The Sci-Fi Movie Sequel That Over 14% Of People Want To See Most
If there's one thing we know about Hollywood studios, it's that the only thing they love more than a hit is an equally lucrative sequel.
But not every film arrives in theaters sequel-ready, and even those whose narratives are clearly fit for a follow-up run the risk of underperforming at the box office to the point of a sequel becoming both unprofitable and/or unnecessary. Yet whether they're comedies, dramas, or sci-fi/fantasy adventures, even those perceived failures still have fans. And you'd better believe those fans would give anything to spend another couple of hours in a darkened theater with the characters and stories that captured their hearts and minds the first time around.
On rare occasions, even critical raves, a successful box office run, and an open door to sequelville isn't enough for a film to get the green light for a second chapter. Via an informal Looper survey asking movie lovers the world over what flick they'd most love to see a follow-up to, over 14% of votes were cast in favor of just such a film.
The film? None other than writer/director Luc Besson's mind-blowing 1997 sci-fi spectacular The Fifth Element. Comprised of equal parts operatic space action, dazzling special effects, an enchantingly offbeat romance, and a wicked sense of humor, The Fifth Element followed the futuristic tale of a seemingly average cabbie (Bruce Willis) who gets wrapped up in an intergalactic adventure when he steps in to help a woman (Milla Jovovich) who's more special than he could ever imagine.
In bringing The Fifth Element to big screen life, Besson paid homage to, and boldly re-imagined the sci-fi mold cast by Star Wars and its many copycats – and fans have been wanting more ever since.
The Fifth Element got a pseudo sequel in Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
There are numerous reasons a sequel to The Fifth Element never got off the ground though, ranging from money concerns to Luc Besson's complicated past with the film's star Milla Jovovich. More than anything, it's probably got a lot to do with Besson's general aversion to directing sequels. Given how much time has passed since The Fifth Element first screamed into theaters, it's hard to believe he'd be hot to revisit those characters now.
Besson sort of did make a sequel to The Fifth Element in 2017, though it was very much "spiritual" in nature. That film was Besson's bizarro sci-fi epic Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, and while Valerian features no direct connections to the way-out-there wonders Besson conjured in The Fifth Element (Korben, Leelu and the gang are nowhere to be found), the worlds depicted in both films are similar.
If you're among those who bypassed Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets when it was in theaters (and judging by its abysmal domestic box office returns, that's most of you), the film follows Dane DeHaan's titular Major and his wily partner Sergeant Laureline (Cara Delevingne) as they race to save space station Alpha, and ultimately the universe itself, from dastardly forces bent on destroying both.
There's a lot more going on in Valerian of course. Some might even argue there's a little too much going on in the film. That sort of judgment really does belong to each individual viewer though. Those viewers will not only recognize, but likely adore, the singular sort of creature-centric, serio-comic, world-building insanity that made The Fifth Element so much fun in every single frame of Valerian as well.