#Watch the fifth element crackle movie#
#Watch the fifth element crackle full#

There are a lot of movies, especially movies based on them, that people say “are just like a video game.” Generally that’s considered an insult, it is just a shorthand for constant ludicrous action with little plot. The nearest thing to it in form are the vast and open sandboxes of computer role playing games. What it is, is a glorious fantasy, a world that would be a delight to explore for all its charms and terrors. It’s gritty and violent, referencing the modern culture of business, celebrity, and politics, but is anything but a realistic projection of today into the future. It has heroes, breathtaking sights and architecture, wondrous creatures (who doesn’t want one of those genetically engineered miniature elephants?), but is hardly utopian either. It has police state brutality, familiar homages to Blade Runner, Brazil, 1984, but it isn’t a dystopia per se. The world itself is a terrifically unique creation, not necessarily in all the details, which borrow heavily from the gamut of science fiction, but in the overall execution.

On occasion the film cuts back and forth between groups so that the effect is one large conversation that only the audience hears.ĭirector Luc Besson creates a vivid and rich world that is at once believable and patently absurd. There’s the beautiful fight scene interspersed with the Diva’s solo, the music both heard by some characters and offering a soundtrack to others.

#Watch the fifth element crackle full#

The direction of the film is fantastic, full of little touches that make the film crackle. Every time I go through airport security, I have to restrain myself from holding up my ID and telling them “Leeloo Dallas, multipass.” The music too is otherworldly, like they took the basic germ of John Williams’ Star Wars scores and shot it up with acid. And the humor! The film remains one of the most quotable films ever made. These characters succeed because they both fit into clear archetypes and yet exist with so much individual color and texture that they feel more like the individuals the archetypes are based upon than characters based upon the archetypes. Even Luke Perry makes an appearance as a random wannabe Indiana Jones assistant during the film’s introduction.

Ian Holm channels a strange combination of robed Obi-Wan and stuttering hobbit. Destruction, he insists, is every bit as important as creation. Gary Oldman’s Zorg is one of the most ludicrously over the top and entertaining villains in science fiction, that particular sort of antagonist in which Alan Rickman used to specialize, the kind who doesn’t just sell the world out but relishes every nuance of his malice. Chris Tucker tags along, being so annoying that you start looking for a sold out Jackie Chan. The film features Bruce Willis when he still had most of his hair and Milla Jovovich before she exclusively starred in video game adaptations for her husband. There are four elements (not five!) that really make the film stand on its own even thirteen years and six generations of special effects later: the characters, the humor, the music, and the stunning visuals. It moves from set piece to set piece with frantic action, quotable humor, and a shamelessly absurd plot.

#Watch the fifth element crackle movie#

The Fifth Element is the greatest video game movie ever made.