Just a year ago we had Nosferatu by Robert Eggers. A truly horrid type of a horror film, based on the story of Dracula. A real cinematic treat for the fans of horror. But then suddenly in 2025 Luc Besson was just like... "Hey, I also made a Dracula movie". At first I was skeptical about it. Why would Luc Besson care about some horror tale? But after finally seeing it I must tell: This movie has more to do with Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein than Nosferatu. And I am not just talking about Christoph Waltz here...
When looking at the poster of 2002 film Rollerball you ask yourself 2 questions: 1) Why somebody thought it would be a good idea? 2 ) Why this somebody is John McTiernan, the filmmaker that brought us classics like Predator and Die Hard?
French 1983 Luc Besson film Le Dernier Combat has 2 spoken words throughout its 1 and a half hour runtime. Both of those words are Bonjour, which I bet you already know the meaning of. The film is about a post-apocalypse future where humans lost the ability to talk. The one time two characters in the film have an exchange of Bonjours doesn't even require the understanding of the word to get the impact. It's about them finally being able to utter a word. It is not about them exchanging information.
It is not a spoiler in 2025 that the message of Luc Besson's 1997 film The Fifth Element is "Love". The fifth element itself ( a revelation in the end of the film ) appears to be Love. And the thesis is that Love is the thing that can defeat the evil in the world. But looking at the film and the behind the scenes drama around it, you can say that Besson didn't really mean love in its purest sense. But he was instead preaching a Bonobo Philosophy. Where "love" or in modern language sex, is used to deescalate conflict. Bonobos are known to fuck each other instead of fighting with each other, making themselves more peaceful. Looking at how horny The Fifth Element ( and Luc Besson ) is, the Bonobo philosophy theory sounds to be a much more plausible reading of the film. Making it very tragic indeed.
On the surface level 2014 Luc Besson film Lucy starring Scarlett Johansson is a scientific thesis that is trying to say some grand truth about the world, while pretending to be an action film, to make people go see it. On the other hand though, it is an action film that injects a lot of profound-sounding pretentious pseudo scientific bullshit, to make itself appear as something better than it is: a dumb action movie. Which one of them is it? Or did I miss something?