7/25/2023 0 Comments Leeloo fifth element lightningAnd that’s just the introduction.īruce Willis plays Dallas with that dry wit he’s used in every other movie he’s been in. There’s a few cliches, symbols, and a bad omen thrown in for good measure. These guys void the contract and try to reclaim the power of God, like it’s a used car. The second joke is that most of the mysticism and power left behind on Earth is under some sort of rental agreement with a bunch of oversized, goofy aliens. The bearded guy pours it into his pal’s cup and the camera watches closely as he teases drinking it over and over. This is cleverly disguised duality meant to fool us into thinking the water represents God, as in Holy Water, when it is really just poison. A bearded man describes some hieroglyphs carved into a wall, and another holds up a vial of water in deep contemplation of what it all means. The first time comes early on in the movie as some archaeologists try to uncover just what the fifth element is. The cliche names are meant to poke fun at sci-fi, but that’s just a bonus. Dallas thinks that’s what God’s prophet is here to release, in order to destroy the Great Evil. Taken more literally, the characters “think” the fifth element is the power of God “or something”. Maybe that’s why it’s supposed to be funny.Ĭolonel Musgrove: Now, what’s that supposed to be coming out of there? According to Plato, the fifth element is the quintessence, an abstract concept not easily described. It’s not that big a reveal really, since they explain it early on. What is the fifth element? This is the biggest joke of the whole movie. Most of the symbols themselves are from a variety of sources, like the 19th century Freemasons or Catholicism. The movie takes its content even further, by throwing in every symbol you can think of to create some more comedic situations. The futuristic hairstyles, clothes, oversized aliens are meant to be goofy. Most of the movie pokes fun at sci-fi cliches and overdoes a lot of them for comedic effect. It’s not Blade Runner, but it’s not meant to be, even though I hear it compared to Blade Runner all the time. I think this is also why the movie bombed in the USA, because the comedy is really out-there and I myself didn’t find it all that humorous. There are plenty of other examples of humor in this movie, and it uses science symbols, religious metaphors, and astrology to make the jokes more outlandish and funny. Gary Oldman’s hair aside, his over-the-top performance might be one example of this movie trying to find comedy in its context. Most of this movie is setup as a running joke. There is more symbolism in this movie than in 2001: A Space Odyssey and 2010 combined, and they build on one another, like a comedy builds toward a joke, and all of them express the duality inherent in the story. Together with Father Vito Cornelius (Ian Holm) and zany broadcaster Ruby Rhod (Chris Tucker), Dallas must race against time and the wicked industrialist Zorg (Gary Oldman) to save humanity.There are a lot of comedy and sci-fi movies out there, but I can’t think of one that tried to combine those two elements in order to make fun of symbolism. 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. 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.
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