Review by C.J. Bunce
Thirty years ago one of the 20th century’s greatest and most unusual science fiction movies took audiences by surprise worldwide. Writer-director Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element is like no other movie, standing alone in the sci-fi genre for its elaborate designs and colorful look at the future. Besson tapped artists he idolized, Jean “Moebius” Gerard and Jean-Claude Mézières, to create a future of Earth that veered away from Syd Mead’s darker vision for movies like Blade Runner. Inspired by his first love, Mézières own Laureline from the French Valerian and Laureline comic books, Besson created an unusual love story spanning Ancient Egypt to a vacation spaceship in our distant future, about a cab driver and a young woman destined to connect humanity and alien races.
A new book by Patrice Girod and Arnaud Grunberg collects the original concept art, production photographs, and new images of surviving props, costumes, and ships, and intertwines them with the entire movie screenplay by Besson and Robert Mark Kamen, including incredible deleted scenes. The result is The Fifth Element: A Visual Retrospective, available now here at Amazon from Titan Books. It’s the best deep dive into a classic movie since the late J.W. Rinzler’s similarly stellar and heretofore unparalleled accounts of the Star Wars trilogy, the Indiana Jones movies, The Planet of the Apes (reviewed here), and Alien (reviewed here). A candidate for the best book of 2026, this account is a must-read for fans of futurism, concept artwork, visual effects, and sci-fi movies.
One of the greatest science fiction movies of this century so far is Besson’s Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (reviewed here). Eye-opening in this book is the original Big Market scene from Valerian that was filmed by Besson to sell The Fifth Element to studios. But the concept art, the aliens, and the costumes didn’t fit what was then a bloated script. So Besson shelved it–only to revive his Market years later as one of the best features of the Valerian movie. The thug in Big Market, the soldier uniforms, the young alien woman who opens the film on the strange planet of pearls, and her little alien pet who kept the planet going all can be seen in these early illustrations for The Fifth Element. It’s ironic that Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets got its own brilliant retrospective book first, Mark Salisbury’s The Art of the Film: Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (reviewed here). But much of the artwork in The Fifth Element: A Visual Retrospective is also key to what became the Valerian movie, so it will serve another segment of fandom.
Most poignant in the book is a discussion of Besson happening upon a simple image by Jean-Claude Mézières from June 1992–before the project was shelved–showing a simple yellow taxi in a bustling future cityscape. It was this image that prompted Besson to re-think his title and the focus from a far more sprawling story to the love story of cab driver Korben Dallas and Leeloo, the woman who fell from the sky. You’ll also find fully-designed scenes that didn’t make the final cut, including a story of Korben taking the train to work, and a cab repair shop.
Readers will learn about plot threads and connections they might not have noticed before, like the way Leeloo’s light shines out in a way that mirrors the design stature of the ancient statues at the beginning of the film.
The book includes a beautiful fold-out image of the bright blue model of the Fhloston Paradise, and another even larger four-page fold-out showcasing artist Patrice Garcia’s composite painting of New York circa 2259, a painting since lost to time that she recolored for this presentation. The book truly has it all: filming miniatures, full-sized models of vehicles including Korben’s cab, its smashed interior, the full-sized blue police car, 1:24 scale cityscapes, all the key cast and memorable background character costumes, concept weapons and final versions, the full-size metallic Mondoshawan costume, the Mangalore soldier prosthetic masks, the life-size sarcophagus prop, and more matte paintings than you’ve ever seen in one volume.
The project was a dream team of French creators that included costume designer Jean-Paul Gaultier and art director Michael Lamont. You’ll find futuristic concept artwork from production designer Dan Weil, Pierre-Alain Chartier, Sylvain Despretz, Kamel Tazit, Kevin Mack, Wayne Haag, Roland Stevenson, Humbert Chabuel, Gary Tompkins, Jacques Rey, Hélène Giraud, Paul Kirby, Kun Chang, Bradford Plows, Niels Nielsen, John Coppinger, Nick Dudman, Gary Pollard, Sean Hargreaves, and creators from Digital Domain, the effects company recommended by James Cameron that Besson tapped to realize his future world.
Effects pioneer Joe Johnston wrote the foreword to the book. You’ll likely find yourself reading and re-reading the script and Besson’s notes, along with studying the cut and rearranged scenes.
The artwork in The Fifth Element: A Visual Retrospective is in the same league with Ralph McQuarrie’s original designs for Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Syd Mead’s original designs for Blade Runner and Tron, and Mike Minor and later Rick Sternbach’s concept art for Star Trek. It’s truly that stunning and innovative. Don’t miss out on this great behind-the-scenes account and chronicle of Luc Besson’s vision of futurism. The Fifth Element: A Visual Retrospective is available now here at Amazon.
