Big Trouble in Little China
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Big Trouble in Little China | |
|---|---|
 Promotional poster |
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| Directed by | John Carpenter |
| Produced by | Larry J. Franco |
| Written by | Adaptation: W. D. Richter Screenplay: Gary Goldman David Z. Weinstein |
| Starring | Kurt Russell Kim Cattrall Dennis Dun James Hong Victor Wong |
| Music by | John Carpenter Alan Howarth |
| Cinematography | Dean Cundey |
| Editing by | Steve Mirkovich Mark Warner Edward A. Warschilka |
| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
| Release date(s) |  July 2, 1986 |
| Running time | 99 minutes |
| Country | USA |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $25,000,000 (est.) |
| Allmovie profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Big Trouble in Little China (also known as John Carpenter's Big Trouble in Little China) is a 1986 American comedy/action film, directed by John Carpenter and stars Kurt Russell as truck driver Jack Burton who helps his friend Wang Chi (Dennis Dun) rescue Wang's green-eyed girlfriend (Suzee Pai) from bandits from San Francisco's Chinatown. They go into the mysterious underworld beneath Chinatown, where they face an ancient sorcerer named Lo Pan (James Hong).
Although originally envisioned as a Western set in the 1880s, screenwriter W. D. Richter was hired to rewrite the script extensively and modernize everything.
Big Trouble in Little China was a commercial failure, grossing $11.1 million in North America and well below its estimated $25 million budget. It received critically mixed reviews which left Carpenter disillusioned with Hollywood and influencing his decision to become an independent filmmaker yet again. The film has since gone on to become a cult film due in large part to its success on home video.
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[edit] Plot
When truck driver Jack Burton (Russell) and his friend Wang Chi (Dun) go to the airport to meet friends arriving on a flight from China, bandits from Chinatown kidnap Wang's green-eyed girlfriend (Pai). To rescue her, Burton and Wang go into the mysterious underworld beneath Chinatown, where they face a number of dangerous challenges and battle kung-fu masters and a 2,000-year-old man – an ancient sorcerer named Lo Pan (Hong). Centuries ago, Lo Pan was put under a curse, and the only way that he can permanently break the curse and regain his human form is by marrying a woman with green eyes (Miao Yin) and sacrificing her. Lo Pan is served by a ruthless street gang, the "Wing Kong", and by the "Three Storms" – three mystical henchmen named Thunder, Lightning and Rain. Jack and Wang are aided in their quest by lawyer Gracie Law (Kim Cattrall), a tour bus-driving sorcerer named Egg Shen (Victor Wong), Wang's friend Eddie Lee (Donald Li), and a helpful street gang, the Chang Sing.
[edit] Main cast
| Actor/Actress | Character |
|---|---|
| Kurt Russell | Jack Burton |
| Kim Cattrall | Gracie Law |
| Dennis Dun | Wang Chi |
| James Hong | David Lo Pan |
| Victor Wong | Egg Shen |
| Kate Burton | Margo |
| Donald Li | Eddie Lee |
| Carter Wong | Thunder |
| Peter Kwong | Rain |
| James Pax | Lightning |
| Suzee Pai | Miao Yin |
| Chao Li Chi | Uncle Chu |
[edit] Production history
[edit] Screenplay
The first version of the screenplay was written by first-time screenwriters Gary Goldman and David Weinstein. They had written a Western originally set in the 1880s with Jack Burton being a cowboy who rides into town. Producer Paul Monash bought their script and had them do at least one rewrite, but still didn’t like the results. He remembers, “The problems came largely from the fact it was set in turn-of-the-century San Francisco, which affected everything – style, dialogue, action”.[1] Goldman and Weinstein left the project because they did not want to change the setting to a contemporary one as per Monash’s wishes and felt that they had done their best.
Along with his co-producer Keith Barish, Monash brought in screenwriter W. D. Richter, a veteran script doctor (and director of cult film The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai) to extensively rewrite the script as he felt that the Wild West and fantasy elements didn’t work together. The screenwriter modernized everything. Almost everything in the original script was discarded except for Lo Pan’s story.[2] Richter realized that “what it needed wasn’t a rewrite but a complete overhaul. It was a dreadful screenplay. This happens often when scripts are bought and there’s no intention that the original writers will stay on”.[1] Richter used Rosemary's Baby as his template, presenting “the foreground story in a familiar context – rather than San Francisco at the turn-of-the-century, which distances the audience immediately – and just have one simple remove, the world underground, you have a much better chance of making direct contact with the audience”.[1]
Carpenter made his own additions to Richter’s rewrites which included strengthening the Gracie Law role and linking her to Chinatown, removing a few action sequences due to budgetary restrictions and eliminating material deemed offensive to Chinese Americans. The characters in the film reminded Carpenter “of the characters in Bringing Up Baby or His Girl Friday. These are very 1930s, Howard Hawks people”.[2] The rapid-fire delivery of dialogue, especially between Jack Burton and Gracie Law, is an example of what the director is referring to. Carpenter was disappointed that Richter did not get a proper screenwriting credit on the movie because of a ruling by the Writers Guild of America, west that gave it to Goldman and Weinstein based on the WGA screenwriting credit system which protects original writers.
[edit] Casting
Barish and Monash first offered the project to Carpenter in July 1985. He had read the Goldman/Weinstein script and deemed it “outrageously unreadable though it had many interesting elements”.[3] To compete with rival production The Golden Child’s casting of box office draw Eddie Murphy, Carpenter wanted a big star of his own and both Clint Eastwood and Jack Nicholson were considered but were busy.[3] The studio wanted to cast Kurt Russell because they felt that he was an up-and-coming star. Initially, Russell wasn’t that interested in the screenplay and the character of Jack Burton because he felt that there were “a number of different ways to approach Jack, but I didn’t know if there was a way that would be interesting enough for this movie”.[4] After talking to Carpenter and reading the script a couple more times, he got a handle on the character and liked the notion of having “never played a hero who has so many faults. Jack is and isn’t the hero. He falls on his ass as much as he comes through. This guy is a real blowhard. He’s a lot of hot air, very self-assured, a screw-up”.[4] Furthermore, the actor felt that "at heart he thinks he's Indiana Jones but the circumstances are always too much for him".[5] Russell felt that the film would be a hard one to market. "This is a difficult picture to sell because it's hard to explain. It's a mixture of the real history of Chinatown in San Francisco blended with Chinese legend and lore. It's bizarre stuff. There are only a handful of non-Asian actors in the cast".[5]
John Carpenter had seen Dennis Dun in Year of the Dragon and liked his work in that film. He met the actor twice before casting him in the role of Wang Chi only a few days before principal photography.[6] The martial arts sequences weren’t hard for Dun who had “dabbled” in training as a kid and done Chinese opera as an adult.[6] He was drawn to the portrayal of Asian characters in the movie as he said, “I’m seeing Chinese actors getting to do stuff that American movies usually don’t let them do. I’ve never seen this type of role for an Asian in an American film”.[1]
The studio pressured Carpenter to cast a rock star in the role of Gracie Law, Jack Burton's love interest and constant source of aggravation. For Carpenter there was no question, he wanted Kim Cattrall. The studio was not keen on the idea because at the time Cattrall was primarily known for raunchy comedies like Porky's and Police Academy. She was drawn to the movie because of the way her character was portrayed. “I’m not screaming for help the whole time. I think the humor comes out of the situations and my relationship with Jack Burton. I’m the brains and he’s the brawn”.[1]
[edit] Principal photography
Problems began to arise when Carpenter learned that the next Eddie Murphy vehicle, The Golden Child, featured a similar theme and was going to be released around the same time as Big Trouble in Little China. (As it happened, Carpenter was asked by Paramount Pictures to direct The Golden Child). He remarked in an interview, “How many adventure pictures dealing with Chinese mysticism have been released by the major studios in the past 20 years? For two of them to come along at the exact same time is more than mere coincidence”.[3] To beat the rival production at being released in theaters, Big Trouble went into production in October 1985 so that it could open in July 1986, five months before The Golden Child’s Christmas release.
Production designer John Lloyd designed the elaborate underground sets and re-created Chinatown with three-story buildings, roads, streetlights, sewers and so on. This was necessary for the staging of complicated special effects and kung fu fight sequences that would have been very hard to do on location.[1] This forced the filmmaker to shoot the film in 15 weeks with a $25 million budget. For the film’s many fight scenes Carpenter “worked with my martial arts choreographer, James Lew, who literally planned out every move in advance. I used every cheap gag – trampolines, wires, reverse movements and upside down sets. It was much like photographing a dance”.[3]
[edit] References to Chinese mysticism
Some of the Chinese mythology in the film is based on actual history. Lo Pan is a famous legend in Chinese history. He was a “shadow emperor”[3] appointed by the first sovereign emperor Chan Che Wong. Lo Pan was put on the throne as an impersonator because Wong was afraid of being assassinated. However, Lo Pan tried to take over and was cursed by Wong to exist without flesh for 2,000 years until he could marry a girl with green eyes.[3]
Egg Shen defines "difficulty at the beginning" which is a hexagram from the Book of Changes or I Ching. Lo Pan is the name of the compass used for geomancy or feng shui. It literally means everything bowl – the device that reveals the secrets of the universe.
There are several allusions - and even earthly representations - of several elements from Diyu, the Chinese depiction of Hell.
[edit] Soundtrack
| Big Trouble in Little China (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) | ||
|---|---|---|
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| Soundtrack by John Carpenter Alan Howarth |
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| Released | November 21, 1996 | |
| Recorded | 1986 | |
| Genre | Soundtrack | |
| Length | 71:35 | |
| Label | Supercollector | |
| Producer | John Carpenter | |
| Professional reviews | ||
Carpenter wanted to avoid the usual clichés as he found that “other scores for American movies about Chinese characters are basically rinky tink, chop suey music. I didn’t want that for Big Trouble”.[3] Carpenter instead opted for his trademark synthesizer score mixed with rock ‘n’ roll music.
A soundtrack album, produced by Carpenter, was released in 1986 on Demon Records and featured nine tracks for a total of just over 43 minutes. It was re-released on CD in 1992. In 1996, an expanded and remastered edition was released by Supercollector. It included two versions of Carpenter and his band, the Coupe DeVilles' "Big Trouble in Little China" theme song, three tracks from Howarth's previously unreleased score for Backstabbed, and a track from Escape from New York, entitled, "Atlanta Bank Robbery."
[edit] Track listing
- Coup de Villes — "Big Trouble in Little China" 3:13
- "Pork Chop Express" 3:40
- "The Alley" 2:00
- "Here Come the Storms" 2:20
- "Lo Pan's Domain" 4:30
- "Escape from Wing Kong" 8:00
- "Into the Spirit Path" 7:07
- "The Great Arcade" 10:00
- "The Final Escape" 4:47
- Coup de Villes — "Big Trouble in Little China" -Reprise- (3:08)
Backstabbed
- "Opening" (3:35)
- "Alexandra" (5:57)
- "Blue Planet Interlude/Final Stab" (5:41)
Escape from New York
- "Atlanta Bank Robbery" (3:31)
Both soundtrack albums are currently out-of-print.
[edit] Reception
Opening in 1,053 theaters on July 4, 1986, Big Trouble in Little China grossed $2.7 million in its opening weekend and went on to gross $11.1 million in North America, well below its estimated budget of $25 million, as of July 12, 2007.[7]
The film received critically mixed reviews when it was first released but has since enjoyed a reappraisal. It currently has an 83% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Ron Base, in his review for the Toronto Star, praised Russell's performance. "He does a great John Wayne imitation. But he's not just mimicking these heroes, he is using them to give his own character a broad, satiric edge".[8] Walter Goodman in the New York Times wrote, "In kidding the flavorsome proceedings even as he gets the juice out of them, the director, John Carpenter, is conspicuously with it".[9] Harlan Ellison praised the film, writing that it had "some of the funniest lines spoken by any actor this year to produce a cheerfully blathering live-action cartoon that will give you release from the real pressures of your basically dreary lives".[10] However, in his review for the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert wrote, "special effects don't mean much unless we care about the characters who are surrounded by them, and in this movie the characters often seem to exist only to fill up the foregrounds", and felt that it was "straight out of the era of Charlie Chan and Fu Manchu, with no apologies and all of the usual stereotypes".[11] Paul Attanasio, in the Washington Post, criticized the screenwriters for being "much better at introducing a character than they are at developing one".[12] David Ansen wrote, in his review for Newsweek, "though it is action packed, spectacularly edited and often quite funny, one can't help feeling that Carpenter is squeezing the last drops out of a fatigued genre".[13] In his review for The Times, David Robinson felt that Carpenter was, "overwhelmed by his own special effects, without a strong enough script to guide him".[14]
After the commercial and critical failure of the film, Carpenter became very disillusioned with Hollywood and became an independent filmmaker.[15] He said in an interview, “The experience [of Big Trouble] was the reason I stopped making movies for the Hollywood studios. I won’t work for them again. I think Big Trouble is a wonderful film, and I’m very proud of it. But the reception it received, and the reasons for that reception, were too much for me to deal with. I’m too old for that sort of bullshit”. Since its initial release it has developed a cult following and is now well received by critics.[16]
[edit] Video game
The movie was made into a game published by Electric Dreams Software and produced by Software Studios (Mev Dinc, Focus). It was available for the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 and Amstrad CPC.[17] Your Sinclair awarded it a total score of 8 of 10. Crash gave it 7/10 and Sinclair User 2/10[18]
In World of Warcraft you can collect a trinket called the 'Six Demon Bag' containing "...wind, fire, all that kind of thing!".
The Fighter Rayden from the Mortal Kombat series was heavily influenced by one of the villains in this movie, Lightning.
[edit] References
- ^ a b c d e f Goldberg, Lee. "W.D. Richter Writes Again", Starlog, June 1986.
- ^ a b Goldberg, Lee. "Big Trouble in Little China", Starlog, May 1986.
- ^ a b c d e f g Swires, Steve. "John Carpenter: Kung Fu, Hollywood Style", Starlog, August 1986.
- ^ a b Goldberg, Lee. "Kurt Russell: Two-Fisted Hero", Starlog, July 1986.
- ^ a b Scott, Vernon. "Kurt as Klutz", United Press International, July 9, 1986.
- ^ a b Dickholtz, Daniel. "Dennis Dun, Kung Fu Hero", Starlog, September 1986.
- ^ "Big Trouble in Little China", Box Office Mojo, July 12, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-07-12.
- ^ Base, Ron. "Muscle-Laden Hero Kurt Russell Delivers Big Action and Little Trouble", Toronto Star, July 1, 1986.
- ^ Goodman, Walter. "Big Trouble, Wild Stunts", New York Times, July 2, 1986.
- ^ Ellison, Harlan. "Harlan Ellison's Watching", Underwood-Miller, 1989.
- ^ Ebert, Roger. "Big Trouble in Little China", Chicago Sun-Times, July 2, 1986. Retrieved on 2008-01-18.
- ^ Attanasio, Paul. "Choppy Little China", Washington Post, July 2, 1986.
- ^ Ansen, David. "Wild and Crazy in Chinatown", Newsweek, July 14, 1986.
- ^ Robinson, David. "More agonies of the awkward age", The Times, November 14, 1986.
- ^ Swires, Steve. "John Carpenter’s Terror Tales from Tinseltown", Starlog, February 1987.
- ^ Swires, Steve. "John Carpenter’s Guerrilla Guide to Hollywood Survival", Starlog, December 1987.
- ^ Big Trouble in Little China at World of Spectrum
- ^ Your Sincliar, Jun 1987
[edit] External links
- Big Trouble in Little China at the Internet Movie Database
- Big Trouble in Little China at Allmovie
- Big Trouble in Little China at Rotten Tomatoes
- Big Trouble in Little China at John Carpenter's official website
- The Wing Kong Exchange
- Erasing Clouds retrospective article
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