I'm just here to share my love for this film. I'm a big movie fan. I've been watching the Fifth Element since high school, and I've only grown to appreciate it more and more as a film as I get older.
It's so full of life, creativity, color, humor, and themes we can all relate to (purpose, love, loss, etc).
This is peek Bruce Willis, and the movie is filled with other exceptional actors including Gary Oldman and Ian Holm. Milla Jovovich is extremely entertaining to watch as a sort fish-out-of-water, and I know Chris Tucker's character here isn't for everyone but in my opinion it's right on-brand for the film. Cracks me up every time for decades.
Mostly the effects have aged really well. That's generally thanks to heavy use of practical effects, as this article highlights.
I often get sad that this is becoming a lost art. Great filmmakers with big budgets are still doing this type of practical effects work (Nolan [Interstellar], Villeneuve [Dune]), but I think eventually it will be lost in time.
dylan604 24 minutes ago [-]
> I often get sad that this is becoming a lost art. Great filmmakers with big budgets are still doing this type of practical effects work (Nolan [Interstellar], Villeneuve [Dune]), but I think eventually it will be lost in time.
Another one of the things that I appreciated from George Miller with Mad Max: Fury Road. There's definitely CGI used, but so much of the stunts were real and not SpiderMan level nonsense.
beloch 4 minutes ago [-]
In the recent Mad Max films, Miller used CG for compositing, but insisted that all the action be real. There are no CG people jumping bikes over 16-wheelers. CG was only used to get rid of safety equipment, change the sky, etc.. The results feel viscerally real.
pavel_lishin 1 hours ago [-]
I cannot imagine anyone but Chris Tucker playing Ruby Rhod. He's one of the best parts of the film.
stiiv 4 hours ago [-]
Agreed -- it's a wonderful film, and deserves a special place right up there with Star Wars and Harryhausen for its practical effects.
While the article mentions Moebius, I think this level of praise still merits an extra Incal callout, even if it just serves as a recommendation to those who want more of this stuff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incal
juancn 2 hours ago [-]
I got the 4K BD disk to watch with my kids a couple months ago and it has aged really well, particularly the special effects.
It's a wonderful movie, definitely one of my favorites.
Cthulhu_ 4 hours ago [-]
> but I think eventually it will be lost in time.
I don't believe it to be honest; model making and painting remains a popular hobby for millions of people, the only question is whether filmmakers will want to use it.
And recently, especially in e.g. Star Wars franchise entries, they have gone towards using models / sets again instead of just using CGI for everything.
0x3f 3 hours ago [-]
But I wonder at what point digital effects become 'good enough' in some sense that they never look aged beyond the containing film. At some point surely there's no more perceptible 'resolution' to be had.
peacebeard 2 hours ago [-]
In practice digital effects haven’t approached being convincing the way practical effects do. In many cases, especially when used liberally, digital effects still clock as amazing digital effects rather than reality. It can be enjoyable but I don’t see what would move forward other than recognizing cgi isnt the best solution for everything.
detourdog 4 hours ago [-]
I was flipping channels in a hotel and I assume the Peter Jackson hobbit/Lord of the Rings were on. The scene I watched was some sort of interior castle scene and it looked really bad. I felt like it was very flat and cardboardy and filmed on VHS.
steve1977 3 hours ago [-]
The cast is just perfect IMHO. Super green! ;
Also one of my all time favorites.
lotsofpulp 40 minutes ago [-]
I thought slightly less of the casting for Fifth Element after I learned about the "Born Sexy Yesterday" thing in conjunction with Luc Besson's personal life. Same with Leon.
While I enjoyed watching the movies, I feel like I would have to point out this dynamic if I were to show the movie to my kids.
Jordan-117 2 hours ago [-]
Excellent article. And a great opportunity to share one of my favorite scifi worldbuilding artifacts: the 4K matte painting used for the brief view of Manhattan during the take-off sequence:
The overall vision for the city is implicit but wildly creative: sea levels have dropped significantly, with the architecture of the city spreading across the newly-exposed land and leaving original structures like the Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan's skyscrapers, and the Statue of Liberty towering above the landscape. There are also oodles of tiny details scattered throughout the image -- you can pore over it for a good 10 minutes and still find more to appreciate. Very cool of Digital Domain to share it originally.
dylan604 11 minutes ago [-]
One of the photog friends I have works on shooting panos of city sky lines that are used for the modern version of the matte paintings used to fill the windows in studio shoots. It's impressive to see them in person.
I took the extended WB back lot tour years ago, and part of the tour was through the matte painting shop. The scale is very impressive. To see artists on 12' ladders to work on it was a nice "human for scale" during the tour.
The circular/sphere real time screen backgrounds Favro at Disney/StarWars is using for The Mandolorian is also neat tech as well.
pavel_lishin 1 hours ago [-]
Went to add this to my rotation wallpaper collection, only to realize it's already there.
jacquesm 4 hours ago [-]
What I like most about the Fifth Element is that they didn't milk it through a bunch of sequels.
throwa356262 3 hours ago [-]
I think this one deserved at least one sequel.
Speaking of sequels, who in the star wars universe will get their own show next? Based on who is left, i put my money on Exogorth.
vidarh 3 hours ago [-]
Fifth Element is pretty much Besson doing Valerian before he was able to get funding for Valerian, so we kinda did get a spiritual sequel of sorts.
Unfortunately, while I've grown to like the Valerian movie, when compared to Fifth Element it would seem that Besson should have been given a far tighter budget for Valerian rather than the apparent near free reign he got.
mgoetzke 3 hours ago [-]
For Valerian he should have been better at casting people that had chemistry and felt real
ticulatedspline 1 hours ago [-]
I desperately wanted to like Valerian since I love Fifth Element, while visually striking the story line was pretty meh and OMG the casting was horrible. I think I could casually enjoy it even with the bad story if they had done better job casting.
jeandejean 4 hours ago [-]
Very true, but I can't help but want a sequel haha. Maybe that desire proves your point... Let our imagination do the rest
LiquidSky 3 hours ago [-]
Yet!
grenoire 7 hours ago [-]
I love this movie so much it's _unreal_. What an experience, every single time.
And each time I see an article like this, I simply marvel at the immense love for art and life it has. What an incredibly talented crew, what product of mastery and care.
sixtyj 7 hours ago [-]
He continued with Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.
The Fifth Element has similar cinematic feeling as the first Blade Runner.
And now it is clear. There is the same person behind it :)
Cthulhu_ 4 hours ago [-]
Valerian missed the mark; I'm sure it's got great designs (although I also believe it's mostly CGI), but the story of the movie is disjointed (which is a risk when trying to merge multiple storylines into one) and the actors are lifeless.
throwa356262 3 hours ago [-]
I really liked Valerian. The story was fine and I expected Cara to be crap but she was actually fine.
I did however very much hated
Dane DeHaan's annoying voice.
vidarh 3 hours ago [-]
I've grown to like Valerian over rewatches, but unfortunately it suffers from Besson being a massive Valerian fanboy and trying to stuff everything he possibly could into it... I think he'd have done far better if he'd gotten a more limited budget, or had to produce three of them for the cost of the one he did...
nntwozz 4 hours ago [-]
The Fifth Element and Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets are widely considered to share a thematic and stylistic universe, with similar aesthetic influences. There are shared elements (ha!) and aesthetics, with Valerian even featuring a shop called "Korbens" as an easter egg to The Fifth Element.
Unfortunately the movie doesn't do it for me, the 90s were a better time.
Once CGI became good storytelling and creativity took a backseat in Hollywood.
sixtyj 3 hours ago [-]
Perfect CGI and no-grain 4K (?) flattened the feeling.
simonh 6 hours ago [-]
Valerian was fun, but I really don't think it held together. Great set piece scenes though.
metalman 7 hours ago [-]
waterworld
Joel_Mckay 6 hours ago [-]
Adam Savage covered the Mondoshawan props on his channel last year:
It was a fun film, but Chris Tucker broke the pacing too many times for a general audience. Even now on rottentomatoes his role still distracts focus from the character arcs.
Was a cult classic for sure, but nowhere near Blade Runner as a film. =3
cubefox 2 hours ago [-]
I think the film would have been better (though perhaps less successful) if Besson had toned down the occasionally exaggerated tomfoolery, like Chris Tucker's character, or the spaceship Evil (the orb described in the article) which felt almost like a SciFi parody taken out of the movie Spaceballs.
The pacing, the great costumes and set design by Moebius, the actors Bruce Willis and Milla Jovovich, and the unusual ideas (like the alien opera singer) were all more than enough to carry the movie.
sschueller 7 hours ago [-]
Off topic but Milla Jovovich just released an AI memory called mempalace:
The parent post didn't say "unauthorized." Plenty of scams use celebrities' names/reputations and compensate then for it. See: just about every pump-and-dump cryptocoin.
diimdeep 3 hours ago [-]
This is what you get combining shameless bunch of famous B-rated movie star, crypto dudes and Automatic programming hype (Claude in contibs)
On the cover it's a story about the failed production of Alejandro Jodorowsky's Dune script but the deeper story was the aggregation of an unbelievably talented pool of visual artists including Jean "Moebius" Giraud (mentioned as central artist in 5th element), H.R. Giger, Chris Foss, Salvador Dali, & Dan O'Bannon.
That group would go on to centrally influence the visual style of a huge body of science fiction work including Alien, Blade Runner, Total Recall, Star Wars, The Matrix, Guardians of the Galaxy, etc etc.
The art and creativity on display in the film is absolutely sonic.
Kind of like the original PayPal mafia!
tvshtr 4 hours ago [-]
I have very vivid memories of watching it for the first time in the cinema (original run). I'm pretty sure I still have the ticket.
I was spending winter break in the mountains, with some friends, completely snowed in. I bought the soundtrack too (on a cassette tape).
Possibly the last decent movie of his.
I really like how well the movie aged. I recently watched it with my wife, who had never seen it, and she was hooked. Most of the effects hold up very well today and the movie is just fun.
ModernMech 6 hours ago [-]
The article is missing one of the best futurescape shots in the whole movie!
That image is only on screen for like 2 seconds, but it tells a whole story and really pulled me into the film. The first half you're deep in the city, and then finally when you get to see it from afar, it seems like a whole real city instead of the few locales they shot. Also makes it feel like a continuity of our future instead of some random alien drama.
Jordan-117 2 hours ago [-]
My post! :)
Imgur might be vastly underselling the richness of the image, depending on your browser/device. Definitely check out the full 4K version if you're only seeing a thumbnail on that page:
It's so full of life, creativity, color, humor, and themes we can all relate to (purpose, love, loss, etc).
This is peek Bruce Willis, and the movie is filled with other exceptional actors including Gary Oldman and Ian Holm. Milla Jovovich is extremely entertaining to watch as a sort fish-out-of-water, and I know Chris Tucker's character here isn't for everyone but in my opinion it's right on-brand for the film. Cracks me up every time for decades.
Mostly the effects have aged really well. That's generally thanks to heavy use of practical effects, as this article highlights.
I often get sad that this is becoming a lost art. Great filmmakers with big budgets are still doing this type of practical effects work (Nolan [Interstellar], Villeneuve [Dune]), but I think eventually it will be lost in time.
Another one of the things that I appreciated from George Miller with Mad Max: Fury Road. There's definitely CGI used, but so much of the stunts were real and not SpiderMan level nonsense.
While the article mentions Moebius, I think this level of praise still merits an extra Incal callout, even if it just serves as a recommendation to those who want more of this stuff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incal
It's a wonderful movie, definitely one of my favorites.
I don't believe it to be honest; model making and painting remains a popular hobby for millions of people, the only question is whether filmmakers will want to use it.
And recently, especially in e.g. Star Wars franchise entries, they have gone towards using models / sets again instead of just using CGI for everything.
Also one of my all time favorites.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_Sexy_Yesterday
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0thpEyEwi80
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luc_Besson#Personal_life
While I enjoyed watching the movies, I feel like I would have to point out this dynamic if I were to show the movie to my kids.
http://web.archive.org/web/20161007133354if_/http://digitald...
The overall vision for the city is implicit but wildly creative: sea levels have dropped significantly, with the architecture of the city spreading across the newly-exposed land and leaving original structures like the Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan's skyscrapers, and the Statue of Liberty towering above the landscape. There are also oodles of tiny details scattered throughout the image -- you can pore over it for a good 10 minutes and still find more to appreciate. Very cool of Digital Domain to share it originally.
I took the extended WB back lot tour years ago, and part of the tour was through the matte painting shop. The scale is very impressive. To see artists on 12' ladders to work on it was a nice "human for scale" during the tour.
The circular/sphere real time screen backgrounds Favro at Disney/StarWars is using for The Mandolorian is also neat tech as well.
Speaking of sequels, who in the star wars universe will get their own show next? Based on who is left, i put my money on Exogorth.
Unfortunately, while I've grown to like the Valerian movie, when compared to Fifth Element it would seem that Besson should have been given a far tighter budget for Valerian rather than the apparent near free reign he got.
And each time I see an article like this, I simply marvel at the immense love for art and life it has. What an incredibly talented crew, what product of mastery and care.
The Fifth Element has similar cinematic feeling as the first Blade Runner.
And now it is clear. There is the same person behind it :)
I did however very much hated Dane DeHaan's annoying voice.
Unfortunately the movie doesn't do it for me, the 90s were a better time.
Once CGI became good storytelling and creativity took a backseat in Hollywood.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pf5dPrmBvwE
It was a fun film, but Chris Tucker broke the pacing too many times for a general audience. Even now on rottentomatoes his role still distracts focus from the character arcs.
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/fifth_element
Was a cult classic for sure, but nowhere near Blade Runner as a film. =3
The pacing, the great costumes and set design by Moebius, the actors Bruce Willis and Milla Jovovich, and the unusual ideas (like the alien opera singer) were all more than enough to carry the movie.
https://github.com/milla-jovovich/mempalace
> Mother/Actress/Architect of MemPalace free and open source on GitHub
And the linktree from the Instagram profile links to https://github.com/milla-jovovich/mempalace
https://github.com/milla-jovovich/mempalace/graphs/contribut...
But it is so dumb that it doesn't even add to the drift towards greater Idiocracy clock values.
https://xcancel.com/BrianRoemmele/status/2041397710113435659...
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1935156/
On the cover it's a story about the failed production of Alejandro Jodorowsky's Dune script but the deeper story was the aggregation of an unbelievably talented pool of visual artists including Jean "Moebius" Giraud (mentioned as central artist in 5th element), H.R. Giger, Chris Foss, Salvador Dali, & Dan O'Bannon.
That group would go on to centrally influence the visual style of a huge body of science fiction work including Alien, Blade Runner, Total Recall, Star Wars, The Matrix, Guardians of the Galaxy, etc etc.
The art and creativity on display in the film is absolutely sonic.
Kind of like the original PayPal mafia!
https://youtu.be/RdqiaNsKR2E
http://i.imgur.com/6W5InkH.jpg
That image is only on screen for like 2 seconds, but it tells a whole story and really pulled me into the film. The first half you're deep in the city, and then finally when you get to see it from afar, it seems like a whole real city instead of the few locales they shot. Also makes it feel like a continuity of our future instead of some random alien drama.
Imgur might be vastly underselling the richness of the image, depending on your browser/device. Definitely check out the full 4K version if you're only seeing a thumbnail on that page:
http://web.archive.org/web/20161007133354if_/http://digitald...
Which scene are you referring to?
http://www.vfxhq.com/1997/stills/fifth/welcome.jpg
It's the wide shot of NYC after they leave the spaceport.
Looking back, the whole story gives a different futuristic feel to the usual gloomy polluted dystopian earths, and feels a bit, "near-future".
Seeing hover cars getting drive through McDonalds will forever be a future hope for me (my inner 10 year old self)