On Earth, an ancient Egyptian temple is the hiding place for a weapon that is capable of defeating an evil entity that appears every five thousand years. The weapon was placed there by aliens called Mondoshawans. The weapon is comprised of four stones that represent the four elements Earth, Wind, Fire and Rain. The four stones are placed in four corners. A fifth element is placed in the middle. The fifth element, which represents life or the life force, combines the powers of the four main elements and creates a divine light that defeats the evil. The fifth element is in the form of a perfect human.
In 1914 the aliens arrive at the temple to move the weapon to a safer place. Over three hundred years later the evil appears. The Mondoshawans attempt to return to Earth with the fifth element. They are attacked by Mangalores and destroyed. The hand of the fifth element is recovered. Doctors reconstruct the element using the surviving cells. The element escapes the laboratory and jumps from the building. She lands on the taxi of Korben Dallas (Bruce Willis). Korben also happens to be a former Major in a Special Forces unit. The element, named Leeloo (Milla Jovovich), manages to communicate to Korben that she must find Father Vito Cornelius (Ian Holm). He is the descendant of the Egyptian priests that cared for the weapon in ancient times.
Korben manages to get roped into helping Leeloo find the four element stones that are being guarded by the Diva Plavalaguna (Maiwenn), an alien opera singer, on the planet Fhloston. Cornelius follows to try to aid in the recovery of the stones. Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg (Gary Oldman) is an evil criminal that wants the stones for a mysterious entity known as Mr. Shadow. Mr. Shadow is none other than the evil itself. The Mangalores have had a falling out with Zorg and want the stones because Zorg wants them and they think they can use them as a bargaining chip.
Unless Korben and Leeloo can recover the stones and defeat the great evil the world will be destroyed.
“The Fifth Element” was released in 1983 and was written and directed by Luc Besson. The film is an English language French science fiction production. Reviews were mixed. So were accolades. The film was nominated for both the British Academy Film Awards and a Golden Raspberry award. It’s a fun campy movie with some great special effects and totally outrageous characters.
In the film, Diva Plavalaguna sings "Il dolce suono", an aria from the opera Lucia de Lammermoor. It is one of the most difficult arias because of its length, its soaring arpeggios, and the high F above high C. The song is actually sung by the soprano Inva Mula with Maiwenn lip syncing. Reportedly when composer Éric Serra showed Inva Mula the sheet music for the Diva Dance she told him that some of the notes written were not humanly possible to achieve because the human voice cannot change notes that fast. To accommodate the song, she performed the notes separately, one by one, as opposed to consecutively singing them all together. They were then digitized to fit the music.
The "Divine Language" that Leeloo speaks was invented by Luc Besson. It was further refined by Milla Jovovich herself. Being fluent in four languages, it was easy for her to learn and help develop it. There are only four hundred words in the language. Besson and Jovovich would regularly have conversations in it and wrote letters to each other in it for practice. By the time the film was completed both Besson and Jovovich were able to have whole conversations in the invented language.
The effects company Digital Domain created the flying traffic. Reportedly the artists were allowed to create personalized license plates for the vehicles. The state slogan printed on the license plates supposedly reads "New York, The F***-You State."
The animatronics used for the Mangalore faces were later used for the Neimodians in Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999).
Leeloo's full name is "Leeloominaï Lekatariba Lamina-Tchaï Ekbat De Sebat".