MovieChat Forums > The Fifth Element (1997) Discussion > I don't like this movie

I don't like this movie

posted 8 months ago by avortac4 (3751)
14 replies | jump to latest

This is one of those popcorn flicks you can't ever take seriously. They are meant to just give you a passing sense of fun and entartainment, so then you can forget them and go about your day.

Movies like this don't always trigger my 'hey, that didn't make any sense'.. err.. sense?

There are, of course, ridiculous things in this movie, just like pretty much any movie. How come the photo of a hallway printed and held unsteadily on your head produces the EXACT same visual as live footage of that same hallway? Even if you get your picture lit JUST right, and the photo is taken from the EXACT same angle (which means, it would basically have to be a screenshot from the actual camera, OR you'd have to replace the camera for the shot)... it would just be too shaky to look realistic (no one can become as still as that trick would require you to, especially that junkie-looking loser), AND so on..

The other thing that puzzles me, is how the heck did the opera singer get those stones inside her stomach? They are rock solid, pretty heavy, large, cumbersome, and her body would need room for her actual organs, too, right? Also, what was the plan if she HADN'T conveniently been murdered, so you couldn't just dig into her stomach willy-nilly?

How come having multiple heavy, big stones inside of your body doesn't hinder your super-demanding sing-and-dance performance? Performing like that is stressful and complicated, nerve-wrecking and difficult as-is, adding THIS challenge would make it impossible.

Just saying she is 'an alien' doesn't explain it fully, either, so don't even try.

However, this time I will just make a post about not really liking this movie.

It's a curious thing - I like the actors for the most part, the futuristic sci-fi setting is great (it's escapism when it's something more interesting than your everyday life on Earth), the sets are cool, as well as many of the visuals anyway - the ugly things look ugly, pretty things look pretty and everything looks as good as could be expected from a movie like this.

I can't remember much about the soundtrack, except the weird opera-pop-song that plays when Mary Sue is beating up men twice her siz.. I mean, when the 'magical being' is superficially and overly-stylistically wushuing some big, stupid monster-aliens that never make any effective-looking moves OR use their guns.

I love space stories and other-planetary mysteries and the pyramids have always been a source of extreme fascination for me - I could look an ancient hieroglyphic art picture of Anubis for days and not get bored, and I still want to see the face of the Isis statue that is kept under the glass, facing away from the public, so you can never see her (I only have a lousy 1970s photo of that particular face - you see the other statues, but not her), of the 'four goddesses' that protect some big box, I forgot the name. (Isis is the one with the modern office building-looking boxy thing on her head)

This movie should have been my top two - on paper. It has everything I should be excited about - comedy, charismatic and talented Hollyweird actors, space theme, other planets, 'futuristic ray gun type weapons', extra-terrestrials, a slightly different plot (although in the end, it's just your typical 'get the MacGuffin, then world will be saved'-romp you've seen an astronomical number of times)..

I even have to ask myself; WHY do I not like this movie? It should be great! It should be exactly my cup of tea.. on paper, this is THE perfect movie for me.

There are some easy explanations, but I am not sure I can ever fully understand it. To list some..

- The Extra-Terrestrials look goofy and too weird, and it's not clear if they are in suits or if that's their skin, etc. They also sound pretty lousy, and this 'only life important' stuff is a lukewarm non-message at best. Nothing spiritual about it, not expanding actual knowledge of what actually went on in the pyramids (which is a thousand times more interesting)

- The spaceships look pretty stupid - who designed these things? If you want to see actually BEAUTIFUL spaceships that do not look predictably pedestrian and cliché, watch the old cartoon 'Once upon a Time...Space' (also french type production.. Il était une fois… l'Espace)

- I absolutely hate the woman in the main role, she's almost anti-type for me - the opposite of 'my type', brr. Still get shivers of disgust when I think of her and her childish way of speaking for the most of the movie

- I hate the IDEA of a 'woman' being the 'perfect being' (haven't we pedestalized these monsters enough? Not ALL women are as crazy as the ones in the cop videos, but watch enough of these 'entitled teen' cop videos to see what many women absolutely are and even the rest CAN turn into)

- I hate that they just 'recreate' her out of thin.. well, out of a hand? A glove? What? How does that work? If the machine can do that, couldn't the machine make MULTIPLE ones? What about 200 of them?

[–] avortac4 (3751) 8 months ago

I mean, the implications of 'MACHINE being able to RECREATE someone perfectly into a LIVING BIPEDAL BEING' are _SO_ massive, the writers obviously did not think of them. Now that the machine has that pattern, what is to stop it from creating another and another and another?

This is why reality of the soul is so important; it doesn't matter what BODY you have or create, without soul, it's just a lifless mass of organic matter, it's just like an actual dead body after the soul has left. When the silver cord is cut, NO 'science' in this world can bring someone 'back to life'. You can't rescuscitate the dead, which is what this movie is basically doing. The soul is GONE.

Now, the soul could reincarnate into a new body if it has all the requirements fulfilled, like a functional chakra system, support for the 'silver cord' and so on, but this is never established in the movie.

Also, since these nihilistic, materialistic, soul-hating movies always operate as if body is the same as the individual, the human being, then the human being is worthless, especially if you can just make more and more of these bodies. This machine could make 700 'Fifth Elements' (so then it'd be like seventh-hundreth element?) if there is no individual soul. Supposedly the 'weird DNA' makes her special, not the soul, but think about it - if the machine can just easily recreate that kind of DNA body (which doesn't really seem to do much anyway, because she's 'just a girl' for most of the movie, except the typical Mary Sue Kung-Fu-scene)..

..what would happen if it just kept making them? Would the 'Fifth elements' fight amidst each other?

- I hate the idea that a Mary Sue type over-celebrated pretty ugly (or at least mediocre-looking) hag is said to be ANY kind of 'element', especially 'the fifth one', when it SHOULD be common knowledge that the fifth element is actually either ether or metal, depending on how you are researching it. Of course, the true element is ether, as it is a real one..

[–] avortac4 (3751) 8 months ago

.. and pretty much everywhere. It's a solid part of existence.

Metal is basically just a certain type of rock that exists in small clumps in mountains. They're not comparable, so a metal can't be an element. Even if it could, it would be part of the Earth element already, so it can't be its own, separate element, or then silver and gold would ALSO be elements, sand would be another element and so on. There's only 'Earth', and anything belonging to that element is included, not a separate element.

I guess the ancient people didn't always agree upon what they thought, but someone should've meditated upon this or at least explained why ONE physical thing can randomly be an element, but some gas can't, etc... makes no sense.

- The story isn't anything to type home about - it is actually SO paint-by-the-numbers, that after the relatively interesting first scene (where our 'good guys' were shown to be evil enough to MURDER someone by poisoning them? Did we all forget? This priesthood is EVIL, but because they were told 'only life important' JUST MINUTES AFTER TRYING TO SNUFF OUT A LIFE... we somehow forget and root for the evil priesthood, yay)..

..you have to groan about 800 times before the movie is over.

- I hate that 'love' solves everything, even though hollyweird movie 'love' is just emotional lust at best, and does not show any hallmarks of actual love, which is genuine, altruistic, selfless caring of your fellow entities and life around you (you don't limit it to bipedal entities, either!)

- I hate that the movie would fall apart, if anyone had thought about the STUPIDEST THING IN MOVIE HISTORY a bit further than 'hey, there is a word like 'war' in dictionary'.

There are SO, so, SOOOOOOO very many, super big amount, massively ridiculously enormous amount of 'just as bad' or 'worse' words than 'war' in the dictionary.

Our 'sensitive Heehoo' ACCEPTS them without a shrug. She gets to V without ANY ill effects, but 'war' then makes her go crazy??

[–] avortac4 (3751) 8 months ago

Isn't she supposed to be some kind of ANCIENT, POWERFUL BEING that is trusted to be the Fifth Element that can VANQUISH SUPER POWERFUL EVIL BEINGS?

What is THAT, if not the result of a war? What is that, if not war in itself? She is WARRING against that planet, she is a friggin' WEAPON OF WAR and she doesn't know what WAR means?! WHAT?!

She's show, as women in movies always are, in an extremely schizophrenic, contradictory way, because moviemakers always try to show women as strong, powerful, independent, more strong than men - but then they realize they also need to make them look sympathetic, so they make them pathetic, weak, vulnerable, crying and whining and being completely childish.

I mean, if a woman has to be shown as 'cute and adorable', right down to her stupid name (groan), she CAN'T be shown to be a strong, independent WAR WEAPON... but this movie doesn't care, or the makers didn't.

It's just so extremely stupid - not to mention, she likely uses english words that begin with V, W, X, Y, Z, etc. I mean, maybe not each of those letters, and I have not researched this, but I will bet you 500 dollars there's at least ONE word she uses in this movie that belongs to the part of the dictionary she didn't read.

Not to mention, you can't learn english from a book, because english pronunciation makes NO SENSE, so you would pronounce it wrong if you don't know how messed up it is. You can't speak on her level, no matter how big of a genius you are, if you learned it from a book. Even Manuel would speak better! (Point to anyone recognizing the reference)

So let's look at some of the words she is 100% UNPHASED (or is it unfazed?) by.

- Atrocity
- Alimony
- Attrition
- Attack
- Butcher
- Bombing
- Bankers
- Bunkers
- Battalion
- Counterstrike
- Carnage
- Creep
- Comanche helicopter
- Culling
- Cutthroat
- Death Cult
- D-Day
- Daltons, the
- Depression
- Desperation
...

and so on, and these were just off the top of my head.

[–] avortac4 (3751) 8 months ago

I must have missed quite many, but the point should be clear - there are SO very very many SO much worse words before 'war', it boggles the mind.

Just to pick a few 'favorites'..

- Genocide (not a problem, as long as it's not war?)
- Holocaust
- Gassing
- Agent Orange
- Vietnam
- Politics
- Feminism
- Murder
- Psychopath
- Serial Killer
- Shotgun
- Machine Gun
- Nuclear Strike
- Nagasaki
- Hiroshima
- Pollution
- Torture
- Brainwashing
- Lobotomy
- Psychiatry
- Napalm

And so on and so forth, like.. HOW are you THAT affected by 'war', after knowing the full meaning of each of these words? After knowing all that, something like 'war' seems like a walk in the park!

[–] avortac4 (3751) 8 months ago

I guess this movie DOES have its 'makes no sense' moments and stupidities, but it's rare that they are -quite- this stupid.

- Bruce Willis is supposed to be some kind of 'tough guy', I mean, look at him in 'Die Hard'. Yet, in this movie, he's basically just a simp for this 'element' woman. He is also weirdly creepy and r*pey, so go figure. Hard to root for him in this one. He also treats fellow beings like crap, but only the vag-holder version of a 'human' gets any sympathy from him. Why isn't he worried about freezing the men, but is shocked at slightly moistening the bint? There's no equality here!

- The fashions are absolutely stupid - why have these weird outfits for air hostesses, where they 'show cleavage but don't show cleavage'? Just make up your mind already, and make them look professional. Chris Tucker's hair could not be more confusingly repulsive as well, is he supposed to look phallic or like a girl? Either way, EWW! (I refuse to say 'ick')

How about wearing a turd e-moji on your head? How did that happen?

- The 'message' is strong with this one, especially considering how long ago this was made. Not only is the Mary Sue, of course, the strongest thing ever and can just weakly throw her fist and some big grunt dies from it, but token black people in powerful positions and so on. Sigh. Well, at least Chris Tucker's character is more what normal casting should be - just cast whoever has the skill in the role, and don't care about any superficial characteristics!

- The world is shown to be pretty close to an absolute dystopia - if I had to live like Bruce's character, I would die from something other than cigarettes, how about anxiety, claustrophobia, no nature anywhere, aagh... I would probably just jump down and hope to be hit by some moving vehicle

[–] avortac4 (3751) 8 months ago

- The stupidity of 'flying cars' rears its ugly head again. Look, it's a wonderful idea, we have probably all dreamed about it, but letting regular people, that can't even handle mopeds, FLY a car? How do you stop drunk flying? Err, drunk flying-driving? What would you even call that? In any case, just watch enough car crash videos, cop videos, Tesla cam videos and whatnot to see that this big bunch of absolute morons is not mentally or psychologically equipped to handle the cars we have NOW..

.. but somehow in these movies, no one ever crashes. Everyone just drives perfectly in the air. Can't at least ONE of these movies show us a mid-air collision because some redneck was texting while 'drive-flying' and thought they can handle a little inebriation as well..?

People are really, really stupid, so giving them a flying car would be a disaster of epic proportions. We would all have to live in fear of a car falling on our heads, almost regardless of where we are, inside or outside.

- The future-prediction gimmicks, like the 'inverted cigarette'. If a filter gets bigger than the smoked portion, people would just make their own cigarettes. Somehow this movie missed the 'vaping craze' completely, though.. what's up with that?

- This movie doesn't REALLY take you out into space. Please don't react until you know what I mean by this. There are movies that do this, we all know them - even the old, crappy show 'Babylon 5' did this in its own way. This movie pretends to be a space adventure, but it's really just 'let's mundanely chase the MacGuffin while things explode'-romp. We don't TRULY get to feel any space travel, see any unique planets and nature, let alone architecture.. just your typical, tiny run-around and we're back in the pyramids. Sigh. What a lost opportunity.. so it's not truly a space-faring movie, but it could have been.

[–] avortac4 (3751) 8 months ago

- Small stupidities, like the 'cockroach spybot. Why would ANYONE let a big insect run around on their table, especially that close? Who thought that was a good idea? Probably the same cretin, who thought we want to have the video/stream keep playing when we click the 'close tab' or 'close window' button. Of course we don't REALLY mean what we do in the internet, so let's FORCE the user to do what the corporation wants instad. WHOSE IDEA WAS THAT tiny window that follows you everywhere even though you thought you closed that tab already? I WANT HEADS ON PLATTERS!! .. well, foam heads on beer, I mean. But still..

- No real surprises or anything 'new' to offer the audience. Everything is so predictable and paint-by-the-numbers, it becomes a cartoon.

- The movie tries to be too many things at once, and falls flat on every aspect. It tries to be a comedy, but it's not quite funny enough for that. It wants us to take things seriously, but it's too goofy for that. It wants to bring us mystery, but it plays it too safe and it's too predictable and paint-by-the-numbers, run-of-the-mill for that. It tries to give us action, but all we see is some Mary Sue typically handling grotesque monsters like Jackie Chan, but not as convincingly or entertainingly, and she doesn't do her own stunts (not that there are many stunts to talk about anyway), making the action actually boring.

I could go on, but you get the drift... it's actually fascinating, how a movie can try so many things and still be so formulaic and predictable, it's almost an achievement in itself.

- The movie CHEATS way too much. We are all used to the trop of 'uh oh, they are going to crash in two seconds', then we see the scene from another angle, and whoops, suddenly they have 10 more seconds. Count down things in movies to realize how common it is - in 'Airplane!' you can count down the altitude when the autopilot deflates. If you keep counting down the same speed we are shown it's going down, it crashes.

[–] avortac4 (3751) 8 months ago

You can take almost any movie that has this kind of scene; from 'First Blood''s 'Heheey, you have three seconds until I break your face!' to 'The planet will be in sights in six minutes'(or whatever the actual line is) (while the visual shows it's a matter of seconds). There's SO much cheating in movies, it makes me sick.

However, this movie takes it to another level. 'Unbreakable glass' is easily broken by a physical woman (DNA does not explain why a bipedal female would be ANY stronger than actual woman, unless we get a good explanation about muscle density or something, maybe, but even then)..

She jumps through what looks like thin tinfoil wall, when a wall in a secure lab should be SOLID and FORTIFIED and who knows what else. WHY would anyone make a wall as weak as _THAT_?! It doesn't even matter how strong she is, she is not using a 'powerful technique' by simply throwing her body (weight doesn't matter, because if it was really heavy, she could not jump like that) against the wall. It's a lot like Wesley's character throwing a guy against a glass in 'Demolition Man' - the move would not be stronger than his kick would be, and so on)..

Also, how would she understand what the keycard is and how to use it, why would the general tease her like that anyway, why don't they have a plan in place for communication with this being AND SO ON.. it's all so stupid, cartoony, unplanned and improvised. Which it WOULDN'T be in such a controlled situation in a lab!

Why can she know what the card is and what to do with it, but not realize those people mean her no harm? Why is everything so selective and contrived? WHY ESCAPE THOSE PEOPLE IN THE FIRST PLACE?!

- This woman is worshipped by everyone almost constantly, it's sickening to the stomach. 'She's the perfect being' blablah, but you should not let your DICK make that kind of judgements, now should you? Geez, adult professionals can't do better than THAT?!

[–] avortac4 (3751) 8 months ago

She's not there to be your fap material, she's a VERY IMPORTANT 'element' (no pun intended) in defeating a super terrible monster villain thing! (Can't take anything seriously in this movie, so I will also explain things the way this movie would)

But sure, gawk at her like you have never seen an old pr0n-magazine and have nothing important to say or do beyond that.. professional lab workers? These guys should've been fired immediately.

- So many stupid explosions just for the sake of explosions. I once tried to inquire someone about why the lowest common denominator not only likes, but loves these huge, planet-polluting gas cloud explosions, but I never got a good answer beyond 'durr..duhh..cool.. it's s0 k3w1 when BADABOOM', a bit like how this movie keeps repeating that toddler lingo crap, sigh.

Why is no one ever talking how much these things pollute when they make movies or how much nature is destroyed by elon's space crapx, but sure, let's ban ALL PLASTIC STRAWS so now nature will be saved. I can't even shake my head enough..

I have never liked an explosion, I have never understood why mindless destruction and pollution is supposedly 'cool', I never get why there are so many explosions in almost every movie, or why they would EVER be required for any movie, but I guess in the CGI-era, at least nature won't be gassed as much.

Oh yeah, the word 'explosion' is also there, and Heehaw doesn't even flinch.

To mention a few more, 'execution', 'electric chair', 'fatal injections', 'death penalty' and so on.. how about 'Vlad the Impaler'? That's gross stuff if you ever read about it.

- The main point might be that this movie is just so very childish. It's like hiding a coin in your left hand, then showing your right hand. A toddler will know it's in your left hand, an adult would not even bother rolling their eyes. That's how this movie feels, some idiot doing these really banal toddler-'tricks', but for an adult audience.

[–] avortac4 (3751) 8 months ago

I feel like I am watching 'Best of the Worst', when they watch those 'magic trick' tapes, where pretty much EVERY single tape has the 'rubbery pen' trick, where you simply move a pen inbetween your fingers, so it looks like it 'bends'.. GROAN! How young do you have to BE to find that entertaining?

This movie is childish in a very similar way - it shows these things we're supposed to just 'believe' and not question at all, although a toddler could already tell why that would not work, or why that's a stupid and crazy thing to do, and so on.

This takes you off the viewing experience, because the immersion gets broken constantly by something so stupid and childish, you have hard time taking it seriously. That general, by the way, should not be alive near the end of the movie, after Corben callously kills him in the freezer.

Worst part? Pleebploob is IN THE ROOM when Corben absolutely MURDERS multiple men by freezing them to death, but because she is a selfish bstard, she doesn't care about such murder whatsoever, she only cares about 'war'.

I mean, think about it - 'war', as terrible as it is when it happens, is basically just a reference word to 'something far away', and you can perfectly discuss it in a calm and rational way without emotions, if you are so inclined.

But if you watch someone MURDER three men in COLD BLOOD (pun intended), that should at least shake you a little bit, right? One is basically an 'abstract concept' you can philosophize about while sipping your Mocca Latte in some palm tree shade cafeteria, the other is something that actually HAPPENS and should basically affect you very powerfully!

Our 'perfect being' is a friggin' PSYCHOPATH, because the murder right under her feet (quite literally) does not bother her THE LEAST, but reading about this abstract concept makes her tear up.

Sheesh..

I am tired of trying to explain it, I guess I will never truly know, but for some reason, I just somehow don't like this movie.

[–] AmeriGirl26 (14674) 8 months ago

I usually treat it as a comedy, a "cartoon with people in it."

[–] cv1cv (515) 8 months ago

BEWARE! Avortac4 is a troll trying to waste everyone's time with such idiotic comments. Look at his posts. He doesn't think anything in any film makes sense. His post may seem like it makes sense in the first sentence or two. But he always quickly wanders off into a completely idiotic idea, and then writes a wall of text that makes no sense. And his sole purpose is to waste your time, thinking he's cute for doing so. Don't feed the troll. If you write a comment, you're giving this troll EXACTLY what he wants. Don't comment after my comment.

[–] Drusilla (563) 8 months ago

I love this movie. There are barely any sci fi movies out there with great worlds like this one has. They are all desolate and boring. So for that reason alone I like it. There are many other reasons too.

[–] moviechatterer (15957) 6 months ago

great point.