TL;DR: The Fifth Element is a neon-soaked, opera-blasting, Gaultier-dressed sci-fi fairy tale that still feels like nothing else. The plot is flimsy and Ruby Rhod is a lot, but the world-building, cast and sheer joyful nerve make it a timeless favourite that rewards every rewatch.
A sci-fi fever dream that still feels like nothing else
Some films age like fine wine, some age like milk left on a Mondoshawan spaceship, and then there’s The Fifth Element, which seems to exist outside time altogether. Luc Besson’s 1997 space opera remains one of my all-time favourite movies, and every rewatch reminds me why: it’s loud, ridiculous, gorgeous, sincere and completely unafraid of looking silly. Most blockbusters try to be cool. This one tries to be everything, all at once, in neon orange and Gaultier latex, and somehow pulls it off far more often than it has any right to.
The setup is pure Saturday-morning mythology. Every five thousand years a Great Evil comes knocking, and the only defence is a weapon built from four elemental stones plus a mysterious fifth element. In the 23rd century, that fifth element turns out to be Leeloo, a “perfect being” rebuilt from a severed hand who crash-lands into the flying taxi of Korben Dallas, an ex-special forces cabbie with a parking-ticket-sized apartment and zero patience. What follows is a chase across a crowded future New York, a luxury cruise to an alien resort, an opera concert that turns into a firefight, and a finale where the fate of the universe hinges on whether one person still believes humanity is worth saving.
Moebius, Mézières and the most colourful future ever put on film
The reason The Fifth Element still looks fresh is that it rejected the gloomy, rain-soaked future that Blade Runner made fashionable. Besson brought in French comic legends Jean “Moebius” Giraud and Jean-Claude Mézières, the artist behind Valérian and Laureline, and you can feel their bande dessinée DNA in every frame. The vertical traffic jams of flying cars, the towering city with no visible ground, the takeaway noodle boat floating up to Korben’s window — it all feels like a comic panel brought to life rather than a futurist’s PowerPoint. This is a world that’s crowded, commercial and messy, but also bright, playful and weirdly optimistic.
Then there’s the wardrobe. Jean Paul Gaultier designed the costumes, and he clearly treated the brief as an invitation to go absolutely feral. Leeloo’s bandage outfit became instantly iconic, the flight attendants look like they escaped a Paris runway, and Ruby Rhod’s leopard-print cascade of a look is the kind of thing only a fashion designer working on a sci-fi film would dare. Paired with Digital Domain’s model-heavy effects work, the result has a tactile quality that a lot of modern all-CGI spectacle simply can’t match, which is exactly why the taxi chase still plays better today than many sequences made two decades later.
Korben, Leeloo, Zorg and a cast that commits to the bit
Bruce Willis is perfectly cast as the reluctant hero, essentially playing a John McClane who’s been reassigned to the space-cab division. He grounds the madness with weary deadpan, and his chemistry with Milla Jovovich works because the film lets them be strange together. Jovovich gives Leeloo a wide-eyed, physical, feral energy, speaking a “divine language” that she and Besson reportedly developed into hundreds of words, and her journey from confused newborn to someone who has to decide if humanity deserves saving is the real emotional spine of the movie. “Leeloo Dallas, multipass” should not work as a catchphrase. It absolutely does.
Gary Oldman, meanwhile, is having the time of his life as Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg, a corporate weapons dealer with a half-plastic hairdo, a Southern drawl and a hilarious little monologue about how destruction creates jobs. The geekiest bit of trivia here is that Zorg never actually meets Korben or Leeloo on screen, which says a lot about how confidently the film juggles its threads. Ian Holm brings fussy warmth as Father Cornelius, while Chris Tucker’s Ruby Rhod is the loudest thing to happen to cinema since the invention of Dolby. I love him, but I fully understand anyone who finds him exhausting, and how you feel about Ruby probably decides how you feel about the film’s entire second half.
The Diva Dance and a soundtrack that refuses to be normal
Éric Serra’s score is a strange beast, mixing orchestral swells, Algerian raï, reggae-tinged grooves and electronic textures in a way that matches the film’s maximalist personality. But everyone remembers one scene: the Diva Plavalaguna, a blue, tentacle-haired alien opera singer, performing a piece from Lucia di Lammermoor before it morphs into a pulsing, inhumanly fast electronic remix. Intercut with Leeloo tearing through a squad of Mangalores, it’s one of the great sequences of 90s cinema, a collision of high art and pure action-movie nonsense that shouldn’t make sense together.
That scene is also the purest summary of what Besson was going for. He reportedly began dreaming up this universe as a teenager, and the whole film carries that teenage conviction that opera, kung fu, fashion, aliens, pop music and a love story can all live in the same two hours. A more cautious studio picture would have sanded those edges down. Instead, the strangeness is the point, and it’s exactly why the soundtrack still pops up in playlists and the Diva remains a cosplay staple decades later.
Where the cracks show after nearly thirty years
Nostalgia doesn’t make the film flawless. The plot is thin to the point of transparency, with the Great Evil being little more than a giant flaming space rock that eventually gets defeated by, well, love. The Mangalores are fun but disposable, the middle stretch on Fhloston Paradise can feel like a hyperactive variety show, and the tone lurches between slapstick and apocalyptic stakes with no seatbelt. If you need tight plotting or hard sci-fi logic, this movie will drive you up the wall faster than a flying taxi in police pursuit.
Some elements also land differently today. The camera’s gaze on Leeloo, especially early on, leans into the male-gaze habits common to 90s action films, and Ruby Rhod’s shrieking energy is a polarising performance that some viewers will tune out entirely. Those criticisms are fair. Yet the film’s central message, that humanity’s capacity for cruelty is real but love still makes it worth protecting, is delivered with such earnest conviction that it somehow survives the cheese. Leeloo learning about war through an encyclopedia montage remains a surprisingly heavy moment in an otherwise candy-coloured ride.
Why The Fifth Element still earns every rewatch
Part of the magic is that this is a fully original universe, not a remake, reboot or cinematic universe setup. It opened the Cannes Film Festival in 1997, was one of the most expensive European productions of its era, and went on to become a global box-office hit and an enduring cult favourite. You can trace its fingerprints in later films that dared to be colourful in space, from Guardians of the Galaxy‘s pop-art swagger to Besson’s own Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, which tried to recapture the magic with far less charm.
What keeps me coming back is how generous the film is. Every rewatch reveals a background gag, a costume detail or a line delivery I’d forgotten, from the McDonald’s flying drive-through to Zorg’s catastrophic cherry pit to the ZF-1 gun demonstration. It’s comfort viewing that also happens to be a genuinely bold piece of design-driven filmmaking. In an era of grey-blue colour grading and franchise obligation, The Fifth Element feels like a transmission from a braver, sillier, more joyful timeline.
Verdict
The Fifth Element is a gloriously unhinged space opera powered by world-class design, unforgettable characters and a total refusal to play it safe. Its strengths are enormous: the comic-book visual world, Gaultier’s costumes, the practical effects, the Diva Dance, Oldman’s scenery-chewing villain and the oddly touching core of Willis and Jovovich’s partnership. Its weaknesses are just as obvious, including a flimsy plot, a love-conquers-all finale that leans hard into cheese, a polarising Chris Tucker performance and some 90s-era framing that hasn’t aged gracefully. For anyone who loves sci-fi that feels handmade, colourful and sincere, it’s essential viewing and a perfect rewatch. If you only enjoy tight, serious science fiction, you may find it more exhausting than enchanting, but for me it remains one of the best movies ever made, warts and multipass included.
