notcuddles:

marimagdaliny:

production design | The Fifth Element (1997)

by Dan Weil

#after terminator and blade runner and robocop sci-fi decided that the future will be desaturated  #muted colours tinged grey-blue and glass and dark sleek steel  #(for minority report spielberg overlit every shot then bleach-bypassed the negatives  #to get create a dark drained look every dystopia after has tried to copy)  #amidst all that the fifth element is a shock of colour and hypersaturation and elaborate art deco flourishes  #there’s fun and irreverence and silliness in every frame before you even get to the outrageous plot  #but also breathtaking setpieces that are vast and bright and weird and beautiful  #there is cynicism but this is not a cynical film and it refuses to show you a dark future  #humans are frail and corruptible  #but also adaptable and dreaming  #this film understands that given enough distance we’d look absurd and incomprehensible to previous generations  #and instead of trying to close that gap by plunging you into the future and explaining every electronic inch of it  #it relishes that unbridgeable strangeness  #our future will be alien to us  #so this future is bright and wondrous and alien and overwhelmingly strange  #also goofy as hell oh god i love this film it’s the most ridiculous  [x]

Seriously this film is so great and the world building is wonderful.  There’s a lot of really great, tiny touches – like the Corbin’s cigarette that is almost entirely filter – which show you the ways in which someone was thinking about the future.