One of the most iconic scenes in sci-fi history nearly ended up in the trash.
After filming wrapped, the negatives for a lavish space opera were flown from London to Los Angeles for post-production. According to associate producer John Amicarella, part of that shipment somehow spilled onto the tarmac at Los Angeles International Airport, where it was promptly run over by a forklift. When he arrived, Amicarella was presented with multiple trashcans filled with what remained.
The damaged footage included a sequence in which a blue-skinned alien opera singer performs an aria before being shot and killed. Then the hero has to retrieve four magical stones hidden inside her body. Somehow, the footage was salvaged. The scene survived. So did the movie.
Nearly 30 years later, Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element feels like it escaped from an alternate timeline. It’s a sci-fi blockbuster loaded with color, camp, sex appeal, practical effects, and big ideas — the kind of movie that’s almost impossible to imagine a major studio greenlighting today. That’s all the more reason to watch it before this movie vanishes from Netflix at the end of September.
Set in the 23rd century, The Fifth Element follows Korben Dallas (Bruce Willis), a former special forces soldier scraping out a living as a flying taxi driver in the New York City of the distant future. His life changes when a mysterious woman named Leeloo (Milla Jovovich) literally crashes through the roof of his cab.
Leeloo has a childlike innocence and curiosity to her, but that’s only because she’s a divine being reconstructed into a human body. She is the titular Fifth Element and the only entity capable of activating four ancient elemental stones that represent earth, air, fire, and water. Together, they are humanity’s only defense against an ancient cosmic evil that returns every 5,000 years to wipe out all life. And if you thought that was a lot of plot to digest, well, buckle up.
The huge armored bird-like aliens called the Mondoshawans — introduced in the movie’s prologue — are essentially the universe’s guardians tasked with protecting all five elements. If they’re priests, then Leeloo is the messiah they’re protecting. The elemental stones are batteries, and she’s the machine. If The Fifth Element at large is a sci-fi fairy tale, then Leelo is basically the magical princess tasked with saving not just the world, but all of sentient life. And the only way to do it? By channeling [spoiler alert for a 29-year-old movie] the power of love.
Fifth Element’s massive cast sells the movie
That premise is already delightfully bizarre. But our principal villain is Gary Oldman as the magnificently unhinged industrialist Zorg speaking with a weird sort of half-Texan accent and sporting a half-shaved hairstyle that includes a sheet of plastic covering part of his skull and a soul patch on his chin, because why not? At about the midpoint, the movie also introduces Chris Tucker’s Ruby Rhod, a loud celebrity radio host in a flamboyant leopard print leotard who was originally supposed to be played by Prince. Somehow, instead of collapsing under the weight of all these weird ideas and big characters, The Fifth Element leverages all of it into one of the most distinctive sci-fi blockbusters ever made.
Part of what makes The Fifth Element feel so refreshing today is its vibrant color palette. We’re conditioned to expect sandy, muted tones from Dune or even the dark and misty Blade Runner cyberpunk aesthetic punctuated by neon. Yet this vision of the future is decidedly bright, even if it’s still violent and chaotic much of the time. Leeloo’s orange hair practically glows against the screen. Every frame is packed with bold colors, eccentric practical costumes, and strange little details. As Amicarella once described it, the movie feels like a collision between comic books, Salvador Dalí paintings, and heavy metal album art.
That same philosophy extends to the performances. Willis provides the grounded center, while everyone around him seems to be operating at maximum intensity. Oldman’s Zorg is menacing and ridiculous. Tucker’s Ruby Rhod remains one of the most fearless performances ever committed to a major blockbuster. Even Jovovich’s Leeloo feels unlike most action heroines, moving through the film with a mixture of innocence and intensity befitting a godlike being that was just reborn into an adult body.
Star Wars, but make it sexy
The movie is also surprisingly sexy in a way we rarely get to see from modern science fiction. Leelo spends a long stretch of the movie in a costume made of bandages that leaves little to the imagination. Everybody wears extravagant costumes designed by Jean-Paul Gaultier. At the McDonald’s of the distant future, all of the female “burger assistants” wear strapless red dresses with the golden arches framing their breasts. Even the flight attendants show up dressed in powder-blue, midriff-baring uniforms that resemble something between a 1960s airline advertisement and a futuristic fashion runway. Besson’s futuristic world is filled with eccentric, attractive, messy people. The result is a universe that feels genuinely alive.
But for all its weirdness, camp, and spectacle, The Fifth Element endures because it has a surprisingly earnest heart. Beneath the opera-singing aliens, flying cars, and ancient prophecies, it’s ultimately a story about choosing hope in spite of humanity’s flaws. The movie’s climactic revelation isn’t that a bigger weapon will save the day. It’s that love is worth fighting for. That’s a corny idea, perhaps even an old-fashioned one, but it’s also the reason audiences continue to rediscover the film nearly three decades later.
If you’ve somehow never seen The Fifth Element, now’s the perfect time to fix that. And if you have seen it, it’s worth revisiting simply to remember a moment when blockbuster filmmaking felt a little stranger, a little riskier, and a lot more fun.