It's so full of life, creativity, color, humor, and themes we can all relate to (purpose, love, loss, etc).
This is peek Bruce Willis, and the movie is filled with other exceptional actors including Gary Oldman and Ian Holm. Milla Jovovich is extremely entertaining to watch as a sort fish-out-of-water, and I know Chris Tucker's character here isn't for everyone but in my opinion it's right on-brand for the film. Cracks me up every time for decades.
Mostly the effects have aged really well. That's generally thanks to heavy use of practical effects, as this article highlights.
I often get sad that this is becoming a lost art. Great filmmakers with big budgets are still doing this type of practical effects work (Nolan [Interstellar], Villeneuve [Dune]), but I think eventually it will be lost in time.
Yeah this comment to me is incredibly surprising. Chris Tucker played an absolutely incredible character in that movie. So creative, so well executed, so memorable.
He was up there with Bruce Willis as top two in that film.
Such a brilliant movie - and definitely feels like a lost art.
While the article mentions Moebius, I think this level of praise still merits an extra Incal callout, even if it just serves as a recommendation to those who want more of this stuff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incal
Another one of the things that I appreciated from George Miller with Mad Max: Fury Road. There's definitely CG used, but so much of the stunts were real and not SpiderMan level nonsense.
That's not to say that doing these things is pointless or unimpressive, but it's often used to denigrate and minimize the work of a lot of already quite underappreciated artists.
It's a wonderful movie, definitely one of my favorites.
Also one of my all time favorites.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_Sexy_Yesterday
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0thpEyEwi80
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luc_Besson#Personal_life
While I enjoyed watching the movies, I feel like I would have to point out this dynamic if I were to show the movie to my kids.
Especially considering he's using Leeloo as "the most quintessential example" but then also "emphasizes that the Born Sexy Yesterday trope intensifies the dynamic by positioning women as submissive rather than equal partners", which is clearly not really the case here.
Or for example a scene early on where Korben tries to kiss her, to which she reacts with a gun to his head and says "never without my permission". Doesn't really sound very innocent or without agency to me.
I get the point of the analysis and it's certainly not completely wrong, but it seems to be a bit far-fetched and incoherent to be honest.
I love it too, and the best part is, I had not heard of it until my buddy dragged me to the theater to see it. I was completely blown away, and have watched it dozens of times over the years. I had the same experience when my mom took me to see the Matrix. I didn't watch much TV back then and didn't keep up with movie previews.
I don't believe it to be honest; model making and painting remains a popular hobby for millions of people, the only question is whether filmmakers will want to use it.
And recently, especially in e.g. Star Wars franchise entries, they have gone towards using models / sets again instead of just using CGI for everything.
I agree that now we are finding our way back to a balance of using everything together to tell stories and I'm personally here for it.
The advertising tries to tell you "we did everything practical!", it's always a lie and you believe it.
It always just seemed out of place to me. Exclude that one scene and it's perfect as far as I'm concerned.
http://web.archive.org/web/20161007133354if_/http://digitald...
The overall vision for the city is implicit but wildly creative: sea levels have dropped significantly, with the architecture of the city spreading across the newly-exposed land and leaving original structures like the Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan's skyscrapers, and the Statue of Liberty towering above the landscape. There are also oodles of tiny details scattered throughout the image -- you can pore over it for a good 10 minutes and still find more to appreciate. Very cool of Digital Domain to share it originally.
I took the extended WB back lot tour years ago, and part of the tour was through the matte painting shop. The scale is very impressive. To see artists on 12' ladders to work on it was a nice "human for scale" during the tour.
The circular/sphere real time screen backgrounds Favro at Disney/StarWars is using for The Mandolorian is also neat tech as well.
And each time I see an article like this, I simply marvel at the immense love for art and life it has. What an incredibly talented crew, what product of mastery and care.
The Fifth Element has similar cinematic feeling as the first Blade Runner.
And now it is clear. There is the same person behind it :)
I did however very much hated Dane DeHaan's annoying voice.
Unfortunately the movie doesn't do it for me, the 90s were a better time.
Once CGI became good storytelling and creativity took a backseat in Hollywood.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pf5dPrmBvwE
It was a fun film, but Chris Tucker broke the pacing too many times for a general audience. Even now on rottentomatoes his role still distracts focus from the character arcs.
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/fifth_element
Was a cult classic for sure, but nowhere near Blade Runner as a film. =3
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouffon
Blade Runner had its own issues, but was a better film done with far less. =3
The pacing, the great costumes and set design by Moebius, the actors Bruce Willis and Milla Jovovich, and the unusual ideas (like the alien opera singer) were all more than enough to carry the movie.
http://i.imgur.com/6W5InkH.jpg
That image is only on screen for like 2 seconds, but it tells a whole story and really pulled me into the film. The first half you're deep in the city, and then finally when you get to see it from afar, it seems like a whole real city instead of the few locales they shot. Also makes it feel like a continuity of our future instead of some random alien drama.
Imgur might be vastly underselling the richness of the image, depending on your browser/device. Definitely check out the full 4K version if you're only seeing a thumbnail on that page:
http://web.archive.org/web/20161007133354if_/http://digitald...
Which scene are you referring to?
http://www.vfxhq.com/1997/stills/fifth/welcome.jpg
It's the wide shot of NYC after they leave the spaceport.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1935156/
On the cover it's a story about the failed production of Alejandro Jodorowsky's Dune script but the deeper story was the aggregation of an unbelievably talented pool of visual artists including Jean "Moebius" Giraud (mentioned as central artist in 5th element), H.R. Giger, Chris Foss, Salvador Dali, & Dan O'Bannon.
That group would go on to centrally influence the visual style of a huge body of science fiction work including Alien, Blade Runner, Total Recall, Star Wars, The Matrix, Guardians of the Galaxy, etc etc.
The art and creativity on display in the film is absolutely sonic.
Kind of like the original PayPal mafia!
I'm still holding out hope for a cartoon of The Incal.
Speaking of sequels, who in the star wars universe will get their own show next? Based on who is left, i put my money on Exogorth.
Unfortunately, while I've grown to like the Valerian movie, when compared to Fifth Element it would seem that Besson should have been given a far tighter budget for Valerian rather than the apparent near free reign he got.
> Mother/Actress/Architect of MemPalace free and open source on GitHub
And the linktree from the Instagram profile links to https://github.com/milla-jovovich/mempalace
https://github.com/milla-jovovich/mempalace/graphs/contribut...
But it is so dumb that it doesn't even add to the drift towards greater Idiocracy clock values.
https://xcancel.com/BrianRoemmele/status/2041397710113435659...
Looking back, the whole story gives a different futuristic feel to the usual gloomy polluted dystopian earths, and feels a bit, "near-future".
Seeing hover cars getting drive through McDonalds will forever be a future hope for me (my inner 10 year old self)
