Film Deconstruction: The Fifth Element

KORBEN, DALLAS!

Ah yes, the staple sci-fi movie in pretty much any nerd/geek/dork's film library. Filled with action, suspense, and even a bit of romance, this movie has all the makings of a pretty standard summer blockbuster. But for some reason, it's so much more than that. What is it about this movie that makes it such a huge cult favorite? Why is it so freakishly enjoyable, despite being filled with obnoxious characters and a bit of a loose plot? Let's take a look through all the layers this movie has, and see if we can figure out why it's so super-green.


First, lets look at the surface. We have a standard sci-fi action movie, filled to the brim with explosions, guns, one-liners, and even a car chase. And all of that is entertaining in its own right. But it also has the "space opera" thing going for it, with the forces of good and evil chasing each other through space to far-off, exotic lands, battling aliens, and showing off cool high-tech gadgets. Oh, and of course there's the literal space opera, too.

So there's all that, but if you stop looking at the explosions and tits for a couple minutes, you'll notice that the film has an overall interesting visual style going for it. Color is very big here, with every single exotic location being filled to the brim with loud, bright colors. The city itself and Korben's apartment (yes, that's how his name is actually spelled) are both very bland and stifling, but places like the Fhloston Paradise, the President's office, and the reanimation lab are all very eye-catchingly bright.

Digging a little deeper into the scenery, you start to notice a lot more neat, subtle things. For instance, you may notice that Zorg's head is very often framed by a circle, and Korben is very often framed by a doorway or some other kind of rectangular shape. You may also notice that locations that are very important to Leeloo, such as the reanimation chamber and the Diva's suite, are all orange. Korben gets similar treatment, where places symbolizing his repressed life, like his apartment and his cab, are yellow, while places connected to his reemerging freedom, like his hotel room or inside the reactor at the end, are blue.

Now let's take a look at the setting. The movie is set in the year 2263, and we start in New York City. Right off the bat, we get flying cars and super-tall skyscrapers, trademarks of the classic futuristic setting. But the refreshing thing here is that you aren't beaten about the head with these things, like you would be in most other movies. The worst it gets is when Leeloo sees the modern world for the first time and freaks out, and even that is justified a bit.

See, one of the coolest things about this movie is how it establishes its own world, and it's all totally believable. It's all about the little touches. The fog, for example, is severely downplayed. They could have gone off about how humans are terrible and polluted the world so much that they had to just build above the pollution, but instead, they just acknowledge that its there, and let the viewer take of that what they will. Its the same with the mountains of garbage in the airport, or the fact that New York is clearly living in a police state, with those oppressive yellow circles for "police control" everywhere, and the fact that the police can just up and open fire on anyone they suspect might be a car thief. These are all just very small, very subtle touches that add to the feel of the setting without trying too hard to point them out. Add in even smaller things, like how nearly every shot of New York has something going on in the background, and the end result is a very organic, realistic world that is very fun to think about and figure out for yourself.

And on the complete opposite side of the room as subtlety, we have the characters. The most notable thing about the characters here is how, despite the fact that they're all wildly different, none of them are unlikeable. Ruby Rhod, obviously, is very very loud and very very obnoxious. But for some reason, he's still a highly enjoyable character, perhaps even the highlight of the movie for many fans. Zorg is the closest thing to a villain the movie has aside from the Big Blob of Vague Evilness, and yeah, he's scummy... but he's still a very likable character. It takes very careful writing to make characters that are supposed to be despised or hated, but still make them fun, enjoyable characters, and this movie pulls it off perfectly.

The final layer I'd like to dig out a bit is all the neat little hidden factoids that pop out at you when you start to really think about the movie. It's clear that, on the surface, Korben is "the hero" and Zorg is "the villain," and like in all good conflicts, these two forces oppose each other in every step of the story. But did you ever notice that the two of them never ever meet, or even see each other? It's highly likely that neither of them even know that the other exists. It's even implied that Korben doesn't know anything about "Mr. Shadow" or what exactly the stones are used for until the very end, when the President tells him about the ball of fire heading toward Earth. Relatedly, it's also implied that Zorg doesn't understand the full scope of what he's doing. His entire motivation isn't to kill everyone, but rather to create a conflict to stimulate the world. It's a highly flawed theory, especially when you know that his goal results in everyone dying, and it's a dick move in general, but it's hard to call it "evil," especially when you stop and think about how, in his head, what he's doing is for the greater good. (And don't overlook the implication that our moon is actually the dead husk of the last ball of evil that tried to kill everything lololol)

It's also neat to think about how there really isn't a "good" faction and an "evil" faction at work. (Well, except for the literal ball of evil and Leeloo.) The groups at work here are Korben and the President/military, the priests and Leeloo, the Mangalores, and Zorg, and to a lesser extent, the Mondashawans and the Diva, and "Mr. Shadow." They all have their own agendas, and half the fun of the movie comes from seeing how they interact with each other and how their goals change and merge as the story develops. There is never a straight "good vs. evil" conflict here, and watching how every character's actions affect everyone else in the story is super fun to watch.

So why is this movie so awesome? For all the reasons listed above: It's a generally fun movie that's great to watch if you want to turn off your brain for a bit, and even better if you want to start digging into it. What at first seems like just more general sci-fi/action tomfoolery slowly becomes much more than that once you start discovering new things about it. Every single time I watch this movie, I see something new, or understand some obscure fact that managed to elude me, and that alone is reason enough to call this a fantastic film.

Oh, and I can't claim credit for discovering this, but its awesome nonetheless. When Ruby meets Korben, he complains that Korben has "no fire, no energy, no nothing," thus mucking up his show. At the end, in the temple, Ruby is tasked with opening the fire stone. But he has no fire. And who does?


Korben. Korben has the fire.