The Fifth Element: How Luc Besson Blatantly Rips Off Plato To Give Us This Sci-Fi Classic
Luc Besson's "The Fifth Element" might be the daffiest Hollywood sci-fi flick ever made (at least until Besson made the even daffier "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets" 20 years later). The film had movie-star insurance in Bruce Willis, and the trailers promised a surfeit of futuristic eye candy, but what exactly was this zany-looking movie about?
The film may be visually cluttered (in a mostly good, yet occasionally exhausting way), but its premise is fairly simple. Every 5,000 years, a force of tremendous evil emerges out of space and tries to destroy Earth. Fortunately, an alien race known as the Mondoshawns and a clandestine religious order are in possession of the only weapon that can repel this evil. This weapon consists of four stones which represent the five classical elements of earth, wind, fire, water, and Philip Bailey. Actually, the fifth element is a humanoid named Leelo, and, as embodied by Milla Jovovich, she is a lethal warrior, who, when the time comes, will send the evil packing.
"The Fifth Element" was a passion project for Besson, but when he began writing it at the age of 16, he couldn't crack the story — that is, until he helped his 13-year-old sister out with her homework. Then, suddenly, all became clear.
Besson goes Greek
In a 2017 interview with Nerdist, Besson revealed that "The Fifth Element" was initially conceived as a novel. "It was not a film in my head," he said. "I never thought about making a film of it." But when he established himself as a precociously talented director in his twenties with "Subway" and "The Big Blue," he realized "The Fifth Element" had to be a movie.
The writing of the film as a screenplay proved difficult for Besson. "I was younger, I had less experience, and it took me forever to figure out," he said. His eureka moment arrived when he helped his sister with a class exercise on Plato. According to Besson, this is when he discovered the film's central theme, and hopes to pay the very dead Plato back in the afterlife.
"[Plato] wrote about [the five elements which were thought to comprise all matter], you know the water, the earth, the fire, and the air. And the fifth element is the human being. And I read the thing, and I said 'F**k! That's exactly what I'm missing.' So, I have to apologize because I stole from Plato. When I see him up there [in heaven], you know, later? I will go to him and say, 'Hey man, I'm sorry I stole your book.'"
The fifth element is ... love
Actually, in my reading of the film, the fifth element is love. At the end of the movie, Leelo loses faith in humanity, and is only stirred back to life when Willis kisses her. It's a corny, shopworn device, but "The Fifth Element" is so unabashedly silly that Besson gets away with it. And, really, the director should let himself off the hook, because writers have been stealing from the Greeks wholesale — especially dramatists like Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides — for thousands of years.
As for "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets," moviegoers need to right a godawful wrong, and finally watch the damn thing (it grossed a disappointing $226 million globally on an absurd $223 million budget). I'm not sure the film makes much sense narratively, but it's bursting with visual invention and deserves a much wider audience.