Day 64: The Fifth Element

Pure evil has come to destroy Earth and Korben Dallas (Bruce Willis) is tasked with helping to save it. He meets the supreme being, Leeloo (Milla Jovovich), who is the fifth element and the only creature that can stop evil. Korben helps to recover the four stones that represent the four elements while battling with some very unhappy aliens and a possible psychopath, Zorg (Gary Oldman). Ultimately love saves the day. And a lot of explosions.

We open in a temple in Egypt in 1914, where there’s an Italian man attempting to discover the meaning behind some symbols on a wall. He’s uncovering too much however and must be stopped so the Mondoshawan, aliens that defend against evil, have to come and remove the element stones before they are found. Pretty sure my favourite bit of the whole film is when this great big hulking robot-alien ambles into the room and the Italian man asks, “Are you… German?” I just laughed so much, it was great.

In films, the people in charge always want to shoot first and ask questions later (it’s even said by one of the military guys) and it always drives me mad. I understand you have things to protect but you can’t just go around attacking and killing things when you don’t know what they are. If nothing else it is just rude. That’s probably why if there is other life out there in the universe it hasn’t shown itself around here, they know they’d be killed on sight. Humans are hopeless. When Leeloo learns about war you know right away how it’s going to go, that she’ll not want to help humanity because all we do is kill everything. But then obviously Korben convinces her otherwise, he says that there are some beautiful things worth saving. Love, namely. He tells her he loves her and so she stops the advancing evil. Love to the rescue! How sappy.

I really wish I lived in the time of proper space travel. Living on a ship and exploring space sounds so brilliant.

“Everything you create is used to destroy.”

8/10