Somehow the twentieth anniversary of “The Fifth Element” skipped right on by me (I was traveling at the time, so…). It premiered May 9, 1997… and it was, and remains, awesome. It’s dumb as a post, it makes no sense, the physics and biology depicted are clearly those of a different universe with some fundamentally different laws… and it’s still awesome. From the era before everything was CGI, the visuals are truly spectacular. New York City in particular is just astounding. It’s eminently quotable. The characters are damned entertaining. It’s set in the future and everything *isn’t* a dystopian craphole, although NYC is even more crowded. And one of the neatest things about it… the Hero and the Villain not only never meet (though they get withing a few feet of each other), they don’t even know who the other is and wouldn’t recognize ’em if they saw ’em.
So… here’s some stuff.
Perhaps the most entertainingly awesome sci-fi personal weapon, the Zorg EF-1: