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In the Fifth Element, we see a great shot of future NYC which shows the statue of liberty and other recognizable elements sitting way up high on small mountains, with the sea line far below present day.

enter image description here

Is any reason given for this low sea level in the film or any other sources?

zipquincy
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    Are you sure the sea level dropped? I'd image they raised the statue and other land marks to bring them above the fog. – Xantec Jul 31 '12 at 16:13
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    Was this actually in the film? Do I have such an awful memory that I forgot such a great shot or was it concept/promotion art? – bitmask Aug 01 '12 at 18:52
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    @bitmask it is in the film! with Dallas's ship racing away from it towards the screen. later I think also Zorg's ship over the same exact scene (IIRC, sun in the same place... :) – zipquincy Aug 01 '12 at 19:54
  • @zipquincy: Shame on me, then. – bitmask Aug 01 '12 at 20:14
  • I watched the film on Blu Ray, and realized that the Statue of Liberty, is now located at a height of 300 meters, means that they dug a lot, much more land. And if the sea level dropped so much, the coast would be located hundreds of miles away, the Upper Bay will no longer exist.

    The quality of this image is excellent https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/000/787/268/large/wayne-haag-5th-fs11-1997-1200px.jpg?1433122122

     – Bebop Jun 15 '20 at 03:11

1 Answers1

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This view of New York city is the creation of Wayne Haag, aka Ankaris, you could see some of his works related to the Fifth Element on his website. Here is a view of the Brooklyn bridge taken form his site, so no, New Brooklyn was not raised to escape the fog:

New Brooklyn

According to an intervention from Ankaris here :

Luc Besson said the lowered ocean level was because we had shipped water off world for terraforming other planets. But he didn't want it explained anywhere.

DavRob60
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    Interesting. So based on the quote and the paintings it isn't so much that the city rose up to escape the fog, but that the fog rolled in sometime after the city built down to fill in the drained river beds. – Xantec Jul 31 '12 at 18:15
  • While that may be canonically accurate, it's just plain silly. It's much more straightforward to grab cometary ice (often available in the Oort cloud of the same system as the world being terraformed). Lifting that much water out of a gravity well would take insane amounts of energy. – Donald.McLean Aug 01 '12 at 17:52
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    @Donald.McLean Well, Luc Besson is not known for is Ph.D. in Engineering of Planetary Environments. – DavRob60 Aug 01 '12 at 17:56
  • @Donald.McLean space elevator siphon –  Aug 01 '12 at 18:22
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    @mps A siphon works when you are moving water to a lower container, not to a higher container. A pipe would work, but it would still take a lot of energy - water is heavy stuff. DavRob60 We're talking basic science here. A scientific consultant should have called him on this. – Donald.McLean Aug 01 '12 at 18:39
  • 1 cubic meter of water weighs 1 metric ton. Not exactly practical to transport off-world. –  Aug 01 '12 at 18:34
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    @Donald.McLean That probably why "he didn't want it explained anywhere." I agree it's quite improbable, but we are not talking about hard Sci-Fi here. – DavRob60 Aug 01 '12 at 18:44
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    @Donald.McLean What about extracting ice crystals/water vapor from some of the higher clouds? No one says the water has to come from the oceans right? – NominSim Aug 01 '12 at 18:53
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    @Donald.McLean: They can reconstruct a whole person, conciousness included, from the remains of one hand in a couple minutes. Don't you think they figured out how to get water off a ginormous rock? And don't tell me "it's not a matter of technology but of the amount of energy required". – bitmask Aug 01 '12 at 18:57
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    @bitmask Sure, if you have direct conversion of matter to energy, it's no problem at all. Except for the fact that it's pretty much a guarantee that there is more, easily available water in the system of the planet being terraformed than all of the water on the planet Earth. In fact, the water requirements to terraform a planet are probably something like 1/4th of all water on Earth. I realize we're not talking about hard SF, but still, if we, as a community, want people to take SF seriously, we need to start with not writing anything blatantly stupid. – Donald.McLean Aug 01 '12 at 19:27
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    @Donald.McLean: Can't argue with that. However, I still enjoy many aspects in scifi works that are blatantly stupid, often intentionally. Especially in the Fifth Element 'verse everything is a bit quirky, which adds flavour. This requires silly pre-conditions. I like that. – bitmask Aug 01 '12 at 19:36
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    @Donald Can't get too scientifically picky about a movie which is centered around the idea of 5 elements. If it was called "the 119th Element", the rest of the movie might warrant more scrutiny! – zipquincy Aug 01 '12 at 20:41
  • @Donald.McLean, I read "A siphon works when you are moving water to a lower container, not to a higher container," and I immediately imagined a siphon connecting Earth's ocean all the way through space to a high-gravity world.... :D – Wildcard Oct 23 '17 at 06:38