The Fifth Element

In the 23rd century, humanity is being threatened by Evil. A mysterious redheaded girl gets into a taxi being driven by a former commando named Korben. They will both take part in a battle to save the world that will require them to locate the eponymous fifth element. None of this could take place, of course, without spectacular explosions, out-of-this-world hairstyles, and the most famous operatic aria in the history of science fiction. The comic plot is merely a pretext for running through an entire catalog of visual and thematic references to the history of the genre. While working on the artistic conception for the film, some 8,000 illustrations were made—the sets were designed by Jean Giraud and Jean-Claude Mézières, while the cult costumes were designed by none other than Jean-Paul Gaultier, whose post-punk esthetics were a good fit for the hint of nihilism discreetly smuggled into the story. While the crux of the conflict is the rather basic philosophical conception of a battle for life or death, the film has nothing to do with an existential dilemma—after all, the phrase that unites the main characters at the beginning of the film is “big-badda-boom.”