DREAMING A DEMENTED, FUN FUTURE; DIRECTOR OF `THE FIFTH ELEMENT' BEGAN CREATING SCI-FI WORLD AS A TEEN.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Writer

Bringing a new vision to a played-out film genre is not easy.

Science fiction, for example. Spaceship battles and dark, decayed, doom-laden cities are a drug on the market.

But there is one way to freshen up these formulaic, effects-laden behemoths: dream up a future that's as delightfully demented as it is dangerous.

``The movie is light and fun and things,'' Luc Besson says of ``The Fifth Element,'' a wacky fantasy the French director has been working on since he was a teen-ager. ``But everyone has forgotten how to fight evil. Then a darkness attacks our dimension, and nobody even knows the story.''

Besson's vision of the 23rd century is hardly utopian. There is still violence and greed, and people live piled on top of one another in a New York so vertical it has more traffic going up and down than back and forth.

But it's also a future where everyone more or less gets along, regardless of their race or planet of origin. If you can afford it, there are delightful space liner cruises that orbit resort worlds. Broadcast personalities have evolved into manic, space age versions of Little Richard. And everybody wears cool/kinky clothes designed by Madonna's favorite fashion freak, Jean-Paul Gaultier.

All this and much, much more for a mere $90 million. Well, no one, not even Besson, imagines that the future will be cheap.

Nor easy.

``I was expecting to go for a 10-mile run, and it was 200,'' says Besson, whose stylish international hits ``The Big Blue,'' ``La Femme Nikita'' and ``The Professional'' offered minimal preparation for his first special-effects extravaganza. ``So I was not even dressed for it! It's easy to imagine a city full of flying cars. That takes three seconds. But for each four-second shot of that, it's 86 layers of film. And that takes nine months. You have to design and approve all the cars, one-by-one. You don't expect that.''

And the `Element' is ...

Moviegoers can expect numerous surprises from ``The Fifth Element.'' First, there's the story. The title thing, also known as Leeloo and played by still waifish ex-model Milla Jovovich, literally drops in on Bruce Willis' anti-gravity taxi driver, Korben Dallas. An alluring if incomprehensible creature, Leeloo is the final component of an alien-designed defense system, the only weapon that can stop the extra-dimensional force of absolute, annihilating darkness that's advancing on Earth.

Got that? Then you're probably ready for the shape-changing, human-dog mercenaries called Mangalores, an otherworldly opera-singing Diva with matching blue skin, blood and tentacles, and hundreds more eccentric and amusing future culture details.

Designing director

An eclectic mix of cross-Atlantic talents helped Besson dress all this up. Over 8,000 design drawings were generated over an 11-month period in a Paris studio overseen by Jean ``Moebius'' Giraud and Jean-Claude Mezieres, two of France's most renowned graphic novelists. Those designs were brought to photo-realistic life by the model-makers and computer graphics artists at James Cameron's Venice-based Digital Domain, under the supervision of Mark Stetson (``Total Recall,'' ``True Lies,'' ``Apollo 13'').

``We had 225 (effects) shots in it,'' Stetson explains. ``There were so many different types of sequences; luckily, Luc had done a lot of preproduction development. He had a great collection of illustrations showing the nature of the city and the future that he wanted to convey.

``We built big cityscape miniatures, 25 feet high,'' Stetson continues. ``The buildings took up an 80- by 150-foot stage, and the backgrounds were filled out by digital matte paintings or 3-D digital building continuations. And flying cars forever! The flying cars were also both miniatures and computer generated.''

The film's main action was shot at London's historic Pinewood Studios, where Besson's crew set off what they claim was the largest indoor explosion of all time on the ``James Bond 007'' stage. Meanwhile, Gaultier personally oversaw the garbing of hundreds of extras in everything from 23rd-century SWAT team uniforms to the latex pop art worn by the era's well-to-do.

But for all the technological and design effort that went into making ``Fifth Element,'' Besson, 37, insists he always put the story first.

``I don't let the visual elements interfere with the story at all,'' Besson says. ``That's why I worked without Digital Domain for a year, making sure that everything about this world was very imagined. The special effects arrived at the end, and they were very precisely timed. I never let them interfere, they only did what we asked them to do. That's the only way to escape the syndrome.''

Another syndrome Besson scrupulously avoided: star trips. Willis has something of a reputation for being hard to work with. Indeed, a movie project called ``The Broadway Brawler'' was canceled in mid-production earlier this year when Willis reportedly was instrumental in the firing of its director, Lee Grant. Besson, however, says that the set of ``Fifth Element'' was almost as much fun as his vision of the future.

``Most of this `reputation' talk comes from people who, in fact, are not good enough,'' the director reckons. ``I'm not saying I'm good, I'm just saying I knew where I was going. Bruce was there to help me with my vision, and he was so nice with me. There was never even the shadow of a problem in 22 weeks.

``I don't just want to defend him, but defend all of these big actors who get accused (of being difficult). Because when you know what you're doing and where you are going, they are more than pleased.''

A pleasant place

The studio, too - in this case, France's venerable Gaumont, which was backing the most expensive project in its history - contributed to the pleasant work atmosphere the best way a studio can: by keeping hands off.

``Directors are always blaming the studio for not letting them do things and interfering, blah blah blah,'' Besson sniffs. ``You know how many times the studio came on my set? Once, in the second week, for half an hour. The ambience was so great, they just said `Wow, good luck,' and I never saw them again.''

Another tribute to the power of Besson's positive thinking, no doubt. But the filmmaker first went into his elaborate, ``Fifth Element'' fantasy world partly as a response to a major adolescent trauma.

The son of diving instructors, as a boy Besson dreamed of becoming a marine biologist. But a scuba mishap, related to Besson's abnormally small sinuses, made it clear that he would never be able to spend too much time underwater.

So, ``I was creating this world, in fact, to escape my world,'' Besson reveals.

It's Besson's wish that ``The Fifth Element'' will bring a similar little burst of positivity to the youth of today - and, of course, tomorrow.

``I always love to give a little hope in movies, I think it's important,'' he says. ``Most of my heroes are in trouble most of the time, but there is always a way for them to escape, a hope to go somewhere.

``I'm sensitive to that because we need it. If you look at society today, watch the news and politics, it's no wonder so many kids are lost around the world. They don't know who to trust.

``So, to do something about that through a movie. ... It's ridiculous, a movie. It's just a drop, it's an aspirin. You know, we're not going to save the world with an aspirin.

``But sometimes it's good to forget the headache for two hours.''

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6 Photos

Photo: (1--Cover--Color) Maiwenn Le Besco as the diva

(2--Cover--Color) Milla Jovovich as the mystery girl

(3--Cover--Color) Bruce Willis as the cab driver 

(4) In the year 2259, police fly between sprawling Manhattan skyscrapers created by Digital Domain by mating model work with digital effects for ``The Fifth Element.''

(5) ``Fifth Element'' director Luc Besson, center, with a group of Mangalores (the bad guys).

(6) Bruce Willis' cabbie-turned-hero is surrounded by a band of Mangalores in ``The Fifth Element.''