this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2025
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chapotraphouse
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Marriage as a throughgoing running gag.
This movie would be so much better if they hadn't made Leeloo pathetic so much. Ugh. The character is absolutely salvageable, but damn.
Legit wonder how much of this look was inspiried by Super Mario Brothers because these two movies have to be in dialogue in regard to their overall look, aesthetic, and general gonzo style..
Ugh. Korben yelling at Leeloo. No thank you.
Fuck. Christ. This movie absolutely did not need to have all this "problematic" which isn't sufficient, but problematic bullshit, but it does, but it didn't need to.
Just introduced Ruby 55minutes in.
This is a very light hearted movie. It's rarely if ever cruel or meanspirited.
Man, Ruby's introduction is so carefully staged, framed, each cut is dynamic, full of motion, telling us who Ruby is and how he relates to the world - No shot or frame is wasted. Like, again, this is problematic, no question, but as a craft, as an understanding of film as a medium, it's incredibly well done. Like he's totally in command, but displays casual indifference and slapstick violence towards others in his introduction.
I love the costume design and overall fashion aesthetic of this. Everyone looks great. Like the clothes just make everyone look good. The good guys and villains are slick and stylish. Everyone is a little ridiculous but they make ridiculous look good. Every costume tells a story.
Up more casual racism.
And more incredibly slick props.
Ruby is camp gay, but immediately after his introduction he's having sex with a flight attendant and I'd love if anyone has an analysis of that juxtaposition.
God this is so good at cutting together sight gags with events happening in different places at the same time.
I remember being fascinated about how the future looked straight up grimy. Like you would rest your hand on any surface and it would be covered in oil, soot, garbage juice, or some bodily fluid. Even the space airport casually has a wall of garbage bags and no one seems to mind at all? But unlike other 20th century sci-fi movies where the future is grimy like robocop, judge dredd (the one with stallone) or blade runner, there's not a value judgement to the dirtiness. We're never made to feel that this future society is decadent, d*generate, or overrun only because it's dirty. It doesn't shy away from how stressful it is to live in and in this world, but it shows people going about their lives, not wallowing in the filth.
I think it's impossible to act like Ruby Rhod's not camp gay-coded, but the scene with the flight attendant to me shows that Ruby is a purely sexual being. Maybe it's because I'm pan, but the whole sequence in the airport/spaceship reads to me as Ruby being frustrated/turned on by Korben's refusal to engage, and taking it out by banging the next person who will pay attention to him. Ruby is definitely camp, but I think the character is better understood as a hyprrsexual being, for whom sex is as turned to 11 as any other part of his personality. It's also a very 90s European coding of gayness, where soft, femme-coded hypersexuality was the more mainstream perception of queerness people like Luc Besson would've been in contact with in places like London, Paris or Berlin.
This doubles as a joke about NYC's abysmal garbage collection policies. They just leave bags of rubbish on the sidewalk for collection and it fuels NYC's notorious rat population. I think some parts of NYC started using bins and dumpsters like, a year ago? Two years ago? Whenever there's a labor dispute with the trash collectors NYC would be full of giant mounds of trash until it was resolved.
This gives me much to think about, thank you.
Ah yeah this tracks, and it ties in with my observation that in many other, more fascist pieces of media from the late 20th century the fact that the big city is dirty and full of trash is presented as shorthand for social decay. In the fifth element it's sort of part of life, there's no heavy handed value judgement, even if it could've been easy to include in the film
More casual racism.
The way they add elements of the absurd to the outfits, I just love it.
Diegetically Ruby is considered a sex god and every woman seems to be infatuated with him, and again, I'd love to hear people's thoughts on how his portrayal of camp gay diva is juxtaposed with his in-story sex god status. I assume he's supposed to be channeling flamboyant sex symbols like Prince, David Bowie, Freddy Mercurcy, and so forth.
The Diva is such a cool character. For a long time it was generally assumed that no real person could perform her song, but several people have pulled it off since then.
The way the story is happening in many places simultaeniously in a very tight timeline is very well done and creates a big universe, lets many characters participate in the plot, and just idk i really admire how it was done.
Seriously I want someone to dig in to the Ruby as camp gay Diva Ruby as universally admired sex god dichotomy here.
Okay and then we get the Diva and the movie becomes absolutely sincere. And that's really well done. Being able to go from high camp to this very sincere and moving dramatic scene, which is a standout in a very full film for just how gorgeous the song is another example of how strong this movie is as a movie, as an art piece that fully makes use of it's medium. And then smoothly back to camp.
Okay now we finally get to see Leeloo, fully recovered from her ordeal, updated on the situation, go to war. Again, Leeloo has a strong basis but the movie doesn't do her justice. The scene is well constructed with fun fighting gags but it certainly could be tighter.
The good old 90s stunt leg.
I really love Zorg's gun. Again, wonderful prop design. It's such a silly as sci-fi gun but also a super cool sci fi gun.
And, again, the overlapping layers of simulataenious events used to keep the plot moving among different characters in different places.
Some of these sets are enormous.
This movie really needs to be more about Leeloo. She gets her moment in battle, but it's really just a moment. She's mostly moved by the plot instead of being an agent driving the plot. For most of the movie the plot is happening to her, and it's Korben who has agency. And in a movie that builds so much on having many things happening at once in different places they had ample room to have her being a dynamic agent alongside Korben instead of being mostly subordinate to his story.
Yeah, Korben's action seen is much noisier than Leeloo's and focuses more on him. Like don't get me wrong her fight is cool, but, idk, Korben's holds the focus on him while he fights the indigenous soldiers.
Casual abelism as comedy.
The action scene is very well crafted. Comedy and tension, high action. timing and pacing, choreography.
Okay Ruby is firmly a deuteragonist now, acting as Korben's foil. Ruby follows Korben. He doesn't have to, but he's part of the team now.
I love Zorg's arc. he never meets Korben, and ultimately he's hoisted by his own petard more or less literally. His story is a closed loop and he defeats himself.
Man Chris's eyes must have hurt after keeping them wide, wide, wide open for so long.
Correction; Laurel and Hardy took turns being Straight Man and Funny Man, Abbot and Costello played those roles more closely.
They do not have touch screens in the future, indicating that the point of divergence is sometime before Steve Jobs ruined phones.
Eugh I should get on with my day.
Eugh Leeloo is so wasted by being a plot device. I love Milla Jovoviches oeuvre of terrible action movies, and she is not being given a chance to be her full terrible action movie heroine self here.
God there's just so much good physical comedy in this. Regardless of all criticisms everyone is doing a very good job with movement, expressions, how they interact with each other physically.
Love this callback to like an hour and a half back in the movie. Strong Chekov's Gun moment.
Again, despite all the flaws, it's love and human connection that defeats evil and capitalism. A strange bunch of oddballs who have nothing in common coming together to do the right thing.
You know if I was gonna do this I would have had Korben and Leeloo be the supreme being together. Not Leeloo as just a MacGuffin, but two people connected in love forming the supreme being together.
I like that the actual defeat of evil isn't a big moment. Evil isn't important, or strong. The heroes obliterate it in a moment and it's back to the characters. Because evil doesn't have character. There's nothing complicated about it. There's nothing to explore or investigate. Just a bunch of shitheads following the path of least resistance towards personal gain in the material circumstances in which they are embedded. The material circumstances, the systems of Capital, the systems of Imperialism and Colonialism, those are big, complicated systems that merit detailed investigation. But the people who actually run those systems, the people who are elevated by them to positions of power over others, are rarely interesting or complex characters. More than most they are tossed too and fro by the circumstances they have tripped in to, ignorant of the waves that rule their lives.
In conclusion, The Fifth Element is a study in contrasts.
Seeing Korben, our cynical, laconic, stone-faced macho power fantasy 90s hero be moved almost to the point of tears by a piece of art, and by opera no less -something relatively inscrutable to the audience-, is a brief moment of sincerity that plants the seeds of the ending where he breaks down while trying to convince leeloo life is worth saving. It gives him unseen depth, make the feeling feel earned and Korben's arc more complete.
Korben is a perfect middle-aged straight white guy's fantasy. He's a former hero who is now a put-upon everyman, scraping by in a menial job, having lost most of what was important to him. Then suddenly he's thrust in to the middle of saving the world, he get's to re-claim all his glory as a soldier and hero, and he gets to fall in love with the beautiful young semi-divine Milla Jovovich. Like I have that fantasy constantly, yearning for the body and skills I used to have, for the days when my love life was richer and I was stronger and more capable. So there's that element (lol) - The protagonist as a self-insert for a what a lot of middle-aged white guys would like to be.
Too tired to participate (my partner and I have had some good discussions of this movie) but want to say I really enjoyed your analysis and commentary. 5th element is one of my problematic faves. My own sci-fi worldbuilding took inspiration from it for years and years afterward.