Horror History: THE FIFTH ELEMENT Is Now 24 Years Old
Mike Sprague
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On this day in horror history, writer-director Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element with Bruce Willis, Gary Oldman, and Milla Jovovich opened back in 1997.
Also Read: Here’s Why THE FIFTH ELEMENT PART II Never Happened
Read more below.
Synopsis
In the 23rd century, a New York City cabbie, Korben Dallas (Bruce Willis), finds the fate of the world in his hands when Leeloo (Milla Jovovich) falls into his cab. As the embodiment of the fifth element, Leeloo needs to combine with the other four to keep the approaching Great Evil from destroying the world. Together with Father Vito Cornelius (Ian Holm) and zany Ruby Rhod (Chris Tucker), Dallas must race against time and the wicked industrialist Zorg (Gary Oldman) to save humanity.
Rated PG-13 for intense sci-fi violence, some sexuality and brief nudity. Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element sports a 71% approval rating over on Rotten Tomatoes. The Critics Consensus: Visually inventive and gleefully over the top. Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element is a fantastic piece of pop sci-fi that never takes itself too seriously.
The film debuted at number one in the US, earning $17M on its opening weekend. It went on to become a box-office success, grossing over $263M, almost three times its budget of $90M. The Fifth Element was the ninth-highest-grossing film of the year worldwide. It went on to become the highest-grossing French film at the foreign box office. A record held for 16 years until the release of The Intouchables in 2011.
Co-writer, Robert Kamen recently revealed why a sequel never happened. The first film underperformed. Kamen says: “[The script] was actually 180 pages, and then [Besson] added a second part to it, which made no sense either. We were going to do it as a sequel, but it made no sense. And The Fifth Element wasn’t big enough here. It was huge in the rest of the world, and it’s a classic, but it only did $75 million here or $80 million. It was way ahead of its time. So we never did the sequel, and the sequel would have been taking the other 180-page thing [Besson] had.”
Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element with Bruce Willis, Gary Oldman, and Milla Jovovich
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