The Fifth Element

The Fifth Element opened in 1997 to a divided response that has never fully resolved. Audiences either loved it immediately or found it baffling, and that split has persisted for nearly three decades. What’s changed is the balance. The film has accumulated a devoted fanbase that considers it one of the best sci-fi spectacles ever made, while the detractors have mostly moved on. It’s the rare blockbuster that polarized people on release and then won the argument through sheer staying power.

Luc Besson started writing the story as a teenager and carried it with him for years before the technology and budget existed to realize it. That personal investment shows. The Fifth Element doesn’t feel designed by committee or shaped by focus groups. It feels like one person’s unfiltered creative vision poured onto the screen at maximum volume, and you’re either on that wavelength or you’re not.

At its core, the story follows Korben Dallas, a cab driver in a densely packed 23rd-century New York, who gets drawn into a mission to save the world when a mysterious woman named Leeloo crashes through the roof of his taxi. The plot is pure Saturday-morning-serial stuff: a great evil approaches, four ancient stones hold the key to stopping it, and a ragtag group of misfits has to assemble the weapon in time. What matters isn’t the story. What matters is the world Besson built to tell it in.

A Future That Actually Looks Like Fun

Most sci-fi futures are grim. Blade Runner gave us acid rain and corporate dystopia. Alien gave us industrial corridors and chest-bursting parasites. The Fifth Element gave us a future where everything is loud, colorful, and slightly ridiculous, and that creative choice is the film’s most enduring achievement.

Besson enlisted legendary comic artist Jean-Claude Mezieres and fashion designer Jean-Paul Gaultier to build the visual world, and their influence is everywhere. The flying cars aren’t sleek. They’re chunky, crowded, and stacked in vertical traffic lanes. The costumes are absurd in the best possible way. The architecture is dense and layered, every surface covered in neon and advertising. It looks like a European comic book come to life, which is exactly what Besson intended.

Every department committed to this visual identity completely. Where most sci-fi films of the era used monochromatic color schemes, this film went in the opposite direction, adding color at every turn. The result is a world that feels thoroughly inhabited and alive, messy in the way real cities are messy. The 23rd-century Earth of The Fifth Element is one of the most memorable sci-fi settings in film history, and it holds up because it was built with such specificity and care.

Bruce Willis plays Korben Dallas as a tired, competent everyman who’s just trying to get through his day, and it’s one of his most natural performances. Milla Jovovich brings an unusual combination of physical intensity and vulnerability to Leeloo, balancing the comedic and dramatic demands of the role. Gary Oldman commits fully to the absurd villain Zorg, chewing scenery with obvious relish. The cast understood the tone Besson was going for and leaned into it without reservation.

The Besson Excess Problem

By far the biggest point of contention is Chris Tucker’s performance as Ruby Rhod, a hyperactive intergalactic radio host who dominates the third act. Tucker operates at a volume and energy level that overwhelms every scene he’s in, and the response to this character has always been sharply divided. Some fans consider Ruby Rhod the best part of the film, a performance so committed and outrageous that it loops back around to brilliant. Others find it grating enough to nearly ruin the movie’s final stretch.

Plot logic doesn’t bear close examination. The ancient evil approaching Earth is visually striking but barely explained. The connection between the four elements and the weapon that stops the threat is hand-waved into existence. Character motivations are thin, and several subplots never get the room to develop properly. Leeloo, despite Jovovich’s committed performance, is somewhat sidelined by the traditional action-hero mechanics that keep Dallas at the center of the climactic sequences.

Besson’s pacing choices prioritize momentum over coherence. Scenes zip by before emotional beats can land. The film moves so fast that logical gaps don’t register in the moment, but they accumulate. If you sit down and try to trace the plot from beginning to end, you’ll find a surprising amount that doesn’t quite connect. The speed is both the film’s greatest strength and its most persistent weakness: it keeps you entertained, but it also keeps you at arm’s length.

Humor throughout is broad, physical, and heavily European in sensibility. American audiences in 1997 found the comedic tone jarring against the sci-fi action, and that disconnect contributed to the initial mixed reception. The film doesn’t operate like a Hollywood comedy or a Hollywood action movie. It operates like something in between, with a camp sensibility that demands buy-in from the audience.

Why It Endures

What makes this film endure is that it commits to its own absurdity without apology. Besson never hedges or winks at the audience. The film is exactly as ridiculous as it means to be, and that confidence is what separates it from lesser genre efforts that try to have it both ways. Every creative choice, from the costume design to the operatic alien diva sequence to Tucker’s explosive performance, comes from the same place of total creative conviction.

One sequence aboard the cruise ship, combining an alien diva’s operatic performance with an action set piece, stands as one of the most iconic scenes in 1990s cinema. It’s the film in miniature: absurd, beautiful, violent, and emotionally committed all at once.

Should You Watch The Fifth Element?

If you’re drawn to sci-fi that prioritizes imagination and style over hard science, The Fifth Element is essential viewing. It’s one of the most visually inventive genre films of its decade, and the world-building alone justifies the runtime. Fans of directors who bring strong personal vision to big-budget filmmaking will find a lot to appreciate.

Walk away if you need your sci-fi to make logical sense or if broadly comedic performances break your immersion. The film operates on pure energy, and if you’re not vibing with the tone within the first twenty minutes, the remaining hundred won’t change your mind.

The Verdict

The Fifth Element is a film that runs entirely on confidence and style, and it has enough of both to power a small city. Besson’s vision of the future is colorful, chaotic, and bursting with personality, delivered at a pace that refuses to let you get bored. It’s uneven in places, the plot is pure pulp, and the humor won’t land for everyone. But there’s nothing else quite like it, and that kind of singular creative vision ages better than most blockbusters from 1997.