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?
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 :)
Not a lot of cyber in it, more just sci-fi.
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 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.
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.