The Fifth Element

For the fifth element of the periodic table, see Boron. "Fifth Element" is also an Estonian musical group. For the alchemical substance see Aether (classical element)

The Fifth Element (1997) is a science fiction action movie, directed by Luc Besson, starring Milla Jovovich, Bruce Willis, Gary Oldman, Ian Holm, Charlie Creed Miles, Chris Tucker, Luke Perry, Tricky, Indra Ové and Al Matthews. The aesthetics of the movie were designed by Jean Giraud (Moebius) and Jean-Claude Mézières and it has a strong, European comic book-like look and feel.

The movie places the survival of mankind on the shoulders of Korben Dallas (Willis) after "the Fifth Element" (Jovovich) falls into his taxicab. His mission is to find the other four elements, represented by stones, and to gather them all before a black evil planet collides with the Earth. Mangalores, blockheaded warrior aliens, and Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg (Oldman), a corporate villain, are bent on thwarting his efforts.

Plot summary

Every five millennia, when three planets are in eclipse, evil is embodied and attempts to turn light to dark, life to death. The weapon against this evil is in a temple in Egypt. To succeed in its goal, the evil has to consume the location of the weapon. The weapon is activated by bringing together the five elements of the universe: the first four are water, fire, earth and air, which are embodied in the form of small triangular-prism stones, and the fifth element is a "Supreme Being", resembling a human except genetically superior, encased in a sarcophagus in the shape of a person with head back and mouth widely open. These five elements together produce the Divine Light, which vanquishes the Ultimate Evil for another five thousand years. This weapon was placed on Earth by the Mondoshawan (also referred to as the Mondochiwans by Leeloo), an old and mysterious race, and the knowledge of the evil and the weapon is passed down generation to generation by a line of priests who serve the Mondoshawan.

In 1914, the Mondoshawan guardians took the elements away because they were no longer safe on Earth, due to the soon-to-begin World War One. Three hundred years later, when the Ultimate Evil formed again, a Federated Army battleship arrives at its location. The ship's commander is then ordered to fire on it, but the Evil only gets larger and engulfs the ship with all hands on board. The government allows the Mondoshawan to return and help defeat the Evil. The Mondoshawan attempt to bring the elements back to Earth. However, Jean-Baptiste Emmanuel Zorg (Oldman) (referred to as "Zorg"), a powerful weapons manufacturer who was asked to obtain the stones by the Ultimate Evil (who Zorg only knows as "Mister Shadow"), orders the destruction of the Mondoshawan spaceship transporting the elements. All of the Mondoshawan crew die when the crippled ship crashes on a moon, but the Earthlings are able to retrieve a severed hand within a glove clutching a case handle from the crash site. This is regenerated to bring the Supreme Being back to life; she turns out to be a red-haired and amazingly strong, smart and beautiful woman (Jovovich), and the last hope of all life in the universe. The woman, however, immediately escapes the laboratory cage and dives into Korben Dallas's flying taxicab. Korben Dallas is a war hero turned cab driver.

Korben, a former major in the Federated Army's elite special forces unit, takes the woman to a priest with the knowledge of the Evil, Vito Cornelius (Holm), and finds out that her name is Leeloo Minai Lekatariba-Laminai-Tchaii Ekbat De Sebat (Leeloo for short). Leeloo tells Cornelius that, as it turned out, the first four elements were not on board the crashed ship. Instead, the Mondochiwan gave them for safekeeping to an alien opera singer, the Diva Plavalaguna (the diva's name is a joking reference to Milla Jovovich's first film, Return to the Blue Lagoon: plava laguna means "blue lagoon" in Serbo-croatian). Leeloo is meant to contact the Diva in a hotel on the planet Fhloston, where the Diva is performing at a charity ball.

Since the Mangalores, an Orc-like race whom Zorg hired with, did not come back with four elements, Zorg is close to giving the Mangalores nothing in return; he is forced at gunpoint to leave them one crate of ZF1 weapons for their effort. However, a curious Mangalore presses a button that turns out to trigger a bomb built into his ZF1, leaving the surviving Mangalores out for revenge. The government also finds out about the Diva from the Mondochiwan, and they decide to reactivate Korben and send him to retrieve the stones from the Diva. In order to get him to Fhloston, they rig a contest where the winner gets tickets to Fhloston. Four different people end up trying to get onto the flight as Korben: the real Korben, Cornelius's novice David along with Leeloo, Zorg's assistant Right Arm (who is blown up shortly afterwards while he is telling Zorg he failed), and two shapeshifted Mangalore warriors (who intend to get the stones to make Zorg negotiate for them). Eventually Korben and Leeloo get on the flight together, along with the contest's flamboyant radio DJ, Ruby Rhod (played by Tucker). Cornelius also stows away in the ventilation system. Immediately after a concert on a spaceship orbiting Fhloston, Plavalaguna is shot and killed by Mangalores who try to take over the ship. Zorg arrives, with the intention of getting the stones himself. He plants a nuclear bomb in the hotel on the spaceship and steals a wooden chest from the Diva's suite, believing the elemental stones to be inside. On his way out, he finds Leeloo (who had spent the evening fighting and killing Mangalores). She jumps into a ventilator shaft, but Zorg shoots at her through the ceiling and injures Leeloo. Once he has departed, he is enraged upon discovering the stones are not inside.

After retrieving the four stones from their actual hiding place—inside the Diva's abdomen, Korben manages to defeat the Mangalores by killing their leader. Afterwards the hotel's bomb detectors detect Zorg's bomb, and everyone evacuates the hotel/ship. A furious Zorg returns to the hotel just as everyone is leaving and deactivates his bomb in the nick of time, but is killed as another, unforseen bomb is exploded by a surviving Mangalore.

Meanwhile, President Lindberg of the Federated Territories is celebrating with his staff the success of Korben's mission. However, their party is broken up when a scientist says that the Evil (now a fireball 1200 miles in diameter) has shifted position and is heading straight for Earth. Korben has only two hours to get the weapon ready.

As Korben, Leeloo, Cornelius, and Ruby Rhod are on their way back to Earth in Zorg's ship, the Ultimate Evil continues moving towards Earth. Leeloo also researches "war" on the ship's computer and learns about the cruelty of man.

With only fifteen minutes left before everyone will die, they arrive back on Earth and set up the weapon. But Leeloo doesn't want to create the Divine Light. "What is the point of saving life if all you do is destroy it?" But Korben convinces her there are some things worth saving, like love, and tells her that he loves her. They kiss, and the Divine Light forms and stops the Ultimate Evil a mere 62 miles from impact. It crusts over, goes into a harmless orbit and becomes a second moon (which might explain how we got the first one).

The next morning, President Lindberg and his staff go to the Nucleological Center to thank Korben. However, Korben can not be interviewed due to the fact that he and Leeloo are making love in the regeneration chamber.

Music

Some pieces in the score, composed by Eric Serra, have a Middle Eastern flavour to them. The popular taxicab chase scene music, "Alech Taadi", by Khaled, is excluded from the movie soundtrack, however it is available on Khaled's album N'ssi N'ssi.

In the second half of Plavalaguna's performance, the music as well as the singing suddenly and dramatically turns from classical to techno style. This change is accompanied by scenes alternating between the performance and Leeloo's fight with a dozen aliens (Mangalores) in Plavalaguna's chamber, with the fight moves and film editing choreographed to the music.

The Diva Dance opera performance used music from Lucia di Lammermoor Part Two, Act Two, N. 14 Scena ed aria, "O giusto cielo!" and was voiced by Inva Mula-Tchako. However, Plavalaguna was acted by French actress Maïwenn Le Besco. As Plavalaguna is an alien, the music was scored with some vocalisations that are rumoured to be physically impossible, however in the documentary on the Special Edition version of the film it is stated that Inva Mula-Tchako's voice wasn't digitally altered. As a side note, Marie-Ève Munger from Canada, is known to have performed the complete diva dance opera in front of a live audience. The performance was at one time broadcast on television in the province of Québec as part of a show from a boxing event.

The concert scenes were actually filmed at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, except for the scenes showing the spaceship window with its view of Planet Fhloston behind the Diva.

Trivia

Although filmed in English and set in a futuristic New York City, the movie is a French production, mostly filmed at Pinewood Studios in England, with some bits shot in Mauritania.
Even though the story jumps "300 years into the future" from 1914, the year in the future is 2263, or almost 350 years.
The Divine Language spoken in the film was invented by director Luc Besson. Multi-lingual Milla Jovovich learned to speak it fluently.
In one scene, Zorg quotes Nietzsche: "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." Bruce Willis recorded an album with that title in the mid-1980s.
The future New York City still has a Central Park which has the same size and location as the original, but it is a hundred feet (30.5 metres) in the air.
We see in a brief shot of New York Harbor, that there is much less water left (the island containing the Statue of Liberty is now connected directly to the mainland). This suggests that either there was extensive land reclamation, or the surface of the ocean is considerably lower. There are, however, still oceans left, as we can see the Earth from space in a few scenes.
Interestingly enough, Korben (the main character) and Zorg (the main villain) never encounter one another, or even learn about each other directly. Korben was an employee of one of Zorg's smaller companies and was subsequently sacked during a massive downsizing (1 million people laid off). Only Cornelius actually met Zorg, whereas all of Korben's fighting is with the Mangalores. Leeloo is the only main character to fight Zorg.
As a visual motif, Korben usually has a large rectangle behind him and Zorg has a large circle behind him.
When ABC first broadcast The Fifth Element, they digitally removed all the Golden Arches since McDonald's is a sponsor.
In Korben Dallas´ apartment, it is possible to see a banner with the Brazilian national football team association crest on one of the walls.
Korben Dallas was originally supposed to be a worker in a rocketship factory. When the film went into development hell in the early 1990s and Besson went on to make Léon starring Jean Reno, comic book artist Jean-Claude Mezieres, who had been hired as a conceptual designer, returned to drawing The Circles of Power, the 15th volume in the Spatio-Temporal Agent series. This featured S'Traks, a character who drives a flying cab through the congested air traffic of the vast metropolis on the planet Rubanis. Besson read the album and subsequently changed the character of Dallas to a cab driver whose taxi flies through the Rubanis-inspired metropolis of the future New York.
In an original version of the script, Zorg confronts Korben aboard the hotel. Zorg then fails to kill them when he discovers he used all of the ammo in his ZF1. Korben and company escape, and Zorg activates a shield in his ZF1. He then survives and lands on Planet Fhloston. Zorg tries to call his secretary to send another spaceship, but the batteries in his ZF1 phone die. This version is reflected in the novelization.
On the DVD closed captioning, the phrases that Leeloo says that are included are "Mlarta", "Big Ba-Dah Big Boom", "Akta", "Seno Akta Gamat", "San agamat chay bet. Envolet", "Danko", "Domo Danko" and "Apipoulai". The rest is called "unknown language" and when it is specified, "divine language".
References to Star Wars abound in the film. The opening scene mimics the scene in The Empire Strikes Back where Imperial Troops are helping Boba Fett carry Han Solo's frozen body out of Cloud City. A female major has hair similar to Princess Leia's iconic hairstyle from A New Hope. The priest's costume is heavily reminiscent of Obi-Wan Kenobi's outfit in Episode IV. The monk Vito Cornelius also mimics Obi-Wan Kenobi as a deus ex machina for the protagonist of the film, as well as one of the last repositories of an ancient monastic code. The design of the federal battleships is similar to Imperial Star Destroyers. Mangalores bring to mind the word Mandalore and Mandalorians. Plavalaguna resembles a Twi'lek.
The nervous would-be mugger who attacks Dallas as he leaves his apartment in a Seinfeld parody (complete with bass riffs) at the beginning of the film is Mathieu Kassovitz, a French film director and actor who is a friend of Luc Besson.
The Fifth Element was shot in Super 35 mm film format. Most of the scenes contain visual effects, including futuristic elements. Scenes containing visual effects are almost always hard-matted.
As a digital in-joke, the license plates on the flying cars say "New York, the fuck you state". Of course, the slogan is too small to be read on screen.
A number of manga volumes can be seen in Dallas' apartment, including Osamu Tezuka's Adolf and Sanctuary by Fumimura Sho and Ikegami Ryoichi.
The cop in the driver's seat of the flying police car parked at the drive-through of the McDonald's is played by American actor Mac McDonald, who also played Captain Frank Hollister in the British series Red Dwarf.
When the film was released, it was rumored to be the first of a two-part series, the second of which would be called Mr. Shadow (named after the Ultimate Evil character from the first). However, no such sequel is currently planned.
The film's heavy use of "neon" orange hair and clothing briefly caused a resurgence in the popularlity of the color, which had been waning after the initial thrust of rave culture faded.
Costumes for the film were designed by French designer Jean-Paul Gaultier.
The Karman line, at 100 km (62 miles), is frequently used as the boundary between atmosphere and space.

Parodies of "The Fifth Element"

In Miss Dynamite XIX, the intro shows main character Eva Sirkowski in a variety of different clothes that can be selected by the viewers. One of those outfits is a replica of Leeloo's from the film. Also, in this design, Eva's hairstyle changes from a blonde to a redhead.

External links

Information about the "divine language"
Keith Short - Film Sculptor Images of set pieces sculpted for this film

Gourt Home::Gourt :: The Fifth Element

Plot summary

Music

Trivia

Parodies of "The Fifth Element"

External links