The '90s were a great time for fans of movies like The Matrix and The Phantom Menace. Luc Besson's The Fifth Element was buried among them all, but today it feels like a film stuck in the middle of a movement.
25 years ago today, The Fifth Element was a hit. It made over $260 million on a big budget. It only made $60 million in the U.S., making it closer to cult status than a mega-blockbuster. You see why when you revisit the film a quarter-century later. It is a roller coaster of tone and intention that makes it feel unique but also polarizing.
The Fifth Element hits the audience with a lot of mythology. An evil appears in the universe every 5,000 years, and only the Fifth Element can stop it. Aliens show up and say that the evil is still 300 years away. A young woman named Leeloo, played by Milla Jovovich, falls into the life of Korben Dallas, played by Bruce Willis, as the story goes forward 300 years. Korben is a cab driver who used to be a special forces officer who finds himself protecting Leeloo as they go on a mission to get the other elements together.
The basic framework is what is going on in The Fifth Element. All of it feels familiar for the first 30 minutes. At a certain point, Korben is forced to shove five people into the bowels of his one-room apartment to keep up a ruse. A more serious sci-fi story becomes a screwball comedy. The introduction of Ruby Rhod, played by Chris Tucker, peaks with a lot of weird situations and jokes.
Ruby Rhod is a Howard Stern of the 23rd century. He's an ultra-popular radio host who runs around commenting on what's going on live for the whole galaxy to hear, and his manic energy combined with machine-gun dialogue smacks The Fifth Element in the face. You almost don't believe you're still watching the same movie after a few humorous scenes, which is refreshing but also a little confusing. You can't help but be enamored by the larger-than-life character that pops onto the screen, but he distracts from everything else. The Fifth Element gets back on track and begins to ease itself back into a more traditional sci-fi action film.
It was the radical swings that stuck with me when I watched The Fifth Element for the first time in two decades. They were brave but only partially successful. Which is the fifth element as a whole. It feels almost like a natural progression from films such as Total Recall, Stargate, and Independence Day on a story level, with scenes set across multiple centuries. It surpasses those movies on a visual level. The production design, costumes, and special effects of the film are amazing. The look of the film is 100 percent The Fifth Element. You will never see Leeloo's costume or Ruby's hair in another movie. It is a stunning vision.
The Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, and The Phantom Menace all adopted this style of world-building a few years later. The scale of The Fifth Element, and its release a few years prior to those mega-hits, almost makes it feel like a sign that Hollywood needed to step things up from sci-fi of the previous years. The film is like a permission slip to go a bit bolder, a bit wilder, and we haven't looked back since.
Is the fifth element influential? It is hard to say. 25 years after its release, the film feels very transitional. It has elements that are both 1997 and 2022. The mix of past, present, and future can be rough. Overall, The Fifth Element was ahead of its time in many ways. It's just as enjoyable to watch and talk about now as it was then.
Prime Video and Paramount+ show The Fifth Element.
Do you want more io9 news? Check out when to see the latest movies from Disney and Lucasfilm, what's next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about House of the Dragon and Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
