This is the War Handwavium score for “The Fifth Element”, the 1997 movie staring Bruce Willis.
Total score: +201 points
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119116/
Note: !!!!!SPOILERS!!!!!
Times are approximate, based on DVR recording.
+5 points: entire movie: Inexplicable ball of evil shows up every few thousand years to destroy earth. If that isn’t “othering”, I don’t know what is.
-5 points: 15 minutes: Cocksure General shoots missiles at unexplainable ball of fire in space. Gets his ship blown up.
-2 points: 20 minutes: punk next door tries to rob Korben Dallas. Dallas disarms him without violence.
+10 points: 23 minutes: we meet the Mangalores, a race of trolls. Complete othering of bad guys for easier, guilt-free killing.
-9 points: 23 minutes: Mangalores shoot down the Mondoshawans ship. Three are killed.
+5 points: 29 minutes: General taunts Leeloo in glass chamber. pointless. But it allows Leeloo to punch through the chamber and punch the General.
+2 points: 36 minutes: cops crash into McDonalds truck.
+10 points: 47 minutes: We meet the bad guy, Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg. Zorg has half a shaven head, has a plastic thingy for a hat, weird clothes, a goatee, a funny accent, and walks with a limp. Outrageous othering.
+5 points: 47 minutes: Zorg fires 1 million employess when assistant says he only needed to fire half a million. Pointless display of evil.
+5 points: 48 minutes: Zorg’s minions are bald, have weird plastic hats, and wear tight leather pants. Othering.
+5 points: 1:05 minutes: Cops bag wrong bad guy. Bureaucracy fails.
+9 points: 1:05 minutes: Trolls kill 3 cops to capture bag from cops.
-2 points: 1:07 minutes: Father Vito Cornelius knocks Dallas on head with trophy, steals his tickets.
+12 points: 1:11 minutes: 2 trolls disquised as punks kill 4 cops and then hide in garbage at airport.
+5 points: 1:19 minutes: Zorg blows up his own minion by exploding cell phone for failing. Pointless display of evil.
+6 points: 1:30 minutes: Trolls go into Diva’s room and kill 2 entourage members.
+30 points: 1:31 minutes: Leeloo beats up 15 trolls.
-2 points: 1:33 minutes: Zorg shoots Leeloo in ventilator shaft
+9 points: 1:34 minutes: Trolls take over ships control room. Kill 3 sailors.
+9 points: 1:34 minutes: trolls attack theater. Kill 2 sailors and the Diva.
+2 points: 1:37 minutes: Dallas flips troll, takes his gun, and pins him.
+5 points: 1:38 minuts: Ruby Rohd kills troll by accident. Lethal Rube Goldberg Machine.
+27 points: 1:38 minutes: Dallas starts killing trolls. 9 killed.
+20 points: 1:39 minutes: Lethal Rube Goldberg Machine. Dallas jumps on lever, troll goes into ceiling. Head is stuck. His rifle fires and he kills 4 other trolls.
+18 points: 1:42 minutes: Dallas shoots 2 trolls behind tripod gun and kills 4 trolls with a grenade.
+21 points: 1:43 minutes: Dallas goes to control room. Kills 6 trolls in one sweep. Then walks in and shoots the leader in the head.
-12 points: 1:46 points: Zorg lands on cruise ship for second time, kills 4 sailors.
+10 points: 1:48 minutes: trolls set of their own self-destruct device. Kill Zorg, kill trolls. Lethal Rube Goldberg Machine.
+3 points: 1:59 minutes: Leeloo activates the weapon, destroys giant ball of evil.
Summary: “The Fifth Element” is a comedy, action, sci-fi story that is cartoonish in its portrayal of good and evil and its portrayal of violence. Evil is evil because it’s evil. And good (leeloo) exists just because evil exists. The battle lines are nice and clean. Then we meet the actual bad guys and discover that it’s an army of trolls hired by a weird, balding, funny accented, funny dressed, funny walking, guy with a weird hat, and a penchant for useless displays of evil. And the supreme being happens to be Leeloo, played by super-model Milla Jovovich, who spends a good chunk of the movie running around in tiny bandages, and has a tendancy to take off her top when men are looking.
It’s so, good=beauty, evil=ugly, that it’s silly.
The final war handwavium is moderately high, reflecting this ultra black-versus-white portrayal, and reflecting that the bad guys are othered to teh point that we don’t feel anything when they’re killed.
For me personally, I enjoyed “The Fifth Element”. It’s one of my favorite movies of all time. But it’s a movie I enjoy not for the violence, but for the extremely well written script. It’s a damn funny movie. And the movie seems to focus more on being a comedy-action movie (like “Big Trouble in Little China”) than on trying to be an action-comedy (like “Beverly Hills Cop”). So I can personally overlook the high war handwavium score enough to like the movie and put it on my favorites list.
It is interesting that when you disect the movie it does land on a fairly high end of the scale. But then “The Fifth Element” was written and directed by Luc Besson. Some of Luc Besson’s other works include “La Femme Nikita” and “The Transporter”. “The Fifth Element” seems like a comedy cousin version of “La Femme Nikita”, and I’d probably not like “The Fifth Element” as much if it had tried to be serious like “La Femme Nikita”.
Basically, the cartoonish aspect of the movie allowed me to watch the war handwavium as not to be taken too seriously. And the fact that the movie is an extremely well written comedy meant that there was much to enjoy even ignoring the war handwavium violence. If “The Fifth Element” had tried to take itself too seriously, or if it hadn’t had an extremely funny script, then the violence would probably have been enough of a turn off that I wouldn’t like the movie overall.
As it is, it is in fact one of my favorites. Being an extremely well-quotable movie helps. I can’t not think “Chicken, good” anytime I pop something in the microwave.
drachefly | 12-Aug-09 at 10:41 am | Permalink
Caveat – I haven’t seen this movie.
I’m a little confused — at 1:05-1:34 when the trolls beat cops and people in theaters etc, why is that + points? Aren’t the trolls black hats and the cops white? It seems like you put these in the wrong column. Since that amounts to 45 points in + instead of -, that would basically cut the movie’s score in half.
Also, at 1:07, what’s the rule by which you’re awarding points? Both characters have names.
Greg | 13-Aug-09 at 5:35 am | Permalink
1:05-1:34 => The cops in this movie are operating against the protagonist, Bruce Willis, and the good guys, Leeloo etc, so the cops in this movie are black hats. The trolls are black hats as well. So in this particular scene when trolls kill cops, the audience doesn’t have to feel bad and is provided with some guilt-free killing.
When black hats kill innocent civilians, it gets the audience angry at the black hats, making it easier to kill the black hats later. It demonizes the black hats. So, it’s positive points on the score. Black hats killing civilians are a specific kind of “useless display of evil”.
If a white hat kills an innocent bystander, then the audience loses some of its affection for the white hat, and their actions become less defensible. So, that is negative points.
In real war, good guys end up killing civilians in the crossfire, but the movies almost never show that.
as for 1:07, Cornelius hits Dallas. it’s white hat hitting white hat, and Cornelius regrets doing it, showing that war isn’t all black and white. it’s like a “friendly fire” incident. Movies usually don’t show friendly fire because it detracts from the “white hats never do anything wrong” approach.