The Fifth Element (1997): The Future Is an Advanced Sh*thole

It’s 2263. We have flying cars, restaurants that come directly to your window, apartments the size of closets, and somehow humanity is still a mess. So naturally, the fate of the world rests with a burned-out taxi driver and a perfect being who takes one look at human history and immediately develops anxiety. This week on Cozy Quilt Cinema, we’re talking about The Fifth Element (1997), Luc Besson’s bright, bizarre, wildly fashionable sci-fi adventure starring Bruce Willis, Milla Jovovich, Gary Oldman, Ian Holm, and Chris Tucker. We get into Leeloo’s surprisingly heartbreaking journey, Corbin Dallas being perpetually comedy-adjacent, Ruby Rhod turning everything up to eleven, Jean Paul Gaultier dressing the apocalypse, and Zorg repeatedly demonstrating why you should always open the case before leaving the scene of the crime. We also talk about consent, dystopia with all the lights turned on, whether love really is the fifth element, why everyone treats the Supreme Being like a very expensive tool, and how a movie this ridiculous still manages to have something genuine to say about choosing to care about a world that gives you plenty of reasons not to. Then we put The Fifth Element through the Stitch Count to see how this colorful future holds up nearly thirty years later.