Trivia / The Fifth Element

• Cast the Expert: Milla Jovovich is fluent in four languages, and so had little trouble learning the alien language written by Luc Besson. They were apparently able to have fluent conversations in the language by the end of filming.
• Corpsing:
  • If you look closely when Ruby Rhod sings "All Night Long", Bruce Willis can be seen trying not to laugh.
  • There's also the infamous "give me the cash" scene near the start of the film. Willis smiles and aborts his initial attempt to get out the "nice hat" quip. The scene plays appropriately as Korben finding the situation funny, but Willis might be unintentionally losing his composure here as well.
• Creator Backlash: Asked in a 2014 interview for Playboy if he liked the film, Gary Oldman stated, "Oh no. I can't bear it." He had explained in 2011: "It was me singing for my supper because Luc had come in and partly financed [my film]."
• Creator Couple: Maïwenn, Luc Besson's wife at the time, played the Diva Plavalaguna. She got the role after the original actress failed to turn up.
• Dueling Works:
  • With Buffy the Vampire Slayer, both works featuring a girl who is The Chosen One to stop the forces of evil. Both came out in 1997.
  • With Starship Troopers, both sci-fi films released in 1997.
• Dyeing for Your Art: Milla Jovovich's hair was to be dyed from its natural brown color to her character's signature orange color. However, because her hair had to be re-dyed regularly to maintain the bright color, Milla's hair quickly became too damaged and broken to withstand the dye. Eventually a wig was created to match the color and style of Leeloo's hair, and was used for the remainder of the production.
• Enforced Method Acting:
  • The wonder on Bruce Willis' face when the diva sings is real. That was the first time he'd heard it.
  • When Korben first meets Leeloo and she starts talking to him in her language, Luc Besson didn't tell Willis what Milla Jovovich was going to say to him, so Bruce's reactions are real.
  • Luc Besson got Chris Tucker into Ruby Rhod's Impossibly Tacky Clothes with a Bait-and-Switch; his first request was an outfit so hideously ridiculous no-one will speak of it.
• Extremely Lengthy Creation: Luc Besson wrote the original screenplay when he was in high school. He had conceived the story of this movie, and invented the world of the movie, as a child so he could escape his lonely childhood. He began writing the script when he was sixteen, though it was not released in theaters until he was thirty-eight.
• Fake American:
  • British actor Gary Oldman plays Zorg, a character who speaks with an extremely exaggerated southern US twang (illustrated by the line "Leave them one crate. For the cause." which is so heavily accented it comes out sounding like "For the course.")
  • Also counts for Christopher Fairbank playing Professor Mactilburgh in an early scene. He's generally more well known as Moxey, a Scouser, in British comedy-drama Auf Wiedersehen, Pet.
• Money, Dear Boy: Gary Oldman is such a good friend of Luc Besson, he took the part without reading the script, doing this film to repay Besson for part-financing his film Nil By Mouth.
• Non-Singing Voice: Opera singer Inva Mula dubs the Diva's singing voice, while Maïwenn Le Besco portrays her. Reportedly Mula told the composer that the notes written for her were impossible, because the human voice cannot transition that way. The solution was for her to sing all the notes in isolation and then splice them together digitally.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Gary Oldman, sporting a slicked-down partial Mohawk, a beard like a misplaced Hitler mustache, a southern accent and giving one of the most low-key but still awesome performances of his career.
  • Tiny Lister as the level-headed, Reasonable Authority Figure President, playing a more prominent and powerful role than his typical Scary Black Man parts.
  • Brion James usually typecast as a low-life criminal scum, is Korben's former commanding officer who charges him to save the world, and implicitly trusts him as the right man for the job.
• Production Posse: The movie has three alumni from Besson's previous film The Professional: Eric Serra as the composer for the soundtrack, Gary Oldman as Jean-Baptiste Emmanuel Zorg (previously portrayed Norman Stansfield) and Maïwenn as the Diva (who was the prostitute girlfriend of the Fatman's wife in the former movie).
• Referenced by...: The video game, Apocalypse, which came out a year after the movie, starring Bruce Willis as the hero — a retired ex-Special Forces soldier, not unlike Korben Dallas — in a futuristic megacity. There's even a stage involving a chase scene on flying taxis, except this time it's Willis' character who ends up falling atop and clinging on the vehicle.
• Romance on the Set: Luc Besson cheated on his then-wife, Maïwenn (who played Diva Plavalaguna) with leading actress Milla Jovovich, which led to divorce with Maïwenn. Besson then married Jovovich.
• Star-Making Role: Milla Jovovich, in her first lead after Return to the Blue Lagoon.
• Stillborn Franchise: This movie was supposed to be a trilogy. Luc Besson had three scripts that he condensed into one.
• Throw It In!: Bruce Willis ad-libbed the line "I only speak two languages — English and bad English."
• Uncredited Role: Vin Diesel provided the voice of Finger, but didn't receive any on-screen credit.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The original storyline was set in the year 2300, and was about a "nobody" named Zaltman Bleros (later renamed Korben Dallas) who wins a trip to the Club Med resort on the planet Fhloston Paradise. There he meets Leeloo, a "sand-girl" who has the "beauty of youth", despite being over 2,000 years old.
  • Alert film buffs will note that Korben and Zorg never meet each other face to face. In an original draft of the script, Zorg would have faced Korben during the hotel evacuation, where the latter beat the crap out of the former for firing him and attacking Leeloo before stealing his ship (the ZF-1 was out of ammo, which resulted in Zorg's Villainous BSoD). Zorg then survives the destruction of the hotel with the personal shield of the ZF-1, only to land in a massive glacier. He then calls his secretary to send another ship, only for the battery in his ZF-1 phone to fail. That ending is featured in the novelization.
  • All the societal elites that Ruby points out at the opera were originally going to have more to do during the shootout at the hotel.
  • Originally, the film was going to star Mel Gibson, Julia Roberts, and Prince. More explained here.
  • Jean Reno was considered for Korben Dallas.
  • Kevin Costner was considered for General Munroe.
  • Jamie Foxx and Michael Jackson were considered for Ruby Rhod.
  • Elizabeth Berkley auditioned for the role of Leeloo, but after the failure of Showgirls, studios were reluctant to hire her.
  • Ruby Rhod's name was originally Loc Rhod. The name appears in the original script and the novelization.
  • A set of alien garbage collectors were created for a shot that was cut from the final film. A huge pile of garbage has gone uncollected, which is still referenced in the film. The creatures would have been seen holding sandwich boards saying "on strike" beside the garbage.
  • In an early script, Korben would have decided that Leeloo is too sexy and will distract him from saving the world, so he would have handcuffed her and left her half-dressed in his hotel room, before going to see the Diva sing.
  • This is one of the rare pre-2020 movies where Bruce Willis was not dubbed in French by Patrick Poivey. Besson wanted Poivey, but he was dismissed following a salary dispute with the local dubbing studio. He was instead dubbed by Bernard Métraux.
• Write What You Know: Luc Besson's father worked a second job as a taxi driver to support his son going to art school.

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