The Fifth Element (1997)
Original title: Le Cinquième Élément
The Fifth Element is a 1997 French-language science fiction movie directed by Luc Besson, with a running time of 2h 6m. It stars Bruce Willis, Milla Jovovich and Gary Oldman.
Luc Besson's 23rd-century adventure is loud, candy-colored, and gleefully strange. Bruce Willis plays Korben Dallas, an ex-special-forces cabbie steering a flying taxi through a vertical New York, until a bandage-wrapped woman named Leeloo (Milla Jovovich) crashes through his roof. She turns out to be the living key to stopping a cosmic evil, and Dallas is suddenly responsible for gathering four mystical stones before it arrives. Gary Oldman hams it up as the villain Zorg while Chris Tucker shrieks as radio host Ruby Rhod, all dressed in Jean Paul Gaultier costumes. It plays like space opera drawn as a pop-art comic strip.
Quick answers
What is The Fifth Element about?
Luc Besson's 23rd-century adventure is loud, candy-colored, and gleefully strange. Bruce Willis plays Korben Dallas, an ex-special-forces cabbie steering a flying taxi through a vertical New York, until a bandage-wrapped woman named Leeloo (Milla Jovovich) crashes through his roof. She turns out to be the living key to stopping a cosmic evil, and Dallas is suddenly responsible for gathering four mystical stones before it arrives. Gary Oldman hams it up as the villain Zorg while Chris Tucker shrieks as radio host Ruby Rhod, all dressed in Jean Paul Gaultier costumes. It plays like space opera drawn as a pop-art comic strip.
When was The Fifth Element released?
The Fifth Element was released on 2 May 1997.
How long is The Fifth Element?
The Fifth Element runs 2h 6m.
Who made The Fifth Element?
The Fifth Element was directed by Luc Besson.
Where can I watch The Fifth Element?
The Fifth Element is available on Netflix, TNT, YouTube TV, Amazon, AppleTV and Fandango at Home.
Where to watch The Fifth Element
Stream: Netflix, TNT, YouTube TV
Rent: Amazon, AppleTV, Fandango at Home
Buy: Fandango at Home
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The Fifth Element in our writing
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A few thoughts on The Fifth Element
For more bright, kinetic sci-fi, Mass Effect 2 (game) delivers the character-packed Space Opera. Ghost in the Shell (comic) supplies the cyberpunk future beneath the color. Deltron 3030 (album) is a hip-hop sci-fi epic with the same playful scope. The Fat of the Land (album) matches the film's late-90s frenetic energy.
Colorful space operas built for spectacle
The Fifth Element is space opera as pop art, loud, candy-colored, and gleefully strange. These films share that appetite for spectacle over realism, filling the screen with alien worlds, wild costumes, and heroes who save the universe with a grin and a one-liner.
Retro-futurist sci-fi manga with wild worlds
The Fifth Element imagines a crowded, vertical future stuffed with invention, the same energy that powers classic sci-fi manga. These comics build dense, retro-futurist worlds of cyborgs, star-trains, and mecha, trading realism for imagination cranked to its limit.
Mind-bending sci-fi games
The Fifth Element runs on a race against a cosmic threat, and these games hand you the puzzle box. Twisting sci-fi at every turn, they drop you into strange facilities and stranger physics, letting you think and shoot your way toward the exit.
Far-future sci-fi adventures on the page
The Fifth Element gathers mystical elements to hold off an ancient evil, a quest these novels chase across their own far futures. Each builds a vivid science fiction world, ruined, rebuilt, or reinvented, and sends young heroes running through it toward survival.
