of note. Then finally most recently, there’s the 4K release 💿 which was done for the 25th anniversary of the film, which was back in 2022 I believe. I think that release came with all of the special features from the Ultimate Edition release, as well as some new special features created specifically for that release, but I’m not quite sure on that. Whether or not they’ll do a theatrical release for the 30th anniversary in 2027 is yet to be seen. It might be in select theaters, but I doubt it’ll be a nationwide or worldwide thing like the theatrical re-releases Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace and The Mummy (1999) back in 2024 were. I’d be genuinely surprised if it was.
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