Book Review: The Story of The Fifth Element

December 27, 2009 by Parka

The Story of The Fifth Element is part production journal and part art book. The production side is written by Luc Besson, the director of the movie.

Luc Besson looks back at the struggles he had to content with, way back in 1975, when the idea for the movie was conceived, and the first 200 pages of the script thrown away because it was too verbose, self-indulgent. The book highlights all sorts of challenges of producing a film and makes for a great read. There are many interesting stories from casting to the creation of sets. There are interviews with fashion designer Jean-Paul Gaultier, production designer Dan Weili, artists Jean-Claude Mezieres and even Moebius.

The latter part of the book collects the concept art for the characters, costumes and the spaceships. All pretty cool to look at.

The book's a great read but will probably appeal more to fans of the movie.

Visit the link beside to read more reviews on Amazon. If you buy from the link, I get a little commission that helps me get more books for review.

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Comments

I should add to this

Tigrosaure (not verified)
December 27, 2009,
35 weeks 4 days ago
Comment id: 1157

I should add to this description, that Luc Besson has written a book for almost all of his films as a director (Le Dernier Combat, Subway, The Big Blue, Nikita, The Professionnal, Joan of Arc, Arthur and the Minimoys) and all of them are great ! Each one emphasizing on a particular aspect of filmmaking.

Unfortunately for non-french speaking people, I'm not sure they are all available in english... but at least, they do in french !

Oh WOW... Now I REALLY want

Brandon (not verified)
December 30, 2009,
35 weeks 1 day ago
Comment id: 1172

Oh WOW... Now I REALLY want this book! Why do you have to review old books that aren't available anymore?! :) I can't afford the prices on Amazon for a used book!

@Brandon I don't have this

Parka
December 30, 2009,
35 weeks 1 day ago
Comment id: 1175

@Brandon
I don't have this book also. It's borrowed from my friend, who started collecting years before me.

It's one of my favourite

Brandon (not verified)
December 30, 2009,
35 weeks 1 day ago
Comment id: 1176

It's one of my favourite movies! I read the behind the scenes article in Cinefex magazine and found it very interesting. The character designs here look amazing, and of course the futuristic vistas are fantastic. I'd love to read this book.

Thanks for all the pictures, now I'll just have to keep looking for this book at a reasonable price. Maybe one day I'll find it.

Tigrosaure, that's cool! I had no idea. I would love to see that Arthur and the Minimoys film book - I really enjoyed the movie. I have the two novels Besson wrote (in English) that the movie was based on.