The Fifth Element
Hey, Do You Remember...?
Christopher Schrader
4.8 • 676 Ratings
🗓️ 12 April 2019
⏱️ 110 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Like Mr. Shadow itself, The Fifth Element was something of an anomaly when it hit theaters in 1997 - a $90 million sci-fi spectacular that wasn't based on a pre-existing property.
While that's technically true, there were some French comic book publishers who felt like Luc Besson's film crossed the line between homage and outright theft. We trace the project's origins to determine if there's any merit to those claims, see how well the movie holds up two decades later, and examine the myriad of reasons there was never a sequel.
Topics include: how comics like Valerian and The Incal helped set the template for the look of this (and many other movies), why ditching the ex-military angle for Korben would really help clean up the first act, our initial reactions to Gary Oldman's performance and some confusion over what exactly his endgame here is, the realization that Leeloo really only has one big scene, the "born sexy yesterday trope", and much more!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, do you remember the fifth element? |
| 0:06.6 | Hello and welcome to Hey, do you remember to Hey Do You Remember, a show where we reminisce about a movie or TV series we grew up with, then take off the rose tinted glasses to see how it holds up. |
| 0:31.6 | I'm Chris. |
| 0:32.4 | I'm Donna. |
| 0:33.0 | And I'm Carlos. |
| 0:33.8 | And today we're revisiting The Fifth Element. |
| 0:58.2 | Thank you. Carlos. And today we're revisiting the fifth element. Were you guys aware that this was an extremely divisive movie when it was released? |
| 0:59.3 | Did you know that? |
| 1:00.6 | I had no idea. |
| 1:05.6 | My impression was that for most people around our age, there was a pretty favorable reaction to this. |
| 1:06.7 | It's been requested a bunch. |
| 1:09.4 | A lot of our listeners were really excited when we announced it. |
| 1:11.0 | So I was surprised to learn that not only were a lot of critics pretty harsh at the time, but that to this day, it still has a |
| 1:16.0 | reputation in some circles as one of those so bad, it's good type movies. |
| 1:19.9 | What? |
| 1:20.8 | I know. So looking back on this two decades later, I think what's really surprising about |
| 1:26.6 | the Fifth Element now is that this was |
| 1:28.5 | a 90 million dollar special effects movie that wasn't based on an existing property which |
| 1:34.6 | we'll get into the gray area there but for now let's just say not explicitly based on a preexisting |
| 1:40.0 | property and then the other surprising thing is that there was never an attempt to turn this |
| 1:44.2 | into a larger franchise, that this was a one-and-done scenario. And I'm sure we'd love to think |
| 1:49.9 | that was a decision based on integrity. There are some more compelling reasons. This was never |
... |
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