Middle Eastern Movie? 2

The other movie we watched during Middle Eastern  day was The Fifth Element. The best adjective to use for this movie is, fun. When the film came out in 1997, it was given mixed reviews but made a considerable amount at the box office. For me in my 20’s now, the film is  a great ride and totally awesome! The Fifth Element is a delightful, low investment futuristic action adventure.


Korben Dallas (Bruce Willis) is a cab driver that lives in futuristic America, that looks like a vibrant collision of the Blade Runner and Idiocracy sets. Soon he meets Leeloo (Milla Jovovich), a woman created to be the perfect human by scientists. Together they must find four magic stones that will defend Earth from a destructive attack. A priest (Ian Holm) will help them figure out the location of the stones. Leeloo and Korben will have to go undercover at opera singer Plava Laguna’s concert. However, evil space genius Zorg (Gary Oldman) also wants the stones for himself to create havoc on Earth.

The Fifth Element has only a vague tie to the Middle East, in that this awesome chase scene plays a Middle Eastern song as the futuristic police chase Korben’s taxi. It’s really cool!

This film does connect with Aladdin. Both were made in ‘90’s and both resurfaced if you started college around 2005 to 2008, because we became nostalgic for Disney movies and action films. I have spoken with many of my friends, who went to college in our home state, the Midwest and the East Coast, and each one had experienced resurgence of three film trends: Disney, Boondock Saints (check out my next entry), and The Fifth Element. The last two have attained cult status.

I’m aware that other films have experienced popularity long after they have left theaters and after years have passed. But I want to know the reason that The Fifth Element was chosen. What attributes appeal  to us now  about this ‘90s movie? Of course, we are affected by choosing the ‘90’s as our glory days but there must be more than that.

My guess would be the advancement of special effects. Upon checking out IMDB for 1997 films, there were a lot of cool special effects being introduced in the film industry. Oscar winning movie Titanic used special cameras to capture real footage of the sunken ship. In The Lost World Jurassic Park, sets were constructed around 9 ton model T Rex’s. Movies always have been given quite a lot of money, but these were new and much more epic demands that were possible during the affluent 1990’s decade.

We were already impressed by new technology with the cell phone and Internet up and running, but in the late ‘90’s it began to really enhance  our entertainment experience. The Fifth Element was another way to show off emerging special effects and art direction, especially when they had a colossal budget to work with.

Many of the representations of the future in The Fifth Element are quite silly, such as the hyper sexual clothing for women, the timeless McDonalds, and a simple plot line to save the Earth. As college students, we often did not want to think of the future and could indulge in a hyperbolic representations. Our  concentration was the past and present, because no one wants to become an adult.