Lately, I have been obsessed with learning about Dark Matter and Dark Energy. I have a file on my computer about it. It is the greatest mystery in the universe, (just a smidgeon greater than how they make pop rock candy).
Scientists don't know what Dark Matter and Dark Energy are; all they know is, based on their calculations, it makes up 96% of everything. That leaves just 4% for everything else. And what is "everything else?" Everything we can see or sense with our equipment. It boggles the mind. Scientists in the know are aware that a trip to Stockholm awaits them if they come up with the answer.
They have been very clever in coming up with theories that fit in nice, neat, little boxes. Categorizing things helps them bend their brains around it. Two of their categories are WIMPS and MACHOS. WIMPS (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles), are the subatomic particles which are not made up of ordinary matter. They are "weakly interacting" because they can pass through ordinary matter without any effects. They are "massive" in the sense of having mass (whether they are light or heavy depends on the particle). The prime candidates include neutrinos, axions, and neutralinos. (You can order extra neutralinos with your fish taco and you won't taste them but they are in there somewhere). MACHOs (Massive Compact Halo Objects) are objects ranging in size from small stars to super massive black holes, and made of ordinary matter (like protons, neutrons and electrons). They may be black holes, neutron stars, or brown dwarfs. But neither of these explains the amount of matter that is affecting the motions of things in the universe. Dare we say, "God?"
I am okay with the theory that we are simply residing on a very big cheeseburger that is on its way to being digested by a very big something that lives in an even bigger dimension. These scientists have no imagination or sense of humor! They are going mad about this Dark Matter and Dark Energy. It goes against all logic, and this irrationality has no place in their math oriented hemispheres. As far as we know, the Milky Way is a very large nerve fiber in a giant brain. Everything is like the nested boxes made in the Ukraine.
Ah well, let's not hurt our brains thinking about it. Let's just accept it as what it is: unknowable, like understanding what happened before the Big Bang. But thinking about it on a superficial level reminds me of one of my favorite sci-films, "The Fifth Element," where there is a thing similar to Dark Matter. It is evil, and cannot be understood, like we all were as two year olds, and like teachers we've had, or one of our siblings.
Actors are made up of more Dark Matter and Dark Energy than you and me. The best ones are ninety-proof Black Holes (like Johnny Depp). Look at their eyes too long and you'll be sucked right in. Bruce Willis is made up of 99% Dark Matter and 1% human DNA. Listen, I am not necessarily a big fan of Bruce Willis. (My son's host family in Japan was enamored with Willis). Granted, the "Die Hard" films without Willis would be nothing. He is the quintessential New Yorker; tough, with a heart of gold. I am of the opinion that he got the shaft from Demi Moore. Ashton Kurcher is no Bruce Willis. I love "The Fifth Element," for the same reason I love "Bladerunner." Harrison Ford is certainly on a par with Willis.
This entertaining and forward-thinking film, by acclaimed director Luc Besson, is the epitome of what every sci-fi film aspires to be, without much hyperbole. Like most sci-fi films, we are asked to suspend our disbelief about the technology of the future. This is not THX 1138, this is an action film with the trademark one-liners we expect with Willis films (and Clint Eastwood films for that matter). It is not "Gattaca" or a Woody Allen spoof, ("Sleeper"), but it is special. I never grow weary of watching it.
For those who haven't seen "The Fifth Element" the logline/plot goes as follows: An ancient evil threatens to destroy the universe and is bested by the forces of good, and true love.
The film opens with a view of Earth from space. A friendly alien ship has arrived. It cuts to a view of an ancient red rock temple in the desert, at an archaelogical site in Egypt in 1914. A white haired archaelogy professor, in a white weather worn suit, is translating a panel of hieroglyphics carved into the interior wall of the ancient temple. His assistant, (Luke Perry) is bored silly, and keeps tabs on how many times the professor tells a young boy, Aziz, to keep a reflector aimed at the wall; ("Aziz! More light!"). He has discerned that there are five elements to defend the world from evil: water, earth, fire, and air, with the fifth element being the embodiment of goodness and perfection.
He has learned that every 5,000 years, these elements are called upon to protect life from evil. Just as he has solved the meaning, an enormous alien spaceship arrives, and enormous bug faced aliens in metallic suits enter the temple to unlock the wall the professor is working on. They have come to retrieve four sacred stones and the fifth element from the hidden chamber. The stones sit on pedestals that encircle a platform where a human-like metallic female icon stands, which contains the fifth element. They have come to protect these elements from evil, and promise the guardian of the elements, a temple priest, that they will return in 300 hundred years to save the Earth from evil.
The film then cuts to the 23rd Century, to deep space, where an Earth spaceship is investigating a strange anomaly: a dark planet that is travelling at a high rate of speed toward Earth. The ship's commander, unaware of the makeup of the object, and under orders from the President, opens fire with all he has, causing the molten black planet to harden and then grow exponentially, engulfing the ship.
The President (perhaps the weakest acting in the film) convenes a cabinet meeting, and the current leader of the line of priests, Cornelius, warns that nothing can destroy the object, nor can anything be known about it, because it does not want to be known. Use of force will only make it stronger, for evil begets evil. There is only one thing that can destroy it, a perfect weapon of goodness, a fifth element, that will preserve life.
Word comes that a friendly alien spaceship is nearing Earth with the fifth element, and the sacred stones, onboard. But before it can land, grotesque amphibian-like aliens, the Mangalores, piloting jet fighters, and in league with the evil entity and an art dealer on Earth, shoot it down. Earth scientists retrieve the remains from the ship: a small fused blob of organic material loaded with an unusual amount of duplicate DNA. At their Nucleolab, they reconstitute the material in a large lucite enclosed tube, and it forms Leeloo, (Milla Jovovich), a dayglow orange-haired vixen who immediately begins babbling a divine ancient language no one but the priests understand. Aware of her mission, though she is only freshly constituted, Leeloo breaks out of the chamber and flees down the air vents to a ledge of the building. Terrorized by the security officers behind her, the height of the building, a hovering police car, and being recaptured, she leaps and crashes through the roof of a cab, driven by Korben Dallas, (Bruce Willis). Dallas is a retired space fighter pilot with an attitude, and too few points left on his cab license. The accident has used up all but one of points, but he is smitten by Leeloo and her appealing babbling, ("Big badda-boom!"). He decides to help her escape and speeds away, pursued by squads of police hover cars.
Leeloo is injured from the crash, and Dallas's wild driving to elude police. She mumbles about a priest named Cornelius before passing out, so Dallas locates Cornelius, and lays her on a sofa, while Cornelius and his male assistant dress in more formal priestly attire. Dallas cannot help himself, and kisses the unconscious Leeloo. She awakens and holds a phaser to his temple and babbles words that Cornelius latter explains means, "Not without my permission!" Then Cornelius ushers Dallas out of the apartment.
An unscruptulous art dealer, Emmanuel Baptiste Zorg (Gary Oldham), seeks to acquire the stones for his client, Mr. Shadow, the evil entity within the dark planet. He summons the priest, Vitto Cornelius, to his corporate office and tries to extract where the stones are. During his interrogation Cornelius saves Zorg from choking on a cherry, so Zorg lets him go free.
Leeloo regains her health, with the help of enormous amounts of food (chicken), and a speedy education on Earth knowledge via Cornelius's computer. She tells Cornelius that the stones are not lost, they are being held by a tall blue alien woman, a pop opera singer named Diva Plavalaguna, who is performing on a resort planet named Fhlosten's Paradise.
Several military officers visit Dallas to let him know he is being called back to service to help them fight the evil entity. Korben hides Leeloo in a shower stall. The commander presents him with an all expense paid trip pair of tickets to Fhlosten Paradise, where he will be interviewed by Ruby, the flamboyant effeminate host of a live television broadcast. Once he arrives, Leeloo and he are to get the stones. The door buzzer rings and Korben hides the three commanders in a cooler.
Cornelius goes to Dallas's apartment, knocks out Korben with a candle holder, and steals his tickets to Fhlosten Paradise. When Korben wakes he gets everyone out of hiding and Leeloo and he go to the spaceport, where he catches up with Cornelius and David (Cornelius' assistant). Leeloo and Korben, in the guise of being newlyweds, fly to Fhlosten to retrieve the stones. Once they arrive, they are accompanied by the annoying, (and over the top) Ruby, (Chris Tucker), his film crew, and entourage of yes men.
The Mangalores arrive on Fhlosten, and go to Diva Plavalaguna's suite to look for the stones. Leeloo sees them and thoroughly thrashes them. The Mangalores, thinking they've been set up, go ballistic and take over the ship. They burst into the auditorium where Diva Plavalaguna has just finished singing. She is mortally wounded by their bullets and collapses. Korben kneels by her side and she tells him that the stones are inside her body. She dies and Korben plunges his hand into her blue bloody belly and retrieves them.
Zorg arrives, sure that the Mangalores will bungle their mission. He takes the wrong box from Leeloo and tries to shoot her, but she escapes into a ceiling vent. Frustrated, and running out of time, he departs aboard his ship, leaving behind a bomb with a timer. Meanwhile, Korben finds Leeloo, and he, Cornelius, David, and Ruby, get aboard a spacecraft. Realizing he has been duped again, Zorg returns to the ship to defuse the bomb. It is to no avail, as a dying Mangalore sets off a secondary bomb.
Korben and his crew narrowly escape the blast, and return to the temple on Earth to activate the stones. With seconds to spare before the arrival of the evil sphere, they get the stones activated by applying handfuls of water, fire, dust, and wind. Only one thing remains: Korben must declare his love for Leeloo to activate her power. He must admit he has feelings for her, and tell her what she needs to hear - that he loves her. Once he declares his love for her, a beam of light shoots from her open mouth into space, destroying the evil planet seconds before it impacts Earth.
The film cuts to the Nucleolab, where Korben and Leeloo are recovering from their ordeal in a metal cylindrical tube. The President and his entourage have arrived to reward the pair, but they will have to wait because Koren and Leeloo are making love and need a lot more time.
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