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It's been a long time since I last saw The Fifth Element, but I don't recall why she is so heavily armoured, or if we see her in armour before reconstruction.

She seems to function fine, after reconstruction, if not better, without it because of her agility and grace.

So why was she previously armoured?

AncientSwordRage
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    She gets seriously injured and nearly dies. If she had been wearing armour that probably wouldn't have happened. – OrangeDog Jul 28 '20 at 11:18
  • @orangedog shows what I remember! – AncientSwordRage Jul 28 '20 at 11:44
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    The first time we see the Fifth Element is in a sarcophagus, which suggests long term storage rather than armour, so maybe whatever suit was attached to the glove before the crash was not intended to be battle armour, either. – Eike Pierstorff Jul 28 '20 at 11:45
  • @eike I remember the hand is gripping something though – AncientSwordRage Jul 28 '20 at 11:46
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    @AncientSwordRage yep, it gripped the handle for the case with the stones for the other four Elements. The case itself had been stolen (but turned out to be empty) at this point. Also I did not mean to imply that this was the sarcophagus that we see at the beginning. – Eike Pierstorff Jul 28 '20 at 11:52
  • Given all the other baffling fashions in The Fifth Element, maybe that's just alien walking-around clothing? – Cadence Jul 28 '20 at 14:52

2 Answers2

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The Fifth Element is seen to be armoured, traditionally, at least according to the official novelisation. The Mondoshawans certainly like to wear armour and it's not out of character for them to put their supreme warrior into a suit similar to theirs.

The President looked skeptically at the page. It showed a human figure encased in armor. Metallic gloves held a case engraved with the emblem of the three suns.

“The case holds the Sacred Stones. Together with the Fifth Element, they produce what the ancients called the Light of Creation, able to bring life to the farthest reaches of the Universe. But if Evil stands here―”

Notably, while Leeloo is a formidable warrior without her armour, she would likely have survived being shot in the stomach had she been wearing her suit of arms.

AncientSwordRage
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Valorum
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She didn't look that way in the original, alien form. Leeloo was rebuilt to specification from DNA after her death from few living cells from arm. It is human machine which rebuilds her. Maybe they just interpreted her DNA as human? The technician even calls the alien him.

Truth is, we don't know. It is not important, except for calling Mila Jovovich perfection :)

jo1storm
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    I'm reasonably sure that the DNA was human(ish) already – Valorum Jul 28 '20 at 13:02
  • Normal human dna has double helix. Hers has a lot more. And the guy doing the cloning even calls it "him". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-uvOpMyPgI – jo1storm Jul 28 '20 at 13:50
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    Sure, because the DNA is too complex for their machines to analyse. Naturally they assume that the " Supreme being" is going to be male because they're men. – Valorum Jul 28 '20 at 14:17
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    We have what looks like a glove for a human hand, with bones sticking out that look rather like remnants of a radius and an ulna, and that seamlessly attach to the human arm created by the machine, which to me suggests humanoid. Also in the end Leoloo assumes the posture of the humanoid sarcophagus we see at the beginning, which suggests that was her previous "vessel". FWIW I am not convinced that this is supposed to be coincidence. – Eike Pierstorff Jul 28 '20 at 14:35
  • @eike so you disagree she's only humanoid here because it's a human machine that reconstructs her? – AncientSwordRage Jul 28 '20 at 14:55
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    @AncientSwordRange Since the device which uses all 5 elements is on Earth, there are additional possibilities other than "the machine ignored the DNA it was trying to use as a template, and somehow still made a viable lifeform": first, if engineered, she may have originally been made to resemble humans in order to blend in with the natives, or second, humans might resemble her due to early-evolution contamination or mimicry. – Chronocidal Jul 28 '20 at 15:31