Sci-Fi Action Blockbuster Classic On Hulu Still Blows Our Minds Almost 30 Years Later

What is it that makes The Fifth Element so great? For one thing, the film finds the right balance between special effects and the human element. Sure, each scene is full of sci-fi splendor, but this is a movie anchored by its performers. None of those performances are quite as confident and iconic as Bruce Willis, whose Korben Dallas character feels instantly fresh in a sci-fi genre filled with boring carbon copies of famous protagonists like Captain Kirk and Luke Skywalker.

If you’ve never seen The Fifth Element and need a mental picture, Willis plays Dallas like a cockier version of his famous John McClane character. Part of what made McClane so compelling in Die Hard is that he was always on the back foot, and he seemed believably out of his depth while fighting through a Christmas party turned terrorist attack.

In The Fifth Element, Willis still exudes the everyman charm and relatability of McClane, but he also has an air of unflappable cool in the face of everything from an incompetent burglar to an impending apocalypse.

Bruce Willis could have carried this film on his own, but he fortunately didn’t have to. Milla Jovovich is a great sidekick turned love interest who later parlayed this performance as a multipass pixie dream girl into a career as an action star. Her quirked-up line deliveries are funny enough, but she can’t hold a candle to Chris Tucker, whose Ruby Rhod delivers one-liners funnier than anything Iron Man ever muttered in the MCU. 

All of the performances in The Fifth Element are great, and we haven’t even touched on Gary Oldman’s turn as a very different kind of villain. He is basically the banality of evil in human form, but this doesn’t keep him from being darkly hilarious. Plus, in an election year, the movie’s notion that powerful leaders might sell humanity out for a piece of the action seems more prescient now than ever.

Plus, this may sound like faint praise (or copium as the kids say), but The Fifth Element is better than most modern sci-fi because of its simple plot. Everything can be summed up in a single sentence: our heroes must find and use the mysterious fifth element to save humanity from an ancient evil. Such a streamlined plot is easy for audiences to understand and gives the film more runway to focus on a narrative that, at its heart, is a love story.

In retrospect, this is what we love most about The Fifth Element: the fancy sci-fi technology and cutting-edge special effects firmly take a backseat so the film can focus on its characters. Everyone gets a rewarding arc: cabbie to hero, ingenue to savior, clown to ally. Individually, these arcs are powerful; collectively, they are like the elements, forming a sum far greater than the individual parts.

Of course, if we praise The Fifth Element any harder, you might think we’re getting kickbacks from Ruby Rhod himself. The best thing to do is make up your own mind by streaming the movie on Hulu (literally the most “super green” of the streaming platforms). Just beware of the emotional drop when you realize that we may never get another sci-fi movie like this Luc Besson classic ever again.