April 30, 2023 • 57 mins
Attention Passengers: On this episode of Strangers on a Podcast The Strangers tell a tale of one of the worst cruises in history. No it's not the Titanic. Gary Oldman, Bruce Willis, Milla Jovovich, Ian Holm, and Chris Tucker play out the fever dream of a high school age Luc Besson in a movie inspired by the artists behind Heavy Metal. Join us, won't you?
-As mentioned in this episode-
DIVA DANCE - Dimash Kudaibergen
Dimash doing 2 versions of Diva Dance + Original version
The Fifth Element (Ultimate Edition 2 disc DVD)
The Fifth Element (Steel Book 4k+Blu-ray+Digital)
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Attention passengers, today on Strangers on a Podcast, we have a 1997 film that puts Bruce Willis on the worst cruise in history.
(00:08):
It contains a floating Thai restaurant, a space ball going ludicrous speed, and a perilous auto wash.
Join us, won't you?
[Music]
(00:34):
Hello and welcome to the movie car here at Strangers on a Podcast.
I'm the conductor and with me is...
i'm Grim Weed.
welcome Grim Weed.
We're called Strangers on a Podcast because we're two guys who don't know each other and we're talking about movies to see how they bring people together.
Are we gonna drive each other nuts? Are we gonna curse and scream one another out? Are we gonna stay on topic?
(00:55):
We'll see.
today we are talking about the one and only The Fifth Element.
what is there to say about The Fifth Element that hasn't been said already? well, probably not much.
luc besson worked on Fifth Element as a kid making drawings and story notes in class while in high school.
he had a lonely childhood and he invented this world to escape to that was the world of the fifth element with Korben Dallas
(01:17):
Korben Dallas is a cab driver because his
Luc Besson's father worked as a second job as a cab driver to pay for Luc's art school
Therefore Luc Besson always puts a cab driver in his movie supposedly to honor his father's sacrifice
I believe he was inspired by the works of Mobius and another writer another comic book cartoonist named Messier's Jean-Claude
(01:38):
- Yeah, and I'm trying to remember Mobius.
- Jean-Paul Girard.
- Yes, the creators of Heavy Metal.
- Indeed, or what's the French term for Heavy Metal?
- I don't know, that's why I went with Heavy Metal.
- Yeah, but the French name is so cool too.
- Yeah, it's cool, but I'm not even gonna try
and pronounce French.
- Metal, hello.
(02:00):
Now after a few of any successes under Luc Besson's credit
with a few low budget pictures in the 90s,
like The Professional and La Femme Nikita.
- Well, The Professional is what got him
the ability to do this.
- Exactly.
Someone gave him the cash to turn his teenage fever dream
into a big budget movie and he knocked it out of the park.
(02:21):
Now he got help turning his teenage ideas into a script
by Robert Mark Kammen, who was most famous
for having written Taps and The Karate Kid by that point,
but has gone to do the Taken franchise
and the Transporter movies.
And together they turn in a really tight script
that doesn't have a boring scene in the whole movie.
It's pure spectacle, action, and laughs.
(02:43):
And Larry Cohen could have written this thing.
It's that tight.
Longtime Besson collaborator Thierry Apregas
shot the movie with an over-the-top color palette
that makes the whole movie a visual feast.
A lot of movies from this time period
have suffered from their VFX aging horribly,
but The Fifth Element has aged like wine
and there's not a bad moment in the whole movie.
- The only real bad effects scene
(03:04):
off the top of my head is when they did the digital dive.
- The digital dive.
- Yes.
- when LeeLoo falls off the building?
- yeah, when LeeLoo, when she does the initial jump,
the first actions of the jump are her,
and then the jump itself is a stunt double,
(03:25):
and then the fall is digital.
- Well, it still looked better than RoboCop.
Eric Sarah handles the music for The Fifth E lement,
It's like a jungle beat stomp meets John Williams roller coaster that never lets you forget you're seeing a purely gonzo sci-fi action fever dream
Eric Sarah really knocked it out the park of this movie
he if you if you ever heard the music of Fifth Element, it's it's like this (imitates music)
(03:46):
and it's like some sort of
Insane drum beat going on with trash cans and you don't know where it's coming from it. It's it's it's it's it's
It's really like nothing else. I I can't think of another movie that sounds even remotely like it anywhere
Except maybe the Valerian of a Thousand Planets
(04:08):
but I can't really remember the movie from the music from that movie particularly well because I didn't
enjoy that movie as i'll mention later and another great name that you have to talk about when you talk about Fifth Element is
Jean-Paul Gaultier who is a French fashion designer famous for his avant-garde theatrical sensibility
He designed all the costumes and really helped create this bizarre future where we get to see in the film
(04:29):
from the weird as fuck street outfits we see Korben and assorted thugs wearing to the uber sexy uniforms the air stewards to the hot
Couture of the upper crowd in the diva scene
Really the only outfits that he says were really his were
Ruby Rhods i
Everything else was because I just really personally checked at 500 extras on set supposedly
(04:54):
No, what I mean is the costuming was
done based on what Luc's vision was.
The only costumes that were really his
as far as his designs, things that's like,
this is me, were for Ruby Rhod's outfits.
- Well, Gautier had done other movies
like The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover,
(05:15):
being the most famous perhaps,
but none of them have the same level
of sheer world building he does in this movie
with costume alone, which apparently
is not a true thing that I'm saying.
But I do think the movie's costumes
are a big part of its visual language
I'm no means a fashion follower or expert or anything like that. I dress like drab crap
I think John Paul Gautier deserved a freaking Oscar for this but oh yeah, he did an amazing job
(05:36):
i think a Fifth Element was kind of like bram stoker's dracula a little bit where
One of the guiding guiding principles of Bram Stoker Dracula was that the costumes will be the sets
in a sense and while there were very big detailed sets on The Fifth Element
And I think the costumes were big splashes of color and vibrancy that really helped define
(06:01):
the character of the world that we get to see in this movie.
Now the movie tells the simple story of a down on his luck ex-special ops cab driver
in the future who has the perfect being fall into his cab and winds up saving the world
with her from a giant space ball of pure evil that's headed toward earth.
Literally fall into his cab.
And it's a space ball.
So we were worried about space balls coming at us before,
(06:24):
'cause of Mel Brooks, but now we see what one--
- At ludicrous speed.
- At ludicrous speed, yes.
Were so fast that the warships
can't even barely keep up with it.
Along the way, we get to meet a ton of wacky characters
acting completely insane.
We get 90210 heartthrob Luke Perry
as an archeologist assistant,
trip hop auteur tricky as Zorg's right arm,
Blade Runner's Breon James as a salty old space colonel,
(06:47):
Baron Munchausen, John Neville
an uptight warship admiral. Pro wrestler Zeus is the president of earth. Maïwenn Le Besco
is the singing alien goddess. ian holm is Vito cornelius the always in a hurry expositor
supreme. Gary Oldman as evil weapons tycoon zorg. who is the main villian of the piece.
bruce willis as the cab drive and the stealth badass korben dallas and Milla jovovich in the
(07:09):
impossible role of LeeLoo, the perfect being.
Milica Jovovich
She is Ukrainian.
Milica, is that it?
Milica Jovovich
it's Milla for short.
i will always call her Milla.
the script for Fifth Element is perfect.
The music is amazing.
The costumes are literally out of this world.
And the cast fires on all cylinders at every point in the movie.
(07:31):
This is a movie that you can start watching at any point during and it plays perfectly.
i defy you to remain depressed while watching The Fifth Element.
I want this movie included in a time capsule sent into space.
The only thing as far as the movie goes that I will say is a negative, and I don't mean
it by it's my negative, it's the negative of the guy in charge of the visual effects,
(07:54):
was the scene where they were reconstructing her body in the way that the body was put
together and everything.
He was not happy with that effect.
I think it kind of had a jeweled quality to it where it looked like the body coming together
was maybe made out of...
A little cartoony.
I'm sorry?
a little cartoony cartoony schmartoony
she was the perfect being and they were making her out of a hand that was all that was left over
(08:19):
after the explosion and it's you know it's i remember it looking like uh the body looked vaguely
metallic before the skin was grown over it or anything i i can watch that a hundred times to
be like oh it looks fine it looks just fine and uh spoiler alert of course at the beginning of the
movie LeeLoo full name and this is going to be hard for me so everybody just take a moment i'm
(08:40):
I'm gonna try to pronounce her full name.
I can pronounce French things,
but this is a made up language.
So here we go.
LeeLoominaï lekatariba-lamina-tchaï, ekbat de sebat
- Yeah, that sounds about right.
- Okay, you wanna try it?
- No, I actually was going to until you did that
and you got it close enough to where that works for me.
(09:00):
Yeah, and when you said it was made up language,
it literally was a made up language.
It wasn't something that was just kind of some gibberish
that was here, say this.
It was an actual language that was developed that he told her,
you need to know this before you even show up to set.
They would sit around and hold conversations in that language.
(09:23):
but anyway, LeeLoo, full name, not saying it again.
She's kind of dead at the beginning.
now the Mondoshawans, who are these amazingly designed,
kind of like a race of Daleks shaped like walking brass colored circles instead of
upside down trash cans.
There's one of them left.
There is one of them left.
They destroyed all but one.
- Bastards.
- Yeah, when they were getting ready to destroy it,
(09:45):
they, where everything was stored,
the ones that owned all of that,
they contacted the guys that made them
and said, "We're gonna destroy them all.
"We're going to record it.
So it's all gonna be documented on tape
saying these were all destroyed."
And because of all the time and effort
that they put into making these,
(10:06):
The guy's like, you, you gotta say you can't destroy these.
We have to save them. And they're like, no, no,
we're destroying them. We cannot save them. There's no way.
So can we just save one? And he said, it's your property.
I won't sell it. It's yours, but I just, I have to have one of them.
I put too much into this.
(10:27):
So there's one still in existence and all the rest have been destroyed.
Make more with CG if they ever made another one of these movies.
I guess they could, but we've seen how well that works in other movies.
Yes, unfortunately.
Yeah.
Anyway, they're kind of like Daleks in that they're a mechanical race, but they're like
circles instead of upside down cylinders and such.
And they just look amazing.
(10:49):
That's going to get a lot of people mad at you.
I am?
Yes.
Because Daleks aren't a mechanical race.
The Mondoshawans are not a mechanical race?
No, the Daleks aren't.
Oh, the Daleks have a juicy center.
There is a crea- basically there are small octopus-like looking creature that's in a battle tank.
Who would win in a fight between the Mondoshawans and the Daleks?
(11:09):
Mandos would be dead in an instant.
Probably, yeah, they're a very peaceful race.
they got mangled by a Mangalores.
By the way, that was who I was going to bring up next.
the Mangalores who are also amazingly designed.
They're space orcs.
Pre-Lord of the Rings film trilogy space orcs.
So they don't look as nasty as later orcs because the orcs in the Lord of the Rings movies
were made to look just nasty.
(11:31):
Like, they're like,
did that guy cut up his face or something?
Is that what his nose looked like?
Or did they cut it up forever, something like that?
- Well, they were supposed to come from humans though,
weren't they?
- Orcs? - Yeah.
- No, they came from elves once.
- Okay, but elves still had the human look.
They just had different ears.
(11:51):
- By Morgoth.
- They should still have a humanoid look to them.
- No, they were elves that were kept in a,
kept in a dark cave and forced to breed and...
Yeah, but since that's where they came from, they would still have a humanoid look
rather than being like the Mangalores that didn't really have a human look to them.
(12:11):
Well, that's why I said they're space orcs, not orcs. Like, they're space orcs in the tradition
of the Gamorrean guards from Return of the Jedi. They are space orcs.
No, I wasn't trying to correct you. I was just trying to
clarify that one looks a little bit more human,
the other doesn't for anybody that hasn't seen this.
- So the Lord of the Rings orcs look a little more human.
(12:32):
- Yes.
- Well, they definitely look a little more rugged
and lived in.
- Yeah.
- They look like they need to take care of their armor better.
- Yeah.
i like how the look for the Mangalores came about, too.
- how did they look for the Mangalores coming down?
- They were trying,
there was one of the hardest ones, apparently,
to try and really nail a look down,
and they had all these ideas
and couldn't come up with anything.
(12:53):
And one of the artists just kind of had sketched out something
and over her own idea and just put it up there.
And she put it up on the board, not really thinking too much of it.
And Luc came by and saw it and said that that's our mangalore.
All it takes is the one concept artist to nail it.
And that's it. The whole the whole race is put together.
You have a great set of antagonists with the mangalores.
(13:16):
And you have Mr. Shadow, who well, he's called Mr.
Shadow when he makes a phone call, but he's the giant flaming ball
of evil that just appears out of nowhere in the middle of a deep space and starts flying
towards Earth at a million miles an hour. Mr. Shadow as a as an entity is not really
that scary visually. He's basically just a giant flaming ball like a until he shoots
(13:40):
flaming skull balls at you. Yeah, and that's when he makes an impression. They they will
or makes you start bleeding from the head.
- There's an armada of good guys there
or assumedly good guys, it's an armada of warships
that are arranged around Mr. Shadow or the giant ball--
(14:01):
- That mysteriously look, well not mysteriously,
that conspicuously look a lot like Star Destroyers.
- A little, just a little.
If we wanted to get into the pedigree of Star Wars
versus The Fifth Element, there's actually
somewhat a little bit of incest going on there.
If you really wanted to dig into it.
- Well, there is in Star Wars too.
(14:23):
- I meant incest metaphorically, not literally.
When the giant space ball shows up,
and I'm gonna call it the space ball gladly because--
- That's what it is.
- That's what it is.
And like I said, space balls are bad, bad, bad guys.
- A giant evil space ball.
- Mm-hmm.
It shows up, it's, oh, it also changes shape, doesn't it?
(14:44):
Like at one point it just--
It's bigger. All the fires go out on it and it like covers itself up in a rock.
Yeah, it doesn't really change shape so much.
It grows.
The surface solidifies to anticipate attack.
Yeah, it grows whenever they shoot at it.
Baron Munchausen is sitting there at a command chair and he's like,
(15:05):
I'll take care of this. -Evil.
begets evil. -In no time at all.
And he shoots everything that worship has at it,
and it just makes the thing stronger.
Exactly and the and Ian Holm is sitting there with the president when this is happening
He's trying to advise the president about what is the wisest course of action. He says evil begets evil
(15:26):
Mr. President the president tells
Vito cornelius he says you have 20 seconds to tell me what's going on and in holm speaks for exactly
20 seconds in that scene
That's how either that's how good the writer is or that's how good Ian Holm is he just timed it perfectly to speak for exactly
20 seconds and Ian Holm is a great actor who is sadly no longer with us
(15:48):
Genre fans may remember him from... -This is a second movie that he's done with a character named Dallas
What was the other one? -Alien
Of course. - I'm shocked I thought
That's why I I jumped in like that because I could have sworn you were gonna say you might remember him from alien
I wanted to jump in before you could do that. I
(16:11):
No, I was going to say from hell. You may remember him from from hell
Yeah, and of course you may remember him as Ash the science officer on the Nostromo in the film Alien with Sigourney Weaver and Tom
Skerritt as who who did Tom Skerritt play in that movie? -I believe the name was Dallas
Yes, indeed. His name was Dallas and I have completely failed as a podcaster as a horror podcaster
(16:37):
I have just I'm shocked you didn't you didn't know that one jump right in
on that now. Oh my head is spinning with failure. And this was an interesting, I can't remember
how many movies he had done before this. this was bruce willis's 30th. this was Milla's fifth.
She had not been in many movies prior to this. Chris Tucker, I think that was his fifth as
(17:01):
well. He made a splash in Friday prior to this. Yes. But this was one of those movies
just like Strangers on a Train was a movie where you count the doubles, this is a movie
where you count the fives. There are a lot of fives in this movie.
and speaking of Korben Dallas, he is a great protagonist because he fits the movie perfectly,
(17:22):
and he's as much in the dark about what's going on as the audience, and he needs things
explained to him the same way we do. Rather than being the subject of exposition, like
perhaps Hellboy in the first Ron pearlman Hellboy movie, Korben Dallas is the recipient.
He learns what we learn and the story goes forward.
he's interested in LeeLoo and her purpose and so are we.
Which isn't to say the movie is one long exposition dump after another because it's not.
(17:45):
The plot is astoundingly simple.
Bruce Willis and an orange haired supermodel have to stop the evil using four magic stones.
They go on an adventure to retrieve the stones.
Stuff happens and it's as fun at two hours and change as you're likely to have watching
a movie.
And it's not just an orange, it's Mandarin orange.
Her hair?
Yes.
They were trying to find the right shade of orange and Luc finally says Mandarin and
(18:10):
they couldn't figure out what it was and it's like this Mandarin they finally found that
Mandarin orange is the color.
Milla jovovich's hair fell out unfortunately during the production and they had to get
a wig because they had to keep dyeing her hair orange so often.
Well, they weren't touching her roots up because they if you looked at her hair, it was only
(18:31):
orange to a certain point and then it was blonde.
So when they touch up the roots, they were overlapping the bleach and not touching it
up right and it burned it and killed her hair.
And her hair started falling out.
Burned it, killed her hair and they had to put her in a wig.
but as luck would have it, Milla jovovich looks amazing with short hair too.
So she probably didn't lose a step.
(18:52):
I think she was regrowing her hair and she rocked a pompadour following the release of
a Fifth Element and appeared on many a magazine cover having this amazing looking pompadour
where she was growing her hair back out and that was like a medium style for her.
now one of the things that stands out to me most about Fifth Element that i've talked
about whenever i talk about the movie is jean-baptiste emmanuel zorg and who plays him Grim Weed?
(19:17):
Gary Oldman.
Gary Oldman.
amazing Gary Oldman.
amazing Gary Oldman and one of the things i love about fifth element is that you have
the antagonist Zorg, who...
- Never once meets your hero.
- Never once meets your heroes, thank you.
That's exactly what I was going for.
- They are only in the same shot once in the entire movie
(19:39):
and they're still not on screen together.
- No, they're not.
The only time, no, that's the thing.
They never really have much interaction.
the heroes wind up being LeeLoo, korben, cornelius,
later on Ruby Rhod and then there's Cornelius'
little helper guy whose name I completely forget. -David. -David?
I believe so. If I remember right, that's the name he reads off of the multi pass
(20:03):
when he goes to the airport and says I sent him to check in or to get my boarding
pass.
yeah. they never have any real direct interaction with Zorg. now Zorg is pulling
the strings and trying to get the stones.
Cornelius does.
What?
Cornelius has direct interaction with him.
Exactly. That's right. I was getting to that.
- Oh, I thought you named everybody
(20:24):
and said they never had.
So, I'm sorry, I'm jumping ahead.
- That was a mis- that was a typo.
Mangalores, he wants the Mangalores to retrieve them,
but we never get any kind of scene where Zorg is about
to pull off his master plan and the plucky good guys win.
he fires Korben Dallas as a part of a mass layoff
early in the movie.
he has a meeting with Cornelius about a third of the way
through the movie, but neither of them really gets anything
(20:46):
out of it, except Zorg almost chokes on a cherry pit
and Cornelius saves him.
- Imagine how much different this movie would have been
if he would have let him choke.
- yeah, but Cornelius is a nice guy.
- Oh yeah.
I'm not saying he should have let him choke.
I'm just saying, imagine what if.
- It would have been a lot more boring
because Zorg was such a fun character to watch in the movie.
(21:06):
i think Zorg added a really interesting side plot
to the movie, as I will go on to say.
you see, other than that, meaning Zorg is basically operating
at cross purposes to korben and LeeLoo,
but they never come into any grand confrontation.
it's like Zorg, for all his machinations,
is just a pawn in the game of good versus evil
and he isn't aware when he gets sacrificed.
(21:27):
The story moves on without him
and the good guys don't have to kill him.
He dies as a result of his own plans going wrong.
- the only ones he interacts with are cornelius and LeeLoo.
- does he ever interact with LeeLoo?
- Well, he tries to shoot her.
- Oh, he does try to shoot her, yes.
- He comes in after her fight and says,
"Thanks for doing all the hard work for me,"
and then tries to kill her.
- But she doesn't get it.
(21:48):
I think she, doesn't he wound her or something?
I think she has to hide in this ceiling.
He was using one of his amazing space guns
that he was paying the manglers with.
- Or not paying them with, however you wanna look at it.
- Yeah, no stones, no crates.
Four stones, four crates.
Zero stones, zero crates.
(22:09):
- Exactly.
That was a cool gun though.
I mean, just the replay button.
- Yeah, I defy Marvel to come up with,
Marvel's Iron Man to come up with that much arsenal
in one little package.
- Well, Iron Man would have to,
it would be a targeting thing and lock on
and do a lot of other things.
This was just one little, or not little,
(22:32):
but it was one gun that had everything.
You didn't have to have special targeting.
You shoot it and then say replay and everything goes there.
Well, I guess don't say replay, you activate replay,
but yeah, then every shot goes where that first one went.
- Mm-hmm, which, well, it seems like a waste of bullets
a good shot, but I don't think the Mangalores were.
(22:53):
- It didn't seem to be.
They didn't hit much.
- No, they were good at taking hostages
and they loved to negotiate.
That's one of the things I always laugh at
whenever the Mangalores get into a catch-22 situation
where they're like, "We have a hostage
"will someone, send someone to negotiate."
(23:14):
It's like, I think there's two or three times
when they try to negotiate throughout the movie.
- At least twice.
- They say they're not merchants
and then semi-negotiate to get a crate of weapons.
And then they try to negotiate the hostage
and that doesn't end well.
(23:34):
- No, it does not.
- I don't remember any other negotiations though.
- Korben Dallas was much better at negotiating
than any of the Mangalores.
- Yes, by far.
He had a very unique negotiation, tactic.
- Shoot the leader, basically.
- Yeah.
leader, Mangalore's won't fight without leader. Anyway, back to
the story. i think there's a moral to Zorg story that base
human evil is choked by its own ego. He he's he claims to be
(23:58):
serving chaos when he doesn't really know the intentions of
the true master that he's serving Mr. Shadow is a being of
pure destruction, and there's not going to be any chaos to
redeem. I think the apocalypse that's coming due to Mr. Shadow's
impact on Earth, which Mr. Mr. Shadow is basically like Sephiroth's
Meteor attack come to life and he's coming for the planet earth and it's gonna destroy the whole thing
(24:20):
yeah, there will be no more life anywhere ever and
Zorg is just worried about his payment and
The cost is gonna go up because it's harder to get the stones than he thought. I think mr. Shadows like
[The Conductor immitates Mr. Shadow voice] Money is no object. -Talk about hell to edit that is gonna be a pain
(24:45):
What was wrong with that?
Just trying to hear it is gonna be hard.
Well, I think he said money is no object.
Yeah.
Which makes me wonder, does Mr. Shadow have a bank account somewhere?
I think it's more you're not gonna be alive, so I don't have to worry about paying ya.
That makes sense too, but I, I, but it's, it's not unheard of for otherworldly beings in fantasy stories to have holdings in the mortal plane.
(25:10):
like maybe a townhouse in New York where they can get away from being an extra dimensional being.
Maybe like Lucifer on the show Lucifer, he comes to Earth and it just so happens of course he's a
billionaire who can do whatever he wants because he's as shocking as it may seem he's invested over the years.
(25:32):
Well, yeah, but there's still something there called life, and the Space Ball is going to
eradicate all life.
So, therefore, it probably hasn't made a visit to check up on a stock market, a stock market.
Yeah, I'd say there's probably not a whole lot of investment portfolio action going.
(25:53):
Probably not.
I'm leaning more towards, you're going to be dead, so I don't have to worry about paying
you anyway.
Probably.
which makes Zorg a bit of a sucker.
Just a bit.
zorg is this oddball character played with great charisma by Gary Oldman, and while he's
on screen, as weird as it is, you kinda root for him.
We as the audience know he's an agent of the giant ball of evil moving through space,
(26:15):
and he gets to give this little spiel about chaos vs order and all that.
But when he's on screen, he almost feels sorry for him because nothing ever goes his
way.
Even though he's a schmuck who kills his own henchmen who fails at the task, and sucks
seeing Tricky blown up.
Gary Oldman just imbues the guy with so much oddball charisma that even as he operates
a t cross purposes as the heroes, you love to watch him.
Okay, I'm with you on that.
(26:37):
I'm with you that love to watch him, but I'm not quite with you on the root for him.
Yeah, that was a bit of an overstatement.
you just want to see more of Zorg.
He is a very interesting character and he's one that you kind of want to backstory for.
Yeah, you do.
Not so much so you can understand him,
just because you look at him and listen to him
(27:00):
and you just have to wonder what brought him to this point.
Just like the limp and whatever that weird plastic thing
was on his head.
Was that just a style choice?
Was that fashion or was that function?
- I believe it was style choice, yes.
Or it could have been some sort of brace
(27:20):
he had to wear to keep his brain inside of skull.
- It's hard to say because it wasn't just
the side of his head, it kind of wrapped around the back and there was a lot of things that
were about him that made you think, like the metallic clang with his limp.
I mean, what-
Yeah, he had that.
It was like he had a club foot.
Yeah.
And he had to wear a special boot.
But he's one that I think he could have an interesting backstory.
(27:45):
not only that, but he just got that great name, Jean-Baptiste Emmanuel Zorg.
I mean-
this nice fancy beautiful sounding name finished with Zorg because Zorg is the
ultimate sci-fi bad guy name it just is and you do have in in the history of
villains you do have a lot of Z's and K's you do and V's yes anyway anyway
(28:08):
part of what makes up zorg's charm has to do with the fact that Gary Oldman is
famous for inventing a unique voice for all his characters maybe not all but he
works hard at coming up with different voice and accent and sort of personal
intonations for every character he plays. I think he basically invented the Gotham City
accent that he used as Commissioner Gordon in the Nolan Batman trilogy. For the Fifth
(28:30):
Element he decided to give Zorg a goofy sort of west virginian accent. so on the one hand
he had this guy who's shamelessly evil, this out and out card carrying villain, this Gonzo
character, but he talks like he's Jodie Foster's cousin from Silence of the Lambs. And he's
got this sedate and rather mild country general store owner voice that I guess was meant to
(28:50):
shows Zorg's background or something.
I mean, somehow West Virginian country folks
are the new tycoons in the 23rd century.
In our time, the villains always have British accents.
In the future, though, it's West Virginians.
- No, the villains had, as far as that time,
the villains still had German accents.
(29:10):
The intelligent ones were the British accents.
- In our time?
- No, in the time that that movie was made.
- Oh, okay.
the intelligent, the more upper crust smart,
intelligent figures had the British accents,
the villains all had Germans.
(29:31):
And then as-- - Are you thinking of Die Hard?
Is this a prime example of this?
- It is a perfect example of this.
But then as things changed and everything else
started to change a little with the world,
it went somewhat away from Germans
and more into Middle East.
(29:51):
And the villains started becoming more Middle Eastern.
- Yes, thank you to James Cameron and True Lies
and also World Events that made Middle Eastern people
an easy target for Hollywood boogeymen.
- Yeah, well the same thing happened with the Germans.
I mean, that's kind of,
that's what kicked them off is the big bad.
- Yes.
- We had Russians for a while, we got German,
(30:12):
well, we've still got Russian,
but Russian, German, Middle East,
It's all based on who is the big bad of the era
at the time that this is being made.
- I think when Batman debuted as a serial
on movie screens in the 30s, or no, it was the 40s,
I'm sorry, he mainly fought Japanese saboteurs
(30:35):
to help the war effort.
- Yeah, and Superman fought Nazis.
- Superman fought Nazis, the Spectre fought Nazis.
Any superhero worth his salt back in the day
fought Nazis and killed him like nobody's business.
- Wolverine, Captain America.
- Captain America, the Spectre, I believe.
- Indiana Jones.
- Now another fun character or annoying character,
(30:57):
depending on how blatantly macho you are,
is who am I talking about here, Grim?
- Fun character, blatantly macho.
- No, who is absolutely annoying
if you happen to be blatantly macho?
- Ruby Rhodd.
- Exactly.
- And especially the first time you see him
when he's got a pool noodle on his head.
Is that a, yeah, that's basically what it looks like
is a pure noodle.
(31:19):
- It's his hair.
- Ruby is a kind of podcast radio host shock jock
interviewed with the stars kind of guy
that korben and leeloo run into on Fhloston Paradise.
- Very over the top.
- When they go to retrieve the stones, sorry.
- Very over the top.
- Very over the top.
He's kind of like, in fact, I can't think of a modern
equivalent as to what Ruby Rhod is.
- I would say take Howard Stern when he was at his
(31:42):
most shocking, like when he was constantly getting fired because he was pushing limits.
Take that and mix it with the Elvis sexuality, just that he enters the room and all women
swoon.
And that does happen several times in the film.
He is on a plane to Fhloston Par-- well, not a plane, it's a space shuttle that is
(32:07):
taking everybody to Fhloston Paradise after they win a contest, which is rigged in a day
deus ex machina kind of plot point.
- Yeah, basically the military need him to go
and retrieve the stones from Fhloston Paradise
from a singer. - Diva Plavalaguna
on Fhloston Paradise.
- And in order to get him there on time,
they rig a contest, so he will win this nice trip
(32:29):
for 10 days.
That should be an easy mission,
and turns out to be anything but.
- and he takes LeeLoo along with him.
Actually, I think, how did it go?
first, Vito cornelius shows up and steals his tickets
from Korben Dallas by busting his apartment.
- Well first the military shows up
and tells him what happened.
(32:50):
That they rigged the contest.
- First the military shows up and tells him,
yes, you've won the contest.
then Vito cornelius shows up and steals the tickets from him.
he says, we have to go to fhloston paradise with LeeLoo.
- Yeah, and this is after he hid three large people
in a refrigerator and then--
- One of whom was Brian James.
and then Cornelius and LeeLoo show up.
(33:12):
And then the cops show up to raid the place
looking for Korben Dallas,
and he hides LeeLoo in the shower,
which has an auto wash,
and Cornelius in the bed,
which makes itself,
and I seriously want one.
- Yeah, that would be nice.
Of course, it's also a twin bed that folds into the wall.
everything in Korben Dallas' apartment
(33:32):
is modular and automatic.
- Which is cool, I mean, auto wash, man.
It's cool, but it's also like the size of a hallway.
- Well, yeah, but when it's just you,
what else do you need?
I mean, he's got his refrigerator in there.
He's got a bed.
- Korben Dallas was a micro house.
- He's got a Thai restaurant that floats to his window.
- Yeah.
A beautiful Thai restaurant, by the way,
(33:54):
that looks like a floating boat.
I think it was a blimp.
- It was kind of like an old junk.
- Yeah, it was like an old Chinese
future floating junk hovercraft.
And by the way, that was probably a Blade Runner reference
and he's eating Thai food in the future.
- Yeah, I just remember he forgot to feed the cat,
so he decides to make it up by ordering Thai food.
(34:16):
- and speaking of when they go to Fhloston Paradise
to retrieve the stones,
I never thought of it before until I saw it recently,
but it's a good thing the diva got shot
so they get the stones out of her.
- Yeah, I wondered how she was gonna give the stones up
if that hadn't happened.
- I mean, I don't know, is she going to expel them
or cough them up for LeeLoo after the concert,
but her getting shot kind of made it easy
(34:37):
for Korben to stick his hand in there
and fish around and pull the stones out.
- How did they get in there?
- I would assume she can--
- Did she just swallow them?
Were they surgically implanted?
- It would make sense for them to be surgically implanted,
but I don't know how.
- You would think being a singer with that kind of voice,
(34:57):
you wouldn't want to try and swallow them.
- No, probably not.
It's possible that her body was amorphous
and that her body had a different kind of consistency
than a human flesh bag,
so that maybe if she just pressed the stones hard
to her abdomen, she could absorb them.
- When he stuck his hand in her stomach,
(35:19):
let's be clear, he put his hand in her stomach.
- Her stomach, people.
- Yes, so when he shoved his hand in her,
she did same kind of hollow.
It wasn't like you would expect there to be
a lot of guts or whatever, it seemed more like a cavity
rather than just-- - Maybe she's,
all of her organs are probably in her tentacles
so that her whole body can be an echo chamber for her voice.
(35:43):
- That could explain how she was able to produce the sounds.
- Ruby is this larger than life character
who walks and talks with his own personal soundtrack
that he controls with a cane microphone.
He has a giant phallic cylinder
sticking out of his forehead for a haircut.
He wears unitards that would make David Bowie blush.
He has a high pitched voice that gets immediately
(36:04):
on your nerves and he was almost played by Prince.
Apparently the purple one didn't like the costumes though.
They had designed for him and he also couldn't shoot
the movie because it would have interfered with his touring.
- Yeah and Chris Tucker said that the inspiration for him,
for the character was a combination of Prince
and Michael Jackson.
- prince's Ruby Rhod, he would have had the much deeper voice
(36:25):
'cause Prince is known to have rather quite the range.
Jamie Foxx had this great routine he did
about when he met Prince, he felt,
apparently Jamie Foxx felt a little twinge
of homosexuality just being in the same room with Prince.
Like he did a whole standup routine about it
where he said, man, I feel weird being around him.
And he's talking to Prince's bodyguard,
(36:48):
and he's like, yeah, that happened.
He's like, yeah, I've heard quite a few people
mention that, it was interesting.
- And Jamie Foxx mentions the bodyguard,
he goes, it happened to you?
How'd you get over it?
"Oh man, it fucked me up for years."
It's just like...
so, apparently prince had the raw sexual power that would have added something to Ruby Rhod.
(37:11):
like, when Ruby Rhod walks into the room, it's chris tucker and all the women are swooning over him,
and, you know, you get the idea that it's, you know, "Oh, it's like he's a celebrity, they adore his show,
oh, they they love Ruby Rhod because he's he's Ruby Rhod. he's such a cult of personality kind of person
You get that you get this feeling that hyper sexual
(37:33):
Hypersexual and such but I feel like if they had actually cast Prince
then Ruby Rhod would have been like a walking porno movie that as soon as he walks in not only do all the women in
the in the room melt
But probably a lot of the guys do too and the movie would probably like Prince would burn his way out of the screen
(37:55):
Just like with the raw sexual power. See I think
Looking at it. I can see the the Prince influence easily
i mean, it's obvious the prince and michael jackson influence in Ruby Rhod. you can tell michael jackson's much michael jackson was always part of it
I think if you were gonna cast Prince I would I would do a gender swap and
(38:17):
have prince be The Fifth Element for me that would make more sense
cuz with LeeLoo every time the men -okay, you just blew my mind
-Every time the men were around her it was like she is perfect. It was just everybody
Loved her and that's kind of like with Prince. That's how that's how other men describe Prince being in the room with Prince
(38:40):
- So it's like you just do a gender swap
and you make instead of it being Bruce Willis,
you use like, Charlize Theron or something
and just flip it.
- This movie would have bombed at the box office
if that had happened.
I just don't, there's no way the audiences
would have come out in droves the way they did.
And they didn't really come out in droves that much.
(39:00):
- No.
- But that is an amazing idea that if you're gonna have
Prince in a movie about the perfect being
just cast him as the perfect being.
- Yeah.
- It's right there.
don't just have him be this backup character like Ruby Rhod.
No, just have Prince be the angel come down
to having to save the world or something.
- Why not?
- You can do it with the power of song too
(39:21):
at some point if you wanted.
No, that's a brilliant idea.
Okay, so when I ask you later,
like what would you have changed about the movie?
You could say nothing or you could just say,
well, i would have cast prince in Milla jovovich's part.
- Well, no, I wouldn't necessarily have cast him
in her part.
I would say if you did that,
you'd swap not just that one character's gender.
(39:43):
- yeah, you'd swap Korben Dallas' gender and have--
- Swap his and--
- See Charlize Theron.
- And being in the future, okay,
why is the priest still gotta be a man?
- Very well, could be.
- Yeah, I would do quite a few gender swaps,
possibly even the president.
- The president is a girl?
What is wrong with you?
- No.
(40:03):
- Okay, so it's either a girl or a very large black man.
He Zeus is a big fella. Yes. No, I yeah, that's funny
I think we've had a few movie versions of the president of earth and
The Fifth Element is just the one that comes to mind most easily
But I don't know if we've ever had one where the president of earth was a was a woman
(40:25):
There there have been movies with female presidents. I don't necessarily know if it was a president of earth
Yeah, there have been female presidents
Yes, I've seen there was a TV show about a female president madam president
i previously talked about LeeLoo being an impossible character for all intensive purposes and she is
but Milla jovovich pulls it off with a kind of wide-eyed innocence goofball comedic verb and and by mastering a language that doesn't exist
(40:52):
apparently her and Besson would speak in the language on set supposedly and
There's I don't think there's an actual dictionary for the divine language
No, he he started making it up when he was a kid and he'd worked a long time
Over a lot of years trying to develop it
She helped I think as he introduced her to it. She added to it with him
(41:17):
From what she says a lot of it was she would ask him like how do I say this or what about this?
And he would think about it and come back the next day and have a whole another big list of words for her to learn
But supposedly by the end of the shoot, they were having full conversations in the language.
And there was some, I don't know if it was speculation or if it was just kind of an offhanded
(41:42):
thing, but I watched this with, there's, instead of subtitles, you can do a fact track.
And I don't know if you've watched that on yours at all.
But basically it's just, instead of subtitles coming up, it's just a little trivia things.
And one of the things that comes up about that language was they were possibly talking
(42:05):
about their future wedding because it was only a couple months after this that they
ended up getting together.
And I can't remember if they got engaged a couple months later or if they got married
a couple months later.
But at the time of the filming of this, he was engaged to...
To Maïwenn Le Besco, who was the diva.
He was engaged to Maïwenn and...
(42:27):
audiences and of the genre will of the horror genre may remember most clearly
from high tension. That was another good movie. That was another good movie. But
yeah so that that was one of the things that came up on the fact track is were
they actually talking about that? I do not know. It's possible. I wasn't there. I don't know.
But it don't understand the language anyway so still what? No one does. Yes. It pretty much exists only in
(42:54):
Luc Besson's and uh Milla Jovovich's heads
For me, there's not a lot of one-off movies
that I can name that invent their own language
for a character, okay?
Most of the time when that happens, it's a franchise, okay?
And that's another reason I think
this should have been a franchise.
- Yeah, 'cause even Elvish, that's not really a one-off,
and that's a fully developed language.
- No, it's not, because he wrote how many books about elves?
(43:15):
- And Klingon was not a one-off.
That's another fully developed language.
- Tolkien invented all kinds of languages
for Lord of the Rings.
George RR Martin invented Dothraki for Game of Thrones, a guy named Mark Ocran invented
Klingon for Star Trek, James Cameron worked with linguists to make a language for the
Navee of Avatar, and that is the bare minimum level of storytelling we need to be talking
(43:37):
about generally when a language itself has to be invented.
And I could be wrong, maybe there's all kinds of stuff out there that are one and done stories
that have their own languages, but I doubt it.
Point being that there's another reason that this movie should have been a franchise and
its own language and Milla had to learn it.
Before they can even start filming before she can even turn up to set it is impossible by the way talking about Milla Jovovich
(43:58):
In this movie it is impossible for me to be impartial about this because when this movie came out in 1997
I was a teenage boy
and i completely fell in love with this amazing woman named LeeLoo played by this Ukrainian goddess Milla Jovovich
She learned a whole language of the part did martial arts training to fight like Bruce Lee
She had to run around in a white outfit people have dubbed the band-aid suit
And she did all this after her biggest roles up to that point were a bit part and Dazed and Confused a bad sequel to the
(44:23):
Equally bad blue lagoon and a bunch of heroin chic Calvin Klein obsession commercials
Milla has gone on to be the top earning female action star of all time and she deserves every penny
She's earned and every drop of happiness in her life
I loved this movie and I will shamelessly gush over it until the day I die and I dare you to criticize
LeeLoo Grim. -wasn't even gonna do that. I wasn't even gonna think about it. I was thinking how
(44:47):
how she actually won a Best Newcomer Award for this role.
- Which she deserved completely.
- Yes.
- And she was also nominated for Best Fight
by the MTV Movie Awards and she--
- And that was the fight scene
with the leg on a stick, right?
- I believe that was... the leg on the stick?
- Yeah, so when she's fighting the Mangalores
(45:09):
and she's got the one right in front of her
and I think she's holding on to them with both hands,
but they're so close that she can't really,
like really put her leg out far.
And she had just started to learn martial arts at the point.
So she couldn't get her leg up high enough.
So they happened to have a leg there that they could use.
(45:29):
It was essentially just a leg on a stick.
So when she does that high kick and kicks him in the face,
there's a couple of guys just out of shot with the leg
and they fling it up and hit him in the face with it.
- That must've been hilarious.
- Yeah, I would have loved to see a wide shot
just to see that in full.
I would have loved to have been the Mangalore,
just getting crushed, getting my face crushed by Milla.
(45:49):
- Well, yeah, there's that too.
I personally would rather have been Bruce Willis,
but that's just me.
- Any chance I could get, man, any chance.
That's all.
- If it's between the two, being Bruce Willis
and ended up in that thing at the end
or being a Mangalore and getting hit by a leg on a stick,
(46:10):
I'd take Bruce Willis.
- Yeah, well, I dream realistically.
dream big you know go big or go home. -strangely Luc Besson did venture into
the FX heavy sci-fi action again with the Valerian in the city of a thousand
planets but it was meh I watched it and that's my basic reaction Valerian isn't
that that's also a comic by yes it's actually the comic by Melier yeah that
(46:36):
that he based much of Fifth Element on.
- Yeah, a lot of the styles.
And what was it, was it that one?
- It was just a lot of Star Wars
on the comic, on Valerian comics.
- Was Valerian the one that,
the inspiration for the inside
when they first get to Fhloston Paradise?
(46:58):
- I'm not sure.
- With the big windows and everything.
'Cause the one thing that they were really happy
that Luc let them do was do their own thing
and design and just, this is the look we want.
And Luc's like, sure, great.
And he would think, can you do a little bit more of this
or a little bit more of that and just fine tune.
(47:20):
But he kind of let them do their own thing.
And the only time that he went to them and said,
I want this was when they first get in
and you see those big grand windows and everything else.
But even then, it was, I want this because I saw it in,
and I think it was Valerian.
(47:40):
I saw it in that, and I loved it.
Can you recreate that for this?
And just kind of give it this style.
So it was like, yeah, he did come to us
and want us to do something specific for him.
But even then, it was something from our ideas anyway,
so we'll let him pass.
But everything else was them doing their own thing
(48:02):
creating the sets and the scenes and just the look and feel of it all.
Uh, supposedly, Luc Besson was sued by Alejandro Dzorowski and Mobius, uh, because Dzorowski and
mobius, uh, had some evidence that, uh, Luc Besson stole elements of The Fifth Element from their
graphic novel De Inkal. And, uh, unfortunately, a judge decided that the elements were small
(48:28):
and too buried to constitute a outright theft. Or fortunately, actually, for the sake of Besson
and the originality of our beloved movie Fifth Element, maybe someday the ink-al will make it
to the big screen. I don't know. Apparently, Malie's Valerian was a huge influence on Star Wars.
(48:49):
I've never read it. Maybe someday I will. If we ever covered the Valerian movie on this podcast,
my thoughts about it will come out in more detail, but as it is now, i think we've got a pretty solid understanding of what we both think of Fifth Element. don't you, Mr. Grimm?
I think so.
I think we're good. If you could change anything, what would it be? Besides the Prince bod gender swap?
(49:11):
And I don't... I don't...
It's not something you would change.
I don't know if I would necessarily say I would change that. I think that would just be...
If you were trying to put Prince in it, I wouldn't put Prince as this DJ character.
I would. That makes sense. Yeah.
And it's just because Prince just had that magnetism.
(49:34):
He just exudes magnetism.
Charisma. If I would change anything,
that plastic thing on Gary Oldman's head, i think that's it.
The other thing I would change is you said the CG on the body being reconstructed
was a bit shoddy or it didn't age that well.
And you know what, fine, I'll go with that.
Let's have them do a special edition
(49:55):
where they make Milla's insides a little more detailed.
- I don't know, now that you mentioned that,
I don't know if I would necessarily say I would change it,
maybe update it so the graphics looked better,
but I think I'd just keep the scene as it was.
But like I said, maybe update a graphics.
And I think the really only change would be
what I was saying.
- This is sacrilege, sacrilege what we both said.
(50:16):
The movie's perfect the way it is.
it's perfect the way it is and everybody should watch The Fifth Element as often as they can.
If you ever catch it on tv and it's like, "oh cool, Fifth Element's on."
That's a good time for you.
You've just lucked out.
It's perfect the way it is.
You just ignore the continuity errors and other random things that appear a lot throughout the movie.
Continuity?
(50:37):
No, I'm kidding.
Yeah, there's quite a few continuity errors.
Yes, I imagine there are, but I've never nipped...
i don't nitpick when i'm watching The Fifth Element.
I just enjoy it.
I'm along for the ride.
I've watched this movie a lot.
And a lot of times it was either VHS
or I was at someone else's house and watched it on DVD
(50:59):
or something like that or watch it on TV.
And when it came time for this, I went over to the shelf
and grabbed mine off the shelf and realized
I'd had it for years and I'd never even unwrapped it.
And it's the ultimate edition.
at 2 Disc DVD.
No, it's a 2 Disc DVD set.
(51:21):
It's not even the Blu-ray.
But yeah, I was watching that
and then I found the fact track.
So it's like, oh, I gotta watch it again
just with a fact track.
And then after that--
- Which was a great use as we recorded this.
- Oh, there's so much on there.
I mean, the diva dance, that song,
she practiced that song for like three months
(51:44):
before they actually started filming
when she found out, okay, this is what's gonna happen.
And she practiced it like 30 times a day, every day.
- And this was the soprano Inva Mula,
who performed the music, the vocal performance
for the Diva Plava Laguna character.
And I believe, according to IMDb,
(52:05):
they had to sequence the notes,
or did she actually pull it off?
- No, it's not humanly possible.
- That's what I thought.
- Well, I say that, but,
the way things are going now,
it's getting questionable on that too.
But I'll get back to that in a second.
- I think there's some guy in Asia who's--
- Dimash.
(52:26):
- Yeah, he's got this voice like a bird,
and he can sing the diva.
- He switches octaves and just so quick.
And he goes from one extreme to the other.
And so many times, especially watching reactions
from different singing coaches or voice coaches
or whatever, and anytime they watch him,
(52:47):
it's just, they're in awe.
It's like, how can that be possible?
He can't be human.
But yeah, the song was designed to not be singable
by humans because of the fluctuations
and pitch and everything.
- The human throat cannot make the changes necessary
between the notes.
(53:08):
You can't change notes as fast as the diva dance requires.
Unless you happen to be this one guy, possibly.
Well, even all the people that have attempted it over the years, they always make some kind
of change because it's not possible.
But his is the closest I've ever seen.
But she practiced that because he told her, "No, I still want you to sing it."
(53:29):
And even if we dub over, the performance still has to be there.
It has to look like you're actually doing this.
So she'd practice it over and over again.
And then when it finally came time to do it, in the opera house, that was the first time
that they had seen her.
Because up until that point, none of the cast knew what she looked like.
(53:53):
And then they opened up the curtains and she steps out.
That was the first time they'd actually seen that character when she comes out to do that
performance.
Well, it wasn't, yeah, but the character, Maïwenn, was in the costume and it was the Invamula
who was singing.
So I could imagine.
I don't know why they would have that reaction
to the costume and not to the singing,
(54:13):
which was dubbed in later.
- Well, no, I mean, she still got up there and sing,
and sang the song and did the performance,
but still, that character, it was a very captivating look.
- It was indeed.
- And to just suddenly have this character
you've never seen before with this just out there look
that you just, you can't help but want to know more,
(54:35):
and comes out and does this amazing performance
that sadly ends up getting chopped up,
which the way it was chopped up
and edited together with the other scenes,
I think was great, but she was not happy.
She was rather disappointed
because so much of her performance got cut out.
But it is on the extras, so you can see the whole performance.
(54:57):
It's in front of a green screen,
but you can see the whole performance.
It's really good.
But yeah, like I was saying, I got this off the shelf
and I watched the fact track,
and it just made me want to watch it again
and start counting the fives.
- A lot of fives to count in there, people.
so next time you're watching Fifth Element, go for it.
- How many times do they say five minutes?
(55:18):
How many times, like at the end when the president walks in
and he's gonna thank Korben Dallas,
and you look behind him,
and there's all these people that come in,
and there's five guys with military hats.
there's when when the bomb is about to go off and Gary Oldman stops it
(55:39):
He stops it at five seconds, huh? And then the Mangalore bomb comes on. It's at five seconds
I mean, there's fives all throughout gained himself one second. Basically. I said it when we did our first episode
what I'm not really one to get into all the special features and
so far I've got into the special features of the three movies we've done and each time it's
(56:02):
Made me want to go back for more that is the joy of special features and that is part of the joy of in physical media
Physical media but on that note this train is pulling into the station my friends and it is time for us to have to bid
You adieu I'd like to thank Grim for being my wonderful co-host on this little journey
we took into The Fifth Element one of our favorite movies and one i plan on seeing many times more in the future
(56:25):
I believe you're the same Mr. Grim. Yeah, and as far as the thanks
Yeah, well, obviously got to, you thanked everyone else got to thank you as well
And thank thanks to all the people listening and remember to like subscribe thumbs up stars
Whatever the rating devices on whatever
Just or just you know leave comments. If you don't have anything nice to say make something up. There you go
(56:52):
We don't want negative. We want we want the positives especially with Fifth Element
we want the positives because what negative can you say about Fifth Element really?
Other than it's it's a shame. It's not more popular. It's a shame
It's not more popular that we did get more of it. So this is the strangers signing off
Yeah, thank you so much internet land and goodbye for now. Goodbye
(57:13):
Bye.
[MUSIC]
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
(air whooshing)
Attention passengers, today on Strangers on a Podcast, we have a 1997 film that puts Bruce Willis on the worst cruise in history.
(00:08):
It contains a floating Thai restaurant, a space ball going ludicrous speed, and a perilous auto wash.
Join us, won't you?
[Music]
(00:34):
Hello and welcome to the movie car here at Strangers on a Podcast.
I'm the conductor and with me is...
i'm Grim Weed.
welcome Grim Weed.
We're called Strangers on a Podcast because we're two guys who don't know each other and we're talking about movies to see how they bring people together.
Are we gonna drive each other nuts? Are we gonna curse and scream one another out? Are we gonna stay on topic?
(00:55):
We'll see.
today we are talking about the one and only The Fifth Element.
what is there to say about The Fifth Element that hasn't been said already? well, probably not much.
luc besson worked on Fifth Element as a kid making drawings and story notes in class while in high school.
he had a lonely childhood and he invented this world to escape to that was the world of the fifth element with Korben Dallas
(01:17):
Korben Dallas is a cab driver because his
Luc Besson's father worked as a second job as a cab driver to pay for Luc's art school
Therefore Luc Besson always puts a cab driver in his movie supposedly to honor his father's sacrifice
I believe he was inspired by the works of Mobius and another writer another comic book cartoonist named Messier's Jean-Claude
(01:38):
- Yeah, and I'm trying to remember Mobius.
- Jean-Paul Girard.
- Yes, the creators of Heavy Metal.
- Indeed, or what's the French term for Heavy Metal?
- I don't know, that's why I went with Heavy Metal.
- Yeah, but the French name is so cool too.
- Yeah, it's cool, but I'm not even gonna try
and pronounce French.
- Metal, hello.
(02:00):
Now after a few of any successes under Luc Besson's credit
with a few low budget pictures in the 90s,
like The Professional and La Femme Nikita.
- Well, The Professional is what got him
the ability to do this.
- Exactly.
Someone gave him the cash to turn his teenage fever dream
into a big budget movie and he knocked it out of the park.
(02:21):
Now he got help turning his teenage ideas into a script
by Robert Mark Kammen, who was most famous
for having written Taps and The Karate Kid by that point,
but has gone to do the Taken franchise
and the Transporter movies.
And together they turn in a really tight script
that doesn't have a boring scene in the whole movie.
It's pure spectacle, action, and laughs.
(02:43):
And Larry Cohen could have written this thing.
It's that tight.
Longtime Besson collaborator Thierry Apregas
shot the movie with an over-the-top color palette
that makes the whole movie a visual feast.
A lot of movies from this time period
have suffered from their VFX aging horribly,
but The Fifth Element has aged like wine
and there's not a bad moment in the whole movie.
- The only real bad effects scene
(03:04):
off the top of my head is when they did the digital dive.
- The digital dive.
- Yes.
- when LeeLoo falls off the building?
- yeah, when LeeLoo, when she does the initial jump,
the first actions of the jump are her,
and then the jump itself is a stunt double,
(03:25):
and then the fall is digital.
- Well, it still looked better than RoboCop.
Eric Sarah handles the music for The Fifth E lement,
It's like a jungle beat stomp meets John Williams roller coaster that never lets you forget you're seeing a purely gonzo sci-fi action fever dream
Eric Sarah really knocked it out the park of this movie
he if you if you ever heard the music of Fifth Element, it's it's like this (imitates music)
(03:46):
and it's like some sort of
Insane drum beat going on with trash cans and you don't know where it's coming from it. It's it's it's it's it's
It's really like nothing else. I I can't think of another movie that sounds even remotely like it anywhere
Except maybe the Valerian of a Thousand Planets
(04:08):
but I can't really remember the movie from the music from that movie particularly well because I didn't
enjoy that movie as i'll mention later and another great name that you have to talk about when you talk about Fifth Element is
Jean-Paul Gaultier who is a French fashion designer famous for his avant-garde theatrical sensibility
He designed all the costumes and really helped create this bizarre future where we get to see in the film
(04:29):
from the weird as fuck street outfits we see Korben and assorted thugs wearing to the uber sexy uniforms the air stewards to the hot
Couture of the upper crowd in the diva scene
Really the only outfits that he says were really his were
Ruby Rhods i
Everything else was because I just really personally checked at 500 extras on set supposedly
(04:54):
No, what I mean is the costuming was
done based on what Luc's vision was.
The only costumes that were really his
as far as his designs, things that's like,
this is me, were for Ruby Rhod's outfits.
- Well, Gautier had done other movies
like The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover,
(05:15):
being the most famous perhaps,
but none of them have the same level
of sheer world building he does in this movie
with costume alone, which apparently
is not a true thing that I'm saying.
But I do think the movie's costumes
are a big part of its visual language
I'm no means a fashion follower or expert or anything like that. I dress like drab crap
I think John Paul Gautier deserved a freaking Oscar for this but oh yeah, he did an amazing job
(05:36):
i think a Fifth Element was kind of like bram stoker's dracula a little bit where
One of the guiding guiding principles of Bram Stoker Dracula was that the costumes will be the sets
in a sense and while there were very big detailed sets on The Fifth Element
And I think the costumes were big splashes of color and vibrancy that really helped define
(06:01):
the character of the world that we get to see in this movie.
Now the movie tells the simple story of a down on his luck ex-special ops cab driver
in the future who has the perfect being fall into his cab and winds up saving the world
with her from a giant space ball of pure evil that's headed toward earth.
Literally fall into his cab.
And it's a space ball.
So we were worried about space balls coming at us before,
(06:24):
'cause of Mel Brooks, but now we see what one--
- At ludicrous speed.
- At ludicrous speed, yes.
Were so fast that the warships
can't even barely keep up with it.
Along the way, we get to meet a ton of wacky characters
acting completely insane.
We get 90210 heartthrob Luke Perry
as an archeologist assistant,
trip hop auteur tricky as Zorg's right arm,
Blade Runner's Breon James as a salty old space colonel,
(06:47):
Baron Munchausen, John Neville
an uptight warship admiral. Pro wrestler Zeus is the president of earth. Maïwenn Le Besco
is the singing alien goddess. ian holm is Vito cornelius the always in a hurry expositor
supreme. Gary Oldman as evil weapons tycoon zorg. who is the main villian of the piece.
bruce willis as the cab drive and the stealth badass korben dallas and Milla jovovich in the
(07:09):
impossible role of LeeLoo, the perfect being.
Milica Jovovich
She is Ukrainian.
Milica, is that it?
Milica Jovovich
it's Milla for short.
i will always call her Milla.
the script for Fifth Element is perfect.
The music is amazing.
The costumes are literally out of this world.
And the cast fires on all cylinders at every point in the movie.
(07:31):
This is a movie that you can start watching at any point during and it plays perfectly.
i defy you to remain depressed while watching The Fifth Element.
I want this movie included in a time capsule sent into space.
The only thing as far as the movie goes that I will say is a negative, and I don't mean
it by it's my negative, it's the negative of the guy in charge of the visual effects,
(07:54):
was the scene where they were reconstructing her body in the way that the body was put
together and everything.
He was not happy with that effect.
I think it kind of had a jeweled quality to it where it looked like the body coming together
was maybe made out of...
A little cartoony.
I'm sorry?
a little cartoony cartoony schmartoony
she was the perfect being and they were making her out of a hand that was all that was left over
(08:19):
after the explosion and it's you know it's i remember it looking like uh the body looked vaguely
metallic before the skin was grown over it or anything i i can watch that a hundred times to
be like oh it looks fine it looks just fine and uh spoiler alert of course at the beginning of the
movie LeeLoo full name and this is going to be hard for me so everybody just take a moment i'm
(08:40):
I'm gonna try to pronounce her full name.
I can pronounce French things,
but this is a made up language.
So here we go.
LeeLoominaï lekatariba-lamina-tchaï, ekbat de sebat
- Yeah, that sounds about right.
- Okay, you wanna try it?
- No, I actually was going to until you did that
and you got it close enough to where that works for me.
(09:00):
Yeah, and when you said it was made up language,
it literally was a made up language.
It wasn't something that was just kind of some gibberish
that was here, say this.
It was an actual language that was developed that he told her,
you need to know this before you even show up to set.
They would sit around and hold conversations in that language.
(09:23):
but anyway, LeeLoo, full name, not saying it again.
She's kind of dead at the beginning.
now the Mondoshawans, who are these amazingly designed,
kind of like a race of Daleks shaped like walking brass colored circles instead of
upside down trash cans.
There's one of them left.
There is one of them left.
They destroyed all but one.
- Bastards.
- Yeah, when they were getting ready to destroy it,
(09:45):
they, where everything was stored,
the ones that owned all of that,
they contacted the guys that made them
and said, "We're gonna destroy them all.
"We're going to record it.
So it's all gonna be documented on tape
saying these were all destroyed."
And because of all the time and effort
that they put into making these,
(10:06):
The guy's like, you, you gotta say you can't destroy these.
We have to save them. And they're like, no, no,
we're destroying them. We cannot save them. There's no way.
So can we just save one? And he said, it's your property.
I won't sell it. It's yours, but I just, I have to have one of them.
I put too much into this.
(10:27):
So there's one still in existence and all the rest have been destroyed.
Make more with CG if they ever made another one of these movies.
I guess they could, but we've seen how well that works in other movies.
Yes, unfortunately.
Yeah.
Anyway, they're kind of like Daleks in that they're a mechanical race, but they're like
circles instead of upside down cylinders and such.
And they just look amazing.
(10:49):
That's going to get a lot of people mad at you.
I am?
Yes.
Because Daleks aren't a mechanical race.
The Mondoshawans are not a mechanical race?
No, the Daleks aren't.
Oh, the Daleks have a juicy center.
There is a crea- basically there are small octopus-like looking creature that's in a battle tank.
Who would win in a fight between the Mondoshawans and the Daleks?
(11:09):
Mandos would be dead in an instant.
Probably, yeah, they're a very peaceful race.
they got mangled by a Mangalores.
By the way, that was who I was going to bring up next.
the Mangalores who are also amazingly designed.
They're space orcs.
Pre-Lord of the Rings film trilogy space orcs.
So they don't look as nasty as later orcs because the orcs in the Lord of the Rings movies
were made to look just nasty.
(11:31):
Like, they're like,
did that guy cut up his face or something?
Is that what his nose looked like?
Or did they cut it up forever, something like that?
- Well, they were supposed to come from humans though,
weren't they?
- Orcs? - Yeah.
- No, they came from elves once.
- Okay, but elves still had the human look.
They just had different ears.
(11:51):
- By Morgoth.
- They should still have a humanoid look to them.
- No, they were elves that were kept in a,
kept in a dark cave and forced to breed and...
Yeah, but since that's where they came from, they would still have a humanoid look
rather than being like the Mangalores that didn't really have a human look to them.
(12:11):
Well, that's why I said they're space orcs, not orcs. Like, they're space orcs in the tradition
of the Gamorrean guards from Return of the Jedi. They are space orcs.
No, I wasn't trying to correct you. I was just trying to
clarify that one looks a little bit more human,
the other doesn't for anybody that hasn't seen this.
- So the Lord of the Rings orcs look a little more human.
(12:32):
- Yes.
- Well, they definitely look a little more rugged
and lived in.
- Yeah.
- They look like they need to take care of their armor better.
- Yeah.
i like how the look for the Mangalores came about, too.
- how did they look for the Mangalores coming down?
- They were trying,
there was one of the hardest ones, apparently,
to try and really nail a look down,
and they had all these ideas
and couldn't come up with anything.
(12:53):
And one of the artists just kind of had sketched out something
and over her own idea and just put it up there.
And she put it up on the board, not really thinking too much of it.
And Luc came by and saw it and said that that's our mangalore.
All it takes is the one concept artist to nail it.
And that's it. The whole the whole race is put together.
You have a great set of antagonists with the mangalores.
(13:16):
And you have Mr. Shadow, who well, he's called Mr.
Shadow when he makes a phone call, but he's the giant flaming ball
of evil that just appears out of nowhere in the middle of a deep space and starts flying
towards Earth at a million miles an hour. Mr. Shadow as a as an entity is not really
that scary visually. He's basically just a giant flaming ball like a until he shoots
(13:40):
flaming skull balls at you. Yeah, and that's when he makes an impression. They they will
or makes you start bleeding from the head.
- There's an armada of good guys there
or assumedly good guys, it's an armada of warships
that are arranged around Mr. Shadow or the giant ball--
(14:01):
- That mysteriously look, well not mysteriously,
that conspicuously look a lot like Star Destroyers.
- A little, just a little.
If we wanted to get into the pedigree of Star Wars
versus The Fifth Element, there's actually
somewhat a little bit of incest going on there.
If you really wanted to dig into it.
- Well, there is in Star Wars too.
(14:23):
- I meant incest metaphorically, not literally.
When the giant space ball shows up,
and I'm gonna call it the space ball gladly because--
- That's what it is.
- That's what it is.
And like I said, space balls are bad, bad, bad guys.
- A giant evil space ball.
- Mm-hmm.
It shows up, it's, oh, it also changes shape, doesn't it?
(14:44):
Like at one point it just--
It's bigger. All the fires go out on it and it like covers itself up in a rock.
Yeah, it doesn't really change shape so much.
It grows.
The surface solidifies to anticipate attack.
Yeah, it grows whenever they shoot at it.
Baron Munchausen is sitting there at a command chair and he's like,
(15:05):
I'll take care of this. -Evil.
begets evil. -In no time at all.
And he shoots everything that worship has at it,
and it just makes the thing stronger.
Exactly and the and Ian Holm is sitting there with the president when this is happening
He's trying to advise the president about what is the wisest course of action. He says evil begets evil
(15:26):
Mr. President the president tells
Vito cornelius he says you have 20 seconds to tell me what's going on and in holm speaks for exactly
20 seconds in that scene
That's how either that's how good the writer is or that's how good Ian Holm is he just timed it perfectly to speak for exactly
20 seconds and Ian Holm is a great actor who is sadly no longer with us
(15:48):
Genre fans may remember him from... -This is a second movie that he's done with a character named Dallas
What was the other one? -Alien
Of course. - I'm shocked I thought
That's why I I jumped in like that because I could have sworn you were gonna say you might remember him from alien
I wanted to jump in before you could do that. I
(16:11):
No, I was going to say from hell. You may remember him from from hell
Yeah, and of course you may remember him as Ash the science officer on the Nostromo in the film Alien with Sigourney Weaver and Tom
Skerritt as who who did Tom Skerritt play in that movie? -I believe the name was Dallas
Yes, indeed. His name was Dallas and I have completely failed as a podcaster as a horror podcaster
(16:37):
I have just I'm shocked you didn't you didn't know that one jump right in
on that now. Oh my head is spinning with failure. And this was an interesting, I can't remember
how many movies he had done before this. this was bruce willis's 30th. this was Milla's fifth.
She had not been in many movies prior to this. Chris Tucker, I think that was his fifth as
(17:01):
well. He made a splash in Friday prior to this. Yes. But this was one of those movies
just like Strangers on a Train was a movie where you count the doubles, this is a movie
where you count the fives. There are a lot of fives in this movie.
and speaking of Korben Dallas, he is a great protagonist because he fits the movie perfectly,
(17:22):
and he's as much in the dark about what's going on as the audience, and he needs things
explained to him the same way we do. Rather than being the subject of exposition, like
perhaps Hellboy in the first Ron pearlman Hellboy movie, Korben Dallas is the recipient.
He learns what we learn and the story goes forward.
he's interested in LeeLoo and her purpose and so are we.
Which isn't to say the movie is one long exposition dump after another because it's not.
(17:45):
The plot is astoundingly simple.
Bruce Willis and an orange haired supermodel have to stop the evil using four magic stones.
They go on an adventure to retrieve the stones.
Stuff happens and it's as fun at two hours and change as you're likely to have watching
a movie.
And it's not just an orange, it's Mandarin orange.
Her hair?
Yes.
They were trying to find the right shade of orange and Luc finally says Mandarin and
(18:10):
they couldn't figure out what it was and it's like this Mandarin they finally found that
Mandarin orange is the color.
Milla jovovich's hair fell out unfortunately during the production and they had to get
a wig because they had to keep dyeing her hair orange so often.
Well, they weren't touching her roots up because they if you looked at her hair, it was only
(18:31):
orange to a certain point and then it was blonde.
So when they touch up the roots, they were overlapping the bleach and not touching it
up right and it burned it and killed her hair.
And her hair started falling out.
Burned it, killed her hair and they had to put her in a wig.
but as luck would have it, Milla jovovich looks amazing with short hair too.
So she probably didn't lose a step.
(18:52):
I think she was regrowing her hair and she rocked a pompadour following the release of
a Fifth Element and appeared on many a magazine cover having this amazing looking pompadour
where she was growing her hair back out and that was like a medium style for her.
now one of the things that stands out to me most about Fifth Element that i've talked
about whenever i talk about the movie is jean-baptiste emmanuel zorg and who plays him Grim Weed?
(19:17):
Gary Oldman.
Gary Oldman.
amazing Gary Oldman.
amazing Gary Oldman and one of the things i love about fifth element is that you have
the antagonist Zorg, who...
- Never once meets your hero.
- Never once meets your heroes, thank you.
That's exactly what I was going for.
- They are only in the same shot once in the entire movie
(19:39):
and they're still not on screen together.
- No, they're not.
The only time, no, that's the thing.
They never really have much interaction.
the heroes wind up being LeeLoo, korben, cornelius,
later on Ruby Rhod and then there's Cornelius'
little helper guy whose name I completely forget. -David. -David?
I believe so. If I remember right, that's the name he reads off of the multi pass
(20:03):
when he goes to the airport and says I sent him to check in or to get my boarding
pass.
yeah. they never have any real direct interaction with Zorg. now Zorg is pulling
the strings and trying to get the stones.
Cornelius does.
What?
Cornelius has direct interaction with him.
Exactly. That's right. I was getting to that.
- Oh, I thought you named everybody
(20:24):
and said they never had.
So, I'm sorry, I'm jumping ahead.
- That was a mis- that was a typo.
Mangalores, he wants the Mangalores to retrieve them,
but we never get any kind of scene where Zorg is about
to pull off his master plan and the plucky good guys win.
he fires Korben Dallas as a part of a mass layoff
early in the movie.
he has a meeting with Cornelius about a third of the way
through the movie, but neither of them really gets anything
(20:46):
out of it, except Zorg almost chokes on a cherry pit
and Cornelius saves him.
- Imagine how much different this movie would have been
if he would have let him choke.
- yeah, but Cornelius is a nice guy.
- Oh yeah.
I'm not saying he should have let him choke.
I'm just saying, imagine what if.
- It would have been a lot more boring
because Zorg was such a fun character to watch in the movie.
(21:06):
i think Zorg added a really interesting side plot
to the movie, as I will go on to say.
you see, other than that, meaning Zorg is basically operating
at cross purposes to korben and LeeLoo,
but they never come into any grand confrontation.
it's like Zorg, for all his machinations,
is just a pawn in the game of good versus evil
and he isn't aware when he gets sacrificed.
(21:27):
The story moves on without him
and the good guys don't have to kill him.
He dies as a result of his own plans going wrong.
- the only ones he interacts with are cornelius and LeeLoo.
- does he ever interact with LeeLoo?
- Well, he tries to shoot her.
- Oh, he does try to shoot her, yes.
- He comes in after her fight and says,
"Thanks for doing all the hard work for me,"
and then tries to kill her.
- But she doesn't get it.
(21:48):
I think she, doesn't he wound her or something?
I think she has to hide in this ceiling.
He was using one of his amazing space guns
that he was paying the manglers with.
- Or not paying them with, however you wanna look at it.
- Yeah, no stones, no crates.
Four stones, four crates.
Zero stones, zero crates.
(22:09):
- Exactly.
That was a cool gun though.
I mean, just the replay button.
- Yeah, I defy Marvel to come up with,
Marvel's Iron Man to come up with that much arsenal
in one little package.
- Well, Iron Man would have to,
it would be a targeting thing and lock on
and do a lot of other things.
This was just one little, or not little,
(22:32):
but it was one gun that had everything.
You didn't have to have special targeting.
You shoot it and then say replay and everything goes there.
Well, I guess don't say replay, you activate replay,
but yeah, then every shot goes where that first one went.
- Mm-hmm, which, well, it seems like a waste of bullets
a good shot, but I don't think the Mangalores were.
(22:53):
- It didn't seem to be.
They didn't hit much.
- No, they were good at taking hostages
and they loved to negotiate.
That's one of the things I always laugh at
whenever the Mangalores get into a catch-22 situation
where they're like, "We have a hostage
"will someone, send someone to negotiate."
(23:14):
It's like, I think there's two or three times
when they try to negotiate throughout the movie.
- At least twice.
- They say they're not merchants
and then semi-negotiate to get a crate of weapons.
And then they try to negotiate the hostage
and that doesn't end well.
(23:34):
- No, it does not.
- I don't remember any other negotiations though.
- Korben Dallas was much better at negotiating
than any of the Mangalores.
- Yes, by far.
He had a very unique negotiation, tactic.
- Shoot the leader, basically.
- Yeah.
leader, Mangalore's won't fight without leader. Anyway, back to
the story. i think there's a moral to Zorg story that base
human evil is choked by its own ego. He he's he claims to be
(23:58):
serving chaos when he doesn't really know the intentions of
the true master that he's serving Mr. Shadow is a being of
pure destruction, and there's not going to be any chaos to
redeem. I think the apocalypse that's coming due to Mr. Shadow's
impact on Earth, which Mr. Mr. Shadow is basically like Sephiroth's
Meteor attack come to life and he's coming for the planet earth and it's gonna destroy the whole thing
(24:20):
yeah, there will be no more life anywhere ever and
Zorg is just worried about his payment and
The cost is gonna go up because it's harder to get the stones than he thought. I think mr. Shadows like
[The Conductor immitates Mr. Shadow voice] Money is no object. -Talk about hell to edit that is gonna be a pain
(24:45):
What was wrong with that?
Just trying to hear it is gonna be hard.
Well, I think he said money is no object.
Yeah.
Which makes me wonder, does Mr. Shadow have a bank account somewhere?
I think it's more you're not gonna be alive, so I don't have to worry about paying ya.
That makes sense too, but I, I, but it's, it's not unheard of for otherworldly beings in fantasy stories to have holdings in the mortal plane.
(25:10):
like maybe a townhouse in New York where they can get away from being an extra dimensional being.
Maybe like Lucifer on the show Lucifer, he comes to Earth and it just so happens of course he's a
billionaire who can do whatever he wants because he's as shocking as it may seem he's invested over the years.
(25:32):
Well, yeah, but there's still something there called life, and the Space Ball is going to
eradicate all life.
So, therefore, it probably hasn't made a visit to check up on a stock market, a stock market.
Yeah, I'd say there's probably not a whole lot of investment portfolio action going.
(25:53):
Probably not.
I'm leaning more towards, you're going to be dead, so I don't have to worry about paying
you anyway.
Probably.
which makes Zorg a bit of a sucker.
Just a bit.
zorg is this oddball character played with great charisma by Gary Oldman, and while he's
on screen, as weird as it is, you kinda root for him.
We as the audience know he's an agent of the giant ball of evil moving through space,
(26:15):
and he gets to give this little spiel about chaos vs order and all that.
But when he's on screen, he almost feels sorry for him because nothing ever goes his
way.
Even though he's a schmuck who kills his own henchmen who fails at the task, and sucks
seeing Tricky blown up.
Gary Oldman just imbues the guy with so much oddball charisma that even as he operates
a t cross purposes as the heroes, you love to watch him.
Okay, I'm with you on that.
(26:37):
I'm with you that love to watch him, but I'm not quite with you on the root for him.
Yeah, that was a bit of an overstatement.
you just want to see more of Zorg.
He is a very interesting character and he's one that you kind of want to backstory for.
Yeah, you do.
Not so much so you can understand him,
just because you look at him and listen to him
(27:00):
and you just have to wonder what brought him to this point.
Just like the limp and whatever that weird plastic thing
was on his head.
Was that just a style choice?
Was that fashion or was that function?
- I believe it was style choice, yes.
Or it could have been some sort of brace
(27:20):
he had to wear to keep his brain inside of skull.
- It's hard to say because it wasn't just
the side of his head, it kind of wrapped around the back and there was a lot of things that
were about him that made you think, like the metallic clang with his limp.
I mean, what-
Yeah, he had that.
It was like he had a club foot.
Yeah.
And he had to wear a special boot.
But he's one that I think he could have an interesting backstory.
(27:45):
not only that, but he just got that great name, Jean-Baptiste Emmanuel Zorg.
I mean-
this nice fancy beautiful sounding name finished with Zorg because Zorg is the
ultimate sci-fi bad guy name it just is and you do have in in the history of
villains you do have a lot of Z's and K's you do and V's yes anyway anyway
(28:08):
part of what makes up zorg's charm has to do with the fact that Gary Oldman is
famous for inventing a unique voice for all his characters maybe not all but he
works hard at coming up with different voice and accent and sort of personal
intonations for every character he plays. I think he basically invented the Gotham City
accent that he used as Commissioner Gordon in the Nolan Batman trilogy. For the Fifth
(28:30):
Element he decided to give Zorg a goofy sort of west virginian accent. so on the one hand
he had this guy who's shamelessly evil, this out and out card carrying villain, this Gonzo
character, but he talks like he's Jodie Foster's cousin from Silence of the Lambs. And he's
got this sedate and rather mild country general store owner voice that I guess was meant to
(28:50):
shows Zorg's background or something.
I mean, somehow West Virginian country folks
are the new tycoons in the 23rd century.
In our time, the villains always have British accents.
In the future, though, it's West Virginians.
- No, the villains had, as far as that time,
the villains still had German accents.
(29:10):
The intelligent ones were the British accents.
- In our time?
- No, in the time that that movie was made.
- Oh, okay.
the intelligent, the more upper crust smart,
intelligent figures had the British accents,
the villains all had Germans.
(29:31):
And then as-- - Are you thinking of Die Hard?
Is this a prime example of this?
- It is a perfect example of this.
But then as things changed and everything else
started to change a little with the world,
it went somewhat away from Germans
and more into Middle East.
(29:51):
And the villains started becoming more Middle Eastern.
- Yes, thank you to James Cameron and True Lies
and also World Events that made Middle Eastern people
an easy target for Hollywood boogeymen.
- Yeah, well the same thing happened with the Germans.
I mean, that's kind of,
that's what kicked them off is the big bad.
- Yes.
- We had Russians for a while, we got German,
(30:12):
well, we've still got Russian,
but Russian, German, Middle East,
It's all based on who is the big bad of the era
at the time that this is being made.
- I think when Batman debuted as a serial
on movie screens in the 30s, or no, it was the 40s,
I'm sorry, he mainly fought Japanese saboteurs
(30:35):
to help the war effort.
- Yeah, and Superman fought Nazis.
- Superman fought Nazis, the Spectre fought Nazis.
Any superhero worth his salt back in the day
fought Nazis and killed him like nobody's business.
- Wolverine, Captain America.
- Captain America, the Spectre, I believe.
- Indiana Jones.
- Now another fun character or annoying character,
(30:57):
depending on how blatantly macho you are,
is who am I talking about here, Grim?
- Fun character, blatantly macho.
- No, who is absolutely annoying
if you happen to be blatantly macho?
- Ruby Rhodd.
- Exactly.
- And especially the first time you see him
when he's got a pool noodle on his head.
Is that a, yeah, that's basically what it looks like
is a pure noodle.
(31:19):
- It's his hair.
- Ruby is a kind of podcast radio host shock jock
interviewed with the stars kind of guy
that korben and leeloo run into on Fhloston Paradise.
- Very over the top.
- When they go to retrieve the stones, sorry.
- Very over the top.
- Very over the top.
He's kind of like, in fact, I can't think of a modern
equivalent as to what Ruby Rhod is.
- I would say take Howard Stern when he was at his
(31:42):
most shocking, like when he was constantly getting fired because he was pushing limits.
Take that and mix it with the Elvis sexuality, just that he enters the room and all women
swoon.
And that does happen several times in the film.
He is on a plane to Fhloston Par-- well, not a plane, it's a space shuttle that is
(32:07):
taking everybody to Fhloston Paradise after they win a contest, which is rigged in a day
deus ex machina kind of plot point.
- Yeah, basically the military need him to go
and retrieve the stones from Fhloston Paradise
from a singer. - Diva Plavalaguna
on Fhloston Paradise.
- And in order to get him there on time,
they rig a contest, so he will win this nice trip
(32:29):
for 10 days.
That should be an easy mission,
and turns out to be anything but.
- and he takes LeeLoo along with him.
Actually, I think, how did it go?
first, Vito cornelius shows up and steals his tickets
from Korben Dallas by busting his apartment.
- Well first the military shows up
and tells him what happened.
(32:50):
That they rigged the contest.
- First the military shows up and tells him,
yes, you've won the contest.
then Vito cornelius shows up and steals the tickets from him.
he says, we have to go to fhloston paradise with LeeLoo.
- Yeah, and this is after he hid three large people
in a refrigerator and then--
- One of whom was Brian James.
and then Cornelius and LeeLoo show up.
(33:12):
And then the cops show up to raid the place
looking for Korben Dallas,
and he hides LeeLoo in the shower,
which has an auto wash,
and Cornelius in the bed,
which makes itself,
and I seriously want one.
- Yeah, that would be nice.
Of course, it's also a twin bed that folds into the wall.
everything in Korben Dallas' apartment
(33:32):
is modular and automatic.
- Which is cool, I mean, auto wash, man.
It's cool, but it's also like the size of a hallway.
- Well, yeah, but when it's just you,
what else do you need?
I mean, he's got his refrigerator in there.
He's got a bed.
- Korben Dallas was a micro house.
- He's got a Thai restaurant that floats to his window.
- Yeah.
A beautiful Thai restaurant, by the way,
(33:54):
that looks like a floating boat.
I think it was a blimp.
- It was kind of like an old junk.
- Yeah, it was like an old Chinese
future floating junk hovercraft.
And by the way, that was probably a Blade Runner reference
and he's eating Thai food in the future.
- Yeah, I just remember he forgot to feed the cat,
so he decides to make it up by ordering Thai food.
(34:16):
- and speaking of when they go to Fhloston Paradise
to retrieve the stones,
I never thought of it before until I saw it recently,
but it's a good thing the diva got shot
so they get the stones out of her.
- Yeah, I wondered how she was gonna give the stones up
if that hadn't happened.
- I mean, I don't know, is she going to expel them
or cough them up for LeeLoo after the concert,
but her getting shot kind of made it easy
(34:37):
for Korben to stick his hand in there
and fish around and pull the stones out.
- How did they get in there?
- I would assume she can--
- Did she just swallow them?
Were they surgically implanted?
- It would make sense for them to be surgically implanted,
but I don't know how.
- You would think being a singer with that kind of voice,
(34:57):
you wouldn't want to try and swallow them.
- No, probably not.
It's possible that her body was amorphous
and that her body had a different kind of consistency
than a human flesh bag,
so that maybe if she just pressed the stones hard
to her abdomen, she could absorb them.
- When he stuck his hand in her stomach,
(35:19):
let's be clear, he put his hand in her stomach.
- Her stomach, people.
- Yes, so when he shoved his hand in her,
she did same kind of hollow.
It wasn't like you would expect there to be
a lot of guts or whatever, it seemed more like a cavity
rather than just-- - Maybe she's,
all of her organs are probably in her tentacles
so that her whole body can be an echo chamber for her voice.
(35:43):
- That could explain how she was able to produce the sounds.
- Ruby is this larger than life character
who walks and talks with his own personal soundtrack
that he controls with a cane microphone.
He has a giant phallic cylinder
sticking out of his forehead for a haircut.
He wears unitards that would make David Bowie blush.
He has a high pitched voice that gets immediately
(36:04):
on your nerves and he was almost played by Prince.
Apparently the purple one didn't like the costumes though.
They had designed for him and he also couldn't shoot
the movie because it would have interfered with his touring.
- Yeah and Chris Tucker said that the inspiration for him,
for the character was a combination of Prince
and Michael Jackson.
- prince's Ruby Rhod, he would have had the much deeper voice
(36:25):
'cause Prince is known to have rather quite the range.
Jamie Foxx had this great routine he did
about when he met Prince, he felt,
apparently Jamie Foxx felt a little twinge
of homosexuality just being in the same room with Prince.
Like he did a whole standup routine about it
where he said, man, I feel weird being around him.
And he's talking to Prince's bodyguard,
(36:48):
and he's like, yeah, that happened.
He's like, yeah, I've heard quite a few people
mention that, it was interesting.
- And Jamie Foxx mentions the bodyguard,
he goes, it happened to you?
How'd you get over it?
"Oh man, it fucked me up for years."
It's just like...
so, apparently prince had the raw sexual power that would have added something to Ruby Rhod.
(37:11):
like, when Ruby Rhod walks into the room, it's chris tucker and all the women are swooning over him,
and, you know, you get the idea that it's, you know, "Oh, it's like he's a celebrity, they adore his show,
oh, they they love Ruby Rhod because he's he's Ruby Rhod. he's such a cult of personality kind of person
You get that you get this feeling that hyper sexual
(37:33):
Hypersexual and such but I feel like if they had actually cast Prince
then Ruby Rhod would have been like a walking porno movie that as soon as he walks in not only do all the women in
the in the room melt
But probably a lot of the guys do too and the movie would probably like Prince would burn his way out of the screen
(37:55):
Just like with the raw sexual power. See I think
Looking at it. I can see the the Prince influence easily
i mean, it's obvious the prince and michael jackson influence in Ruby Rhod. you can tell michael jackson's much michael jackson was always part of it
I think if you were gonna cast Prince I would I would do a gender swap and
(38:17):
have prince be The Fifth Element for me that would make more sense
cuz with LeeLoo every time the men -okay, you just blew my mind
-Every time the men were around her it was like she is perfect. It was just everybody
Loved her and that's kind of like with Prince. That's how that's how other men describe Prince being in the room with Prince
(38:40):
- So it's like you just do a gender swap
and you make instead of it being Bruce Willis,
you use like, Charlize Theron or something
and just flip it.
- This movie would have bombed at the box office
if that had happened.
I just don't, there's no way the audiences
would have come out in droves the way they did.
And they didn't really come out in droves that much.
(39:00):
- No.
- But that is an amazing idea that if you're gonna have
Prince in a movie about the perfect being
just cast him as the perfect being.
- Yeah.
- It's right there.
don't just have him be this backup character like Ruby Rhod.
No, just have Prince be the angel come down
to having to save the world or something.
- Why not?
- You can do it with the power of song too
(39:21):
at some point if you wanted.
No, that's a brilliant idea.
Okay, so when I ask you later,
like what would you have changed about the movie?
You could say nothing or you could just say,
well, i would have cast prince in Milla jovovich's part.
- Well, no, I wouldn't necessarily have cast him
in her part.
I would say if you did that,
you'd swap not just that one character's gender.
(39:43):
- yeah, you'd swap Korben Dallas' gender and have--
- Swap his and--
- See Charlize Theron.
- And being in the future, okay,
why is the priest still gotta be a man?
- Very well, could be.
- Yeah, I would do quite a few gender swaps,
possibly even the president.
- The president is a girl?
What is wrong with you?
- No.
(40:03):
- Okay, so it's either a girl or a very large black man.
He Zeus is a big fella. Yes. No, I yeah, that's funny
I think we've had a few movie versions of the president of earth and
The Fifth Element is just the one that comes to mind most easily
But I don't know if we've ever had one where the president of earth was a was a woman
(40:25):
There there have been movies with female presidents. I don't necessarily know if it was a president of earth
Yeah, there have been female presidents
Yes, I've seen there was a TV show about a female president madam president
i previously talked about LeeLoo being an impossible character for all intensive purposes and she is
but Milla jovovich pulls it off with a kind of wide-eyed innocence goofball comedic verb and and by mastering a language that doesn't exist
(40:52):
apparently her and Besson would speak in the language on set supposedly and
There's I don't think there's an actual dictionary for the divine language
No, he he started making it up when he was a kid and he'd worked a long time
Over a lot of years trying to develop it
She helped I think as he introduced her to it. She added to it with him
(41:17):
From what she says a lot of it was she would ask him like how do I say this or what about this?
And he would think about it and come back the next day and have a whole another big list of words for her to learn
But supposedly by the end of the shoot, they were having full conversations in the language.
And there was some, I don't know if it was speculation or if it was just kind of an offhanded
(41:42):
thing, but I watched this with, there's, instead of subtitles, you can do a fact track.
And I don't know if you've watched that on yours at all.
But basically it's just, instead of subtitles coming up, it's just a little trivia things.
And one of the things that comes up about that language was they were possibly talking
(42:05):
about their future wedding because it was only a couple months after this that they
ended up getting together.
And I can't remember if they got engaged a couple months later or if they got married
a couple months later.
But at the time of the filming of this, he was engaged to...
To Maïwenn Le Besco, who was the diva.
He was engaged to Maïwenn and...
(42:27):
audiences and of the genre will of the horror genre may remember most clearly
from high tension. That was another good movie. That was another good movie. But
yeah so that that was one of the things that came up on the fact track is were
they actually talking about that? I do not know. It's possible. I wasn't there. I don't know.
But it don't understand the language anyway so still what? No one does. Yes. It pretty much exists only in
(42:54):
Luc Besson's and uh Milla Jovovich's heads
For me, there's not a lot of one-off movies
that I can name that invent their own language
for a character, okay?
Most of the time when that happens, it's a franchise, okay?
And that's another reason I think
this should have been a franchise.
- Yeah, 'cause even Elvish, that's not really a one-off,
and that's a fully developed language.
- No, it's not, because he wrote how many books about elves?
(43:15):
- And Klingon was not a one-off.
That's another fully developed language.
- Tolkien invented all kinds of languages
for Lord of the Rings.
George RR Martin invented Dothraki for Game of Thrones, a guy named Mark Ocran invented
Klingon for Star Trek, James Cameron worked with linguists to make a language for the
Navee of Avatar, and that is the bare minimum level of storytelling we need to be talking
(43:37):
about generally when a language itself has to be invented.
And I could be wrong, maybe there's all kinds of stuff out there that are one and done stories
that have their own languages, but I doubt it.
Point being that there's another reason that this movie should have been a franchise and
its own language and Milla had to learn it.
Before they can even start filming before she can even turn up to set it is impossible by the way talking about Milla Jovovich
(43:58):
In this movie it is impossible for me to be impartial about this because when this movie came out in 1997
I was a teenage boy
and i completely fell in love with this amazing woman named LeeLoo played by this Ukrainian goddess Milla Jovovich
She learned a whole language of the part did martial arts training to fight like Bruce Lee
She had to run around in a white outfit people have dubbed the band-aid suit
And she did all this after her biggest roles up to that point were a bit part and Dazed and Confused a bad sequel to the
(44:23):
Equally bad blue lagoon and a bunch of heroin chic Calvin Klein obsession commercials
Milla has gone on to be the top earning female action star of all time and she deserves every penny
She's earned and every drop of happiness in her life
I loved this movie and I will shamelessly gush over it until the day I die and I dare you to criticize
LeeLoo Grim. -wasn't even gonna do that. I wasn't even gonna think about it. I was thinking how
(44:47):
how she actually won a Best Newcomer Award for this role.
- Which she deserved completely.
- Yes.
- And she was also nominated for Best Fight
by the MTV Movie Awards and she--
- And that was the fight scene
with the leg on a stick, right?
- I believe that was... the leg on the stick?
- Yeah, so when she's fighting the Mangalores
(45:09):
and she's got the one right in front of her
and I think she's holding on to them with both hands,
but they're so close that she can't really,
like really put her leg out far.
And she had just started to learn martial arts at the point.
So she couldn't get her leg up high enough.
So they happened to have a leg there that they could use.
(45:29):
It was essentially just a leg on a stick.
So when she does that high kick and kicks him in the face,
there's a couple of guys just out of shot with the leg
and they fling it up and hit him in the face with it.
- That must've been hilarious.
- Yeah, I would have loved to see a wide shot
just to see that in full.
I would have loved to have been the Mangalore,
just getting crushed, getting my face crushed by Milla.
(45:49):
- Well, yeah, there's that too.
I personally would rather have been Bruce Willis,
but that's just me.
- Any chance I could get, man, any chance.
That's all.
- If it's between the two, being Bruce Willis
and ended up in that thing at the end
or being a Mangalore and getting hit by a leg on a stick,
(46:10):
I'd take Bruce Willis.
- Yeah, well, I dream realistically.
dream big you know go big or go home. -strangely Luc Besson did venture into
the FX heavy sci-fi action again with the Valerian in the city of a thousand
planets but it was meh I watched it and that's my basic reaction Valerian isn't
that that's also a comic by yes it's actually the comic by Melier yeah that
(46:36):
that he based much of Fifth Element on.
- Yeah, a lot of the styles.
And what was it, was it that one?
- It was just a lot of Star Wars
on the comic, on Valerian comics.
- Was Valerian the one that,
the inspiration for the inside
when they first get to Fhloston Paradise?
(46:58):
- I'm not sure.
- With the big windows and everything.
'Cause the one thing that they were really happy
that Luc let them do was do their own thing
and design and just, this is the look we want.
And Luc's like, sure, great.
And he would think, can you do a little bit more of this
or a little bit more of that and just fine tune.
(47:20):
But he kind of let them do their own thing.
And the only time that he went to them and said,
I want this was when they first get in
and you see those big grand windows and everything else.
But even then, it was, I want this because I saw it in,
and I think it was Valerian.
(47:40):
I saw it in that, and I loved it.
Can you recreate that for this?
And just kind of give it this style.
So it was like, yeah, he did come to us
and want us to do something specific for him.
But even then, it was something from our ideas anyway,
so we'll let him pass.
But everything else was them doing their own thing
(48:02):
creating the sets and the scenes and just the look and feel of it all.
Uh, supposedly, Luc Besson was sued by Alejandro Dzorowski and Mobius, uh, because Dzorowski and
mobius, uh, had some evidence that, uh, Luc Besson stole elements of The Fifth Element from their
graphic novel De Inkal. And, uh, unfortunately, a judge decided that the elements were small
(48:28):
and too buried to constitute a outright theft. Or fortunately, actually, for the sake of Besson
and the originality of our beloved movie Fifth Element, maybe someday the ink-al will make it
to the big screen. I don't know. Apparently, Malie's Valerian was a huge influence on Star Wars.
(48:49):
I've never read it. Maybe someday I will. If we ever covered the Valerian movie on this podcast,
my thoughts about it will come out in more detail, but as it is now, i think we've got a pretty solid understanding of what we both think of Fifth Element. don't you, Mr. Grimm?
I think so.
I think we're good. If you could change anything, what would it be? Besides the Prince bod gender swap?
(49:11):
And I don't... I don't...
It's not something you would change.
I don't know if I would necessarily say I would change that. I think that would just be...
If you were trying to put Prince in it, I wouldn't put Prince as this DJ character.
I would. That makes sense. Yeah.
And it's just because Prince just had that magnetism.
(49:34):
He just exudes magnetism.
Charisma. If I would change anything,
that plastic thing on Gary Oldman's head, i think that's it.
The other thing I would change is you said the CG on the body being reconstructed
was a bit shoddy or it didn't age that well.
And you know what, fine, I'll go with that.
Let's have them do a special edition
(49:55):
where they make Milla's insides a little more detailed.
- I don't know, now that you mentioned that,
I don't know if I would necessarily say I would change it,
maybe update it so the graphics looked better,
but I think I'd just keep the scene as it was.
But like I said, maybe update a graphics.
And I think the really only change would be
what I was saying.
- This is sacrilege, sacrilege what we both said.
(50:16):
The movie's perfect the way it is.
it's perfect the way it is and everybody should watch The Fifth Element as often as they can.
If you ever catch it on tv and it's like, "oh cool, Fifth Element's on."
That's a good time for you.
You've just lucked out.
It's perfect the way it is.
You just ignore the continuity errors and other random things that appear a lot throughout the movie.
Continuity?
(50:37):
No, I'm kidding.
Yeah, there's quite a few continuity errors.
Yes, I imagine there are, but I've never nipped...
i don't nitpick when i'm watching The Fifth Element.
I just enjoy it.
I'm along for the ride.
I've watched this movie a lot.
And a lot of times it was either VHS
or I was at someone else's house and watched it on DVD
(50:59):
or something like that or watch it on TV.
And when it came time for this, I went over to the shelf
and grabbed mine off the shelf and realized
I'd had it for years and I'd never even unwrapped it.
And it's the ultimate edition.
at 2 Disc DVD.
No, it's a 2 Disc DVD set.
(51:21):
It's not even the Blu-ray.
But yeah, I was watching that
and then I found the fact track.
So it's like, oh, I gotta watch it again
just with a fact track.
And then after that--
- Which was a great use as we recorded this.
- Oh, there's so much on there.
I mean, the diva dance, that song,
she practiced that song for like three months
(51:44):
before they actually started filming
when she found out, okay, this is what's gonna happen.
And she practiced it like 30 times a day, every day.
- And this was the soprano Inva Mula,
who performed the music, the vocal performance
for the Diva Plava Laguna character.
And I believe, according to IMDb,
(52:05):
they had to sequence the notes,
or did she actually pull it off?
- No, it's not humanly possible.
- That's what I thought.
- Well, I say that, but,
the way things are going now,
it's getting questionable on that too.
But I'll get back to that in a second.
- I think there's some guy in Asia who's--
- Dimash.
(52:26):
- Yeah, he's got this voice like a bird,
and he can sing the diva.
- He switches octaves and just so quick.
And he goes from one extreme to the other.
And so many times, especially watching reactions
from different singing coaches or voice coaches
or whatever, and anytime they watch him,
(52:47):
it's just, they're in awe.
It's like, how can that be possible?
He can't be human.
But yeah, the song was designed to not be singable
by humans because of the fluctuations
and pitch and everything.
- The human throat cannot make the changes necessary
between the notes.
(53:08):
You can't change notes as fast as the diva dance requires.
Unless you happen to be this one guy, possibly.
Well, even all the people that have attempted it over the years, they always make some kind
of change because it's not possible.
But his is the closest I've ever seen.
But she practiced that because he told her, "No, I still want you to sing it."
(53:29):
And even if we dub over, the performance still has to be there.
It has to look like you're actually doing this.
So she'd practice it over and over again.
And then when it finally came time to do it, in the opera house, that was the first time
that they had seen her.
Because up until that point, none of the cast knew what she looked like.
(53:53):
And then they opened up the curtains and she steps out.
That was the first time they'd actually seen that character when she comes out to do that
performance.
Well, it wasn't, yeah, but the character, Maïwenn, was in the costume and it was the Invamula
who was singing.
So I could imagine.
I don't know why they would have that reaction
to the costume and not to the singing,
(54:13):
which was dubbed in later.
- Well, no, I mean, she still got up there and sing,
and sang the song and did the performance,
but still, that character, it was a very captivating look.
- It was indeed.
- And to just suddenly have this character
you've never seen before with this just out there look
that you just, you can't help but want to know more,
(54:35):
and comes out and does this amazing performance
that sadly ends up getting chopped up,
which the way it was chopped up
and edited together with the other scenes,
I think was great, but she was not happy.
She was rather disappointed
because so much of her performance got cut out.
But it is on the extras, so you can see the whole performance.
(54:57):
It's in front of a green screen,
but you can see the whole performance.
It's really good.
But yeah, like I was saying, I got this off the shelf
and I watched the fact track,
and it just made me want to watch it again
and start counting the fives.
- A lot of fives to count in there, people.
so next time you're watching Fifth Element, go for it.
- How many times do they say five minutes?
(55:18):
How many times, like at the end when the president walks in
and he's gonna thank Korben Dallas,
and you look behind him,
and there's all these people that come in,
and there's five guys with military hats.
there's when when the bomb is about to go off and Gary Oldman stops it
(55:39):
He stops it at five seconds, huh? And then the Mangalore bomb comes on. It's at five seconds
I mean, there's fives all throughout gained himself one second. Basically. I said it when we did our first episode
what I'm not really one to get into all the special features and
so far I've got into the special features of the three movies we've done and each time it's
(56:02):
Made me want to go back for more that is the joy of special features and that is part of the joy of in physical media
Physical media but on that note this train is pulling into the station my friends and it is time for us to have to bid
You adieu I'd like to thank Grim for being my wonderful co-host on this little journey
we took into The Fifth Element one of our favorite movies and one i plan on seeing many times more in the future
(56:25):
I believe you're the same Mr. Grim. Yeah, and as far as the thanks
Yeah, well, obviously got to, you thanked everyone else got to thank you as well
And thank thanks to all the people listening and remember to like subscribe thumbs up stars
Whatever the rating devices on whatever
Just or just you know leave comments. If you don't have anything nice to say make something up. There you go
(56:52):
We don't want negative. We want we want the positives especially with Fifth Element
we want the positives because what negative can you say about Fifth Element really?
Other than it's it's a shame. It's not more popular. It's a shame
It's not more popular that we did get more of it. So this is the strangers signing off
Yeah, thank you so much internet land and goodbye for now. Goodbye
(57:13):
Bye.
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