While Luc Besson has had a long career as a director and producer, going all the way back to 1985’s Subway (starring a young Christopher Lambert), for many of us, his crowning achievement remains The Fifth Element. A respectable hit when it was released in the spring of 1997, its reputation has grown considerably in the years since its release, with it widely regarded as a classic. In it, Bruce Willis plays Korben Dallas, a futurist NYC cabbie, who crosses paths with Milla Jovovich’s Leeloo, the titular Fifth Element, and becomes embroiled in a quest to save the galaxy, with him opposed by Gary Oldman’s Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg.
While packed with show-stopping sequences, the movie is most famous for the extended opera house sequence. In it, Dallas, undercover for the government, attends an opera performance by Diva Plavalaguna, who performs the now iconic “Diva Dance”, with music by Eric Serra. This musical sequence turns into a giant running gun battle, which includes the largest indoor explosion ever film at the time of its release. Yet, some also argue that it’s marred by too much comic relief from Chris Tucker’s Ruby Rod.
In this video, our host Kier Gomes deconstructs the entire sequence, digging into how it was made, how the film overcame an initially mixed reaction to become a classic, and where it stands in the pantheon of great science fiction.
Do you remember The Fifth Element? Let us know in the comments!
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