The futuristic city with flying cars at the beginning of the movie definitely has all the cyberpunk visuals, and technically Zorg is the head of an evil corporation. But the real villain of the movie is incoming force of evil/darkness. And the plot is resolved through the power of love. Even the President of Earth is actively trying to help do the right thing and save the planet.
While there are some great cyberpunk visuals at the beginning of the movie, I don’t know if the themes are there to call this cyberpunk. What do you think? Would you consider The Fifth Element to be cyberpunk?
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It’s not a cyberpunk story, but it’s a cyberpunk world.
Ooh very succinct.
Simple and accurate, I agree with this.
TV Tropes calls it Cassette Futurism, which is part cyberpunk.
I wouldn’t. It has a great dystopian setting, and the visuals are totally cyberpunk, but the antagonist isn’t an embodiment of The System That’s Grinding The People Down (I don’t think? It’s been a while since I’ve seen it). Also, the government has a degree of power, and isn’t corrupt/defanged by evil corps.
I also think of cyberpunk stories as operating on smaller, human scales (e.g. the stakes in Blade Runner are personal), whereas the Fifth Element deals with THE DESTRUCTION OF THE PLANET EARTH. I think. It’s been a while.
Having said all that, lots of people like it, and if you will enjoy it more if it’s cyberpunk, then I agree, it’s 100% cyberpunk.
While I agree with your other points, I’d argue that Jean-Baptiste Emmanuel Zorg is part of the system grinding people down, and the government is pretty feckless.
To the first point, Corbin Dallas is fired from a taxi company run by Zorg. He’s the head of a massive conglomerate that does everything from taxis to weapons sales.
To the second, while the government does have power Zorg also has a bug (literal and technological) in their war room, which shows while they might not be subordinate to Zorg the government isn’t powerful enough to prevent this sort of thing. Also, the government ends up failing in their mission to save the planet.
However, there’s also magic in the universe and, as you said, they’re saving the earth from destruction and not overthrowing Zorg, so I wouldn’t call it cyberpunk.
Totally fair. It’s been a long time since I saw the movie.
To the second, while the government does have power Zorg also has a bug (literal and technological) in their war room, which shows while they might not be subordinate to Zorg the government isn’t powerful enough to prevent this sort of thing. Also, the government ends up failing in their mission to save the planet.
There’s an interesting question here. IMO government’s loss of control is a big part of cyberpunk, because it kinda/sorta shows people have lost power to corporations.
I was going to say that governments are usually absent/background in cyberpunk, but then you have Deckard (Blade Runner) who is employed as a cop.
But whatever. It’s a genre, so there are no rules, only commonalities.
I know this is a very old thread, but cops being essentially legalized corporate forces empowered by law is also very cyberpunk.
I dont think it is fleshed out if the government in blade runner isnt actually a corporate puppet that exists to create the legal framework the corpos behind it desire, especially if it turns out the blade runner and alien universes are one and the same as ridley scott suggests.
In that case the government would be subservient to weyland yutani, who are nonchalantly able to deploy government military personnel as they see fit.
Both are good. From a genre perspective it shows that corporations have taken over. I like the idea of corporate militaries, but corps influential enough to tell governments what to do hews closer to reality.
Here is a good cut list comparing the 1981 version and the more recent version.
Consider some other cyber punk classics that are contemporaneous with the older version: Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Robocop, and Bladerunner. The older version hits many of the same beats story wise, especially with Bladerunner and Robocop. They have that very crime-drama/ film noir styleing, that the source material very much so has. Also, the original I think does show System Thats Grinding People Down, and the corrupt/ defanged system by corrupt cops. For example, Corban has to bribe a cop to get any services in the original, is turned into a cop refusing to act until he gets his McDonalds served to him in the more modern version.
I personally consider the original to be a cyberpunk classic that actually helped form/ shape the genre, but like many genre defining pieces, it doesn’t actually perfectly fit what the genre becomes. I mean you figure bladerunner comes out almost two years after the original fifth element comes out as a short in the Heavy Metal movie.
I didn’t realize it was a remake of a Heavy Metal short. Thanks for the link!
You’d probably like the most upvoted answer if you haven’t seen it.
Been a while since I’ve seen it, but one thing that I’m remembering differently than a lot of folks in this thread is that I don’t remember it being outright dystopian. Sure, evil corp and all. But Earth government isn’t really evil, the arts are still cherished, and while life seems hard it seems more like a dysfunctional society than a dystopia. Just my take though (and doesn’t address OP’s question).
My fun anecdote is that maybe 10 years back I got a free LaserDisc player. The local library happened to have The Fifth Element on LD, so naturally I rented it. You had to request media at the front desk, so I wrote down the call number and he returned with a very confused look — “you know this is LaserDisc, not DVD or Blu-ray? Like, it’s…really big.” Not the same quality as Blu-ray, but was definitely more fun :)
What kind of punk restricts themselves to “punk rules”?
Lawful punk?
old punks?
It’s multipasspunk
Gimmedacasshhh
Negative, I am a meat popsicle
Please place your hands in the yellow circles
That’s…a… very nice hat.
“You like ittt?”
dances
Not a lot of cyber in it, more just sci-fi.
CyberPop
I typically view cyberpunk as a world dressing that acts more as a backdrop and I think The Fifth Element fits it pretty well.
I feel like the rest of it kind of just layers on. Kind of like the game Cloudpunk. It’s set in a futuristic dystopian world that reminds me a lot of Blade Runner but feels a lot like a mystery and adventure game. The cyberpunk aspect doesn’t feel like it’s the most notable part.
This is a very fair take on the whole genre influence thing. More aesthetic similarities yet less story mechanics that are found to define genres. Let’s give open creativity a chance before we stick some label on that produces low effort drudgery.
Very true. Just like there’s high fantasy vs low fantasy, there’s almost a “cyberpunk by aesthetic” and “cyberpunk by themes” distinction in cyberpunk.
It’s not not cyberpunk.
It’s close enough and shares enough of the same things to be analyzed as part of the genre.
I do think that to a large extent the big evil bowling ball of doom is supposed to abstractly represent capital or something adjacent.
Things like the depiction of the indigenous resistance movement as unsophisticated dupes and terrorists merits analysis; why did the French director depict them this way? How can this be a reflection of French colonial history? Same with the depiction of the white Archeologists and the presumably middle easter kid subjected to colonialism in the beggining though I think there’s less there.
Leelu can be analyzed through the “born sexy yesterday” trope and there’s a lot of questions to ask from a Feminist slant.
The movie actually acknowledges some of the harms and contradictions of capitalism, while underplaying others. Showing the relationship between Corben as a cabby working for Zorg and ultimately being one of the people who thwarts Zorg is nice.
The decision to never have the protagonists and the antagonists directly interact is a neat one and opens up some very good questions about narrative norms - turns out the hero doesn’t actually need to confront the villain!
It does have a lot of cyberpunk themes; mighty and powerful corporations and governments can’t save themselves so they need a working class guy and his weird buddies to save the world. The upper classes are depicted as a gaggle of decadent idiots who have no idea what’s happening, while the corporate leader is a hyper-competent bastard who completely understands all the harm his sytem causes and loves it.
And it’s also just a silly adventure film with lots of style and cool visuals and a sappy power of love resolution.
You sound like you watched the movie yesterday. Props.
The questions around French culture/history are interesting.
I don’t remember the whole “no direct interaction” thing. That’s interesting too.
I think it definitely is, especially if you go back to the original Heavy Metal source material. Its just a very 1970’s/ New York portrayal of what Cyber Punk can be. The original material is also very much more in the film noir/ crime drama vein, which also aligns with some older cyber punk classics like Ghost in the Shell, Robocop, Total Recall, Bladerunner, etc.
The 90’s version is brighter and more up beat than the 1970s version, but are actually pretty close overall. My assessment is totally cyberpunk, just not the narrow view of what cyber punk actually is. Its story hits the right beats and the world is the right size, shape and feel. I think both the original material and the new material are very much cyber punk.
Here is a youtube video comparing the elements of both the 1970s Fifth element and the more recent one.
One of my favorite movies. I really don’t consider it cyberpunk but I also wouldn’t say it’s not. It’s got a lot of the aesthetic theme and it’s dystopian but it’s not got much else.
I’d say it’s more of a fantasy story in a cyberpunk setting. There are cyberpunk elements, but I don’t really think the story itself is exploring any of the anti-capitalist or transhumanist themes of cyberpunk, just using them as a background.
I dunno… It shows off the actual government and they actually seem cool? (I mean they are actually trying to stop evil and the president shows compassion towafd his people) The only corporation we see is Zorg, and they don’t seem to have the kind of control typical of a corporation in a cyberpunk setting. It certainly doesn’t seem like a dystopia. Maybe if the government was in league with Zorg it would have.
But I also don’t know much about the world outside of it shown in 5th Element and Valerian. The setting is, apparently, from/inspired by a book/comic series; though I don’t remember what it is called. I think the cigarette thing is a bit of a fucked up nanny state idea. Gives you a preset number a day and they’re like backwards from real ones with a long ass filter and a tiny little bit of tobacco.
The story itself certainly is not cyberpunk. It’s science fantasy.
