10 Sci-Fi Movies That Had No Right To Be This Good
4. The Fifth Element
Notable for providing a mainstream springboard for Resident Evil star Milla Jovovich, The Fifth Element's simplistic plot and one-dimensional characters appeared to have the movie earmarked for failure. At the time, it was the most costly European film ever made, which appeared to constitute the perfect recipe for an expensive disaster.
Bruce Willis (in one of his more unabashedly corny roles) plays Korben Dallas, a former Special Forces major turned taxi driver who finds himself thrust into a race against time to save the world from destruction when he comes across Jovovich's Leeloo, the titular Fifth Element and key to saving the world. Dallas is essentially a science-fiction doppelgänger of John McClane; Willis alternates between cracking wise, chain smoking cigarettes, and kicking intergalactic ass.
Despite the endlessly clichéd storyline, The Fifth Element is a riotous watch, one which enthusiastically embraces the utterly ridiculous nature of the film's tropes to great effect. Featuring a spectacular dystopian aesthetic - clearly envisioned by the same people who predicted what 2015 would look like in Back to the Future - and excellent turns by Gary Oldman and Chris Tucker, Luc Besson's sci-fi thriller is a prime example of a film that should've been an onscreen calamity, but is affectionately regarded among sci-fi fans as a sleeper hit of the genre.