John Carpenter's Attack on Hollywood: Big Trouble in Little China

 

JOHN CARPENTER'S ATTACK ON HOLLYWOOD

 

The Deeper Meaning of Big Trouble In Little China

 

 

INTRODUCTION

 

John Carpenter's Big Trouble in Little China was a critical and commercial failure when it first hit the screen, but like so many other overlooked films from the 80s and 90s, it's been revived as a cult classic in recent decades. As such, the last ten years or so have seen the film analyzed half to death on the internet, and a number of common interpretations have come to prominence. Pretty much any dyed-in-the-wool fan of Big T. in Little C. can tell you, for example, that the hero of the film – Jack Burton, portrayed by Kurt Russell – is actually the sidekick, and the sidekick – Wang Chi, played by Dennis Dun – is the real hero of the picture. Jack, while framed as the hero, is actually a fool.

 

I did not primarily write this to challenge or overwrite any of those interpretations. In fact, we'll be taking a look at three of the most common interpretations (that I've seen, anyway). I think there is some truth to all three of them. My intention, however, is to go past the point where most interpretations end: that is, the somewhat vague and undefined claim that the film is a satire, a "meta-fiction" or a "commentary", without really going into detail as to what exactly Carpenter is commenting on. If the film is really a "meta" take on action-adventure films, then what is the underlying message or truth that is elucidated by this take?

 

I should also note that I'm perfectly willing to say that much of this is simply my opinion. While I will support every claim I make with evidence from the film or with quotes from the people who worked on the film, especially Carpenter himself, I could easily be wrong. Some things might be a stretch. But I would by no means claim the total credit for my analysis of the film, since I feel I’ve included all of the best arguments and observations of other reviewers that I have come across while researching the film.

 

I don't think the text of the film is by any means impenetrable. There isn't some secret code or symbolism that people need to crack (though there are plenty of metaphors and symbols that we will discuss). I would argue that there is one essential element that is absolutely key to understanding the deeper meaning behind this film, and oddly enough it is often not mentioned in the many interpretations purveyed about the film, or is relegated to a mere detail or element of "satire". But before we get to what that element is, we'll need to lay the groundwork. To understand the film, we'll first need to explore the circumstances surrounding both why and how the film was made.

BACKGROUND

 

 

Big Trouble in Little China hit theaters in June of 1986. According to both Kurt Russell and John Carpenter, the reactions during test audience screenings had led them and the studio to believe the film would be a big hit. The studio rushed the release so that they wouldn’t have to compete with The Golden Child, an Eddie Murphy film that came out in December of the same year, also featured a plotline heavily focused on "exotic" ideas of eastern mysticism and featured some of the same actor/martial-artists who played in BTILC. But with Eddie Murphy at the helm, The Golden Child had way more starpower. It was seen as potential competition, and they didn't want to compete. The studio meddled in the production as well - suggesting bigger stars such as Clint Eastwood and Jack Nicholson as the lead, and ordering an additional scene for the opening of the film, in order to frame the character of Jack Burton as “more heroic”.

 

While this meddling was unfortunate, it speaks to the fact that they seemed to legitimately think they had a cash cow on their hands. Russell said he was led to believe that it would be the biggest film of 1986. How wrong they all were.

 

The movie that would eventually become Big Trouble in Little China began its life as a script set not on the modern west coast, but in the old west. When Gary Goldman and David Z. Weinstein first wrote the screenplay, the setting was 1899 San Francisco. The protagonist, in the original version, is a cowboy, who brings meat to the Chinese workers who are building the railroad. The cowboy version of Burton discovers evil spirits and magic that hail from the far east, but on his side of the Pacific. His favorite horse is stolen, and as he tries to get him back, he becomes entangled in a plot featuring kung fu, oriental mysticism and the even the evil Lo Pan. Goldman and Weinstein described the intended tone of the script as "Indiana Jones meets Romancing the Stone".

 

Goldman has acknowledged the influence of the martial arts films that were coming out at the time on his script, stating that these films has "all sorts of weird actions and special effects, shot against this background of Oriental mysticism and modern sensibilities". Both writers imagined the heart of the story as combining elements of Chinese mythology with the western - which is, as I would describe it, a western form of mythology.

 

East meets west - the familiar meets with the 'exotic', the mundane world with the spiritual, the pragmatic with the mystical. This is the germ of the ideas behind the story, and I'd argue that the final product remains true to it, albeit in a way the original writers did not agree with. The writers sold the script to TAFT Entertainment Pictures executive producer Paul Monash in 1982. Monash seemed to recognize the potential of the material but requested a re-write. Mainly, he didn't like the setting. Monash: "The problems came largely from the fact it was set in turn-of-the-century San Francisco, which affected everything-style, dialogue, action".

 

20th Century Fox requested another re-write demanding even more changes, and Goldman refused, particularly because he was adamant that the setting should remain in the old west. It's not uncommon for the original screenwriter to simply provide the groundwork and be removed from the film once a major studio owns it. Both writers were then kicked off the project, though they were credited for the script due to Writer's Guild rules. W.D. Richter was then hired for another re-write. Other than the character of Lo Pan and the mythology and story surrounding him, almost everything was changed or removed. The script was set in modern-day San Francisco. Jack Burton became a trucker rather than a cowboy. Richter: "What it needed wasn't a re-write, but a complete overhaul. It was a dreadful screenplay."

 

Richter cited Rosemary's Baby as his blueprint for the story: an incursion by forces which are malicious and supernatural into the ordinary world. Richter recognized that having a character step into a mysterious "other world" is already a leap for the audience, and thus has said that he changed the story to place "the foreground story in a familiar context - rather than San Francisco at the turn-of-the-century, which distances the audience immediately... just have one simple remove, the world underground, you have a much better chance of making direct contact with the audience". John Carpenter was offered the project in July of 1985. He had read Goldman and Weinstein's original script, which he said was: "outrageously unreadable, though it had many interesting elements". Whatever disputes Goldman and Weinstein had with the studio, the fantastical ideas they'd generated - including the core idea of east meets west - ultimately captivated Carpenter perhaps because of his fascination with westerns and parallel realities. With Richter's re-writes, he was in.

 

Carpenter has stated that he always wanted to make westerns, since he grew up watching them - western films are, fundamentally, the mythos and backdrop for the American version of the hero cycle - but that by the time he was making films, he’s stated that it was a “dead genre”. Thus, according to Carpenter, he has made westerns that aren't really westerns. He’s said that Escape from New York, for example, is a western in all but setting. Perhaps this is why he wanted Russell to be involved, since Russell portrayed Snake Plisskin in Escape from New York. Even though the studio wanted Nicholson or Eastwood, neither was available.

 

Despite the fact that Plisskin was a rather serious type of character, and Escape From New York is a more serious film, Russell was absolutely in on Carpenter's joke, and what he was attempting to accomplish with Big Trouble. Jack Burton is ostensibly the hero of BTILC, and this is sold to the audience by all the usual filmmaking cues that the director uses to tell you who the protagonist is. Russell gets the most screentime. The story is mostly framed from his perspective. Russell defeats the bad guy. But, if you pay attention, you can easily notice that the "sidekick", Wang Chi, has the most at stake in the storyline. Jack just wants to get his truck back. Wang Chi, meanwhile, is trying to rescue the love of his life. Wang is also far more competent, indefatigable in his quest, and - perhaps most importantly - not a total buffoon.

 

This should not even be taken as a "theory" at this point: in an interview by Entertainment Weekly in 2016, Russell said, "The real lead was Wang [Chi]." As Carpenter himself said, "Jack Burton is a guy who is a sidekick but doesn't know it. He's an idiot-blowhard. He's an American fool in a world that he doesn't understand." Elsewhere, Russell has said, "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". In the DVD commentary, Carpenter complains that the studio, and particularly the executives at 20th Century Fox never understood this. An opening scene was added at their request, with the demand being to make Burton seem more heroic. In the added scene, Egg Shen, Chinatown tour bus driver by day and sorcerer by night, declares that Jack Burton "showed great courage", and that "we are in his debt".

 

In the words of Kurt Russel: "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".

 

Perhaps this dovetails into one of the biggest criticisms of the film: that it either maliciously or naively plays into stereotypes about Asian Americans. The idea that the film is a "satire" or "commentary", at the end of the day does not really matter to advocacy groups who are concerned about orientalist portrayals of Asian people (orientalism referring to stereotypes about the east which exaggerate certain features, such as the common tropes of mysticism, exotic and submissive women, cruelty and barbarism, strange rituals and martial arts). Several Asian American social justice groups denounced the film when it came out, although it should be said that modern opinions on it find Asian Americans in both camps.[1]

 

I should say in Carpenter's defense, however briefly, that he did his own re-writes of Richter's script, where he removed material deemed offensive to Asian Americans, among other things (such as modifying and adding to Gracie Law's story, and linking her to Chinatown, rather than her origin in the first script, which stated she was born in China to missionary parents who were "massacred"). This implies that the script Carpenter was handed may have had some of the very orientalist elements that he was implicitly criticizing, which gives another layer of irony to all of this.

 

But this kind of controversy isn't what this analysis is about, so I mention it only to give the full picture of this project's backstory – though we'll touch on it later when we examine some of the theories about the film. Whatever one believes as regards the social awareness of the movie, it must be admitted that both Carpenter and Richter were avowedly inspired by Chinese filmmakers – so it was not a purely orientalist project, but to some degree an imitation or pastiche. Carpenter has stated as one of his influences 1983's Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain. It's a Hong Kong martial arts film, but with supernatural elements. "It's basically the Chinese Star Wars," he said, in an interview with Starlog. "It's nuts - I've never seen anything like it." Star Wars - in case you live under a rock - is one of the most successful film franchises in cinematic history, combines a futuristic setting with fantasy elements, and has been acknowledged as based largely on Joseph Campbell's Hero With A Thousand Faces. Campbell's work distilled the journey of the hero into a single blueprint that could be applied to nearly all the great myths throughout the world - the hero cycle.

 

As for Carpenter's goal with the film overall, it's worth noting that his interviews around this time (mid-1980s) reveal that he was fascinated around this time with quantum physics, alternate dimensions, and the religious/theological implications of these theoretical notions in science. His next film, Prince of Darkness, would also explore these themes. We might also note that these types of interests were shared by Lovecraft, who explored them in his fiction, and Carpenter eventually directed possibly the best on-screen love letter to Lovecraft in his In The Mouth of Madness. Big Trouble In Little China is by no means a sci-fi film - it's firmly in the fantasy camp. Nevertheless, when viewing the film with this in mind, we might note several points where it seems as though our protagonists are transported out of the "normal" world and into a fantastical world where none of the rules of our reality apply. Or, as in the inciting incident of the film, the antagonistic elements – the "evil spirits" – emerge from the dark underworld to make an incursion into our own. Lo Pan, who is presumably fueled by nothing other than magic, is nevertheless described as having been “atomized”: a mystical being described in almost scientific diction. Perhaps this is what intrigued Carpenter so much about the bizarre ideas in the script: the east to west element. A meeting of two worlds.

 

Speaking of evil spirits, perhaps the most important and first clue to examine is right in the titlecard of the film. The first thing we see is a series of Chinese characters, then the words "Big Trouble In Little China" emerge out of the blurriness and rain only after we've seen the phrase in Chinese. It translates to: “Evil Spirits Make a Big Scene in a Little Spiritual State”. The translation for the phrase as given could be taken as a 'paraphrasing' or rough translation of the name "Big Trouble In Little China", though it also could be seen as elucidating a sort of hidden meaning within the name. The "big trouble" we're seeing in the film is simply a "scene" being caused by spirits - both in the sense of someone "making a scene" - causing drama over something that should be trivial - but we also have to consider the term quite literally, in the context of filmmaking.

All at once we're told that this is a story with a deeper significance behind it - and yet, reminded that it is melodrama. The characters appear in a "little spiritual state" because they've incarnated into flesh and blood to play war, as it were - but also because they're being rendered two-dimensionally, on a screen.

 

We're being told by the filmmaker - albeit in a language that non-Chinese speakers can't read, and thus most of the American filmgoing audience - that what we're witnessing is larger-than-life. The characters we're witnessing are avatars of spirits. Or, if you prefer, archetypes. This is a heightened reality.

 

 

JOHN CARPENTER'S IDEAS ABOUT FILM

 

With all of this background information, if one had not yet seen the film, one might expect Carpenter – a director known for horror (The Thing, Halloween) action (Escape From New York) and thrillers (Assault on Precinct 13) - would pour all of this raw material into a product which was equal parts action/adventure and horrifying, mind-bending scares. And yet, while there are certainly visual effects that wouldn’t be out of place in a horror film (courtesy of the great Robert Edlund), there is hardly anything scary about the film as a whole. The first thing to understand when Big Trouble in Little China is that it is, first and foremost, a comedy.

 

Obviously, the original idea was for the film to be a western - and while Carpenter has hinted that it is still a “stealth western”, and there are many nods in the film to this idea, calling it a “western” does little to elucidate the aims of the film. In fact, one can basically find elements of almost every genre of film in the movie. Jack Burton is a modern-day version of a cowboy in many respects, and the western framework for the story remains. Yes, it's also an adventure film. The heroes fight the evil forces, win the day, and get the girl in the end. And yes, it has action, martial arts, explosions. There are some terrifying images or ideas in the movie; arguably the “horror elements” begin and end with make-up and special effects, however. But what is the genre? What is the underlying goal of the film?

 

The goal is to make us laugh. Since what we're laughing at is the farce of big budget filmmaking, that means that this is also a meta-fiction – which is probably why it contains the elements of so many different styles of big budget filmmaking. The comedic elements are what bind the whole project together. While the film may have begun as a western - and this may have attracted Carpenter because of his desire to make westerns – we have to recognize that this film, without the humor that laces the entire picture, would be dead on arrival. Watch BTILC with any audience or group of friends who know and love the movie, and you'll notice that they aren't gasping at jump scares or waiting for the next action setpiece. They're primarily laughing, and not at the movie, but with the movie. Or else, they're quoting along the movie. Maybe they're enjoying the masterful visuals that still have a strange magic to them almost forty years later. But mostly, it's laughing. The film is a farcical comedy, above all else.

 

As for what the studio, and general audiences in 1986 seemed to think about the film, it's clear that they thought they were watching an action movie. And this isn't exactly out of left field, because one of the film’s targets is the American action/adventure movie. Particularly its protagonist, the quintessential "action hero". So, Carpenter made a comedy, posing as an action film, out of the corpse of a western, and with supernatural visuals sprinkled in. Why?

 

In an interview in the mid-1990s[2], Carpenter gave his opinion on a wide variety of topics having to do with modern-day cinema. And I think many of the comments he makes here are key to understanding his motivations behind a lot of the decisions in BTILC.

 

The interviewer brings up Monkeyshines and Dead Ringers as examples of horror films that utilize suspense over gore or violence in order to create an atmosphere of fear. He asks what Carpenter's thoughts are on using suspense instead of violence, seems to imply that the trend is towards more violence, and whether he thinks focusing on suspense is a better way of filmmaking.

 

Carpenter: "I think it entirely depends on the story that you want to tell. I do know that, in America, at least, the horror film is kind of dying out as a popular genre because the action movie has stolen all of its techniques. If you look at a movie like Die Hard 2, with the slitting of the throat and so forth and knives going in… they’re right out of a horror films. As a matter of fact, the director in fact is a horror movie director… Terminator 2 is basically a horror film. All those techniques that we used to use in horror are now in the big budget action film."

 

This is fascinating: Carpenter believed that the techniques and tropes of horror had been stolen by action filmmakers. These were the biggest blockbusters of the 1980s and into the 1990s. These were the movies getting the fattest paychecks from the studios, and getting the widest audience attention. The gore, the monsters, and the milieu of cinematic techniques for achieving horror – all of these are in greater use than ever… but not for the end of achieving horror. In making BTILC, Carpenter immediately goes against the grain by creating an "action movie", but taking his techniques and tropes primarily from the comedy genre rather than from the horror genre.

 

Carpenter continues: "I think maybe the market for horror films is beginning to change, at least it is in America. There are a couple of kind of yuppie horror films in America, Fatal Attraction is one of them, that audiences go to see… I think they feel more comfortable because they know that they’re not going to be disturbed by anything because Michael Douglass is in the film, he’s not gonna do anything really scary, which is unfortunate. I think one of the good things about a horror movie is that you should never be quite sure what they’re gonna show you on the screen… that’ll put you a little bit ill-at-ease… 'Am I going to see something that’s going to disturb me?' Because frankly, horror is about fear, about frightening things. You should be scared."

 

We can learn a couple things from this. First: if it's a horror film, you should be scared; by way of deduction, then, if it's a comedy film, you should laugh. The film should serve the purpose it is trying to accomplish. Second, Carpenter saw a cheapening of horror happening - and really, this has continued and even accelerated into the present day. The modern horror film seems more and more like a "haunted house" themepark ride than a cinematic experience - the audience is simply waiting for the next scary thing to jump out at that them. But just like the haunted house ride, you don’t get off afterwards disturbed, or thinking deeply about what you’ve seen. It was entertaining, but when it’s done you forget about it. You paid your admission ticket, got a little bit of joy, and now it’s over. The thing that made a horror film a horror film is gradually being lost. The films are becoming shallow, and most have no underlying message or lingering sense of mystery that the audience takes away from the experience.

 

Then, the interviewer asks him about another change in horror films over the decades. Rather than the "stars" that the films were centered around in the past - such as Peter Cushing or Christopher Lee - now we have mere identifiable "figures", such as Freddie, Jason, or Leatherface, who are not portrayed by recognizable actors giving a compelling performance, but instead recognizable by their physical traits or masks. As the director of Halloween, Carpenter's remarks may be somewhat unexpected to some, but they are scathing:

 

Carpenter: "Cartoon characters. It comes out of the popularity of comic books. It comes out of the idea of someone wearing a mask, out of superheroes… When you think about it, not too much different than Boris Karloff…and the kind of Frankenstein monster he made popular, played by various people, but it’s the same kind of make-up over and over again. Kids began to identify with the bad guy in the horror film, and began to like the bad guy, because he was the smartest guy around. Everybody else was so stupid, they just walk into a room and get murdered. The people who tend to go to horror movies are adolescents. And they go for… because horror movies are usually anti-authority movies. They get to laugh at people getting killed, and that’s not something that’s acceptable around the house with mom and dad. A whole lot of that is about society and kids growing up. The older you get in life, the less you’re inclined to want to go to see one of those movies, because you experience fear and violence in real life."

 

Carpenter goes on to talk about a mass shooting that had recently happened in Killeen, Texas, and noted that the people who just suffered the effects of that would probably not want to go see a gory horror movie any time soon. As for kids - well, generally younger people have the illusion of invincibility. Your boring suburban life when growing up doesn't expose you to death and pain and tragedy, so the horror film is exciting. Even though Carpenter would go on to make more horror films, it is particularly interesting that he seems to relegate all of the genre to a sort of youthful fantasy – a form of mere entertainment that is primarily interesting to "adolescents" –  mainly because Carpenter said this around the time he made In The Mouth of Madness (a horror film), at which time he was a (relatively) older man.

 

The most telling segment, however, and part of the key that will help us understand Big Trouble In Little China, is in Carpenter's answer to the interviewer's concern about "splatterfilms". He says that there are more and more "splatterfilms" these days. He asks what Carpenter thinks about the trend.

 

Carpenter: "Splatterfilms? It’s hard to know what you mean by that. You could say Psycho is a splatterfilm. You’re talking about where the death and carnage is done like a ballet and that’s the only purpose of the movie. That becomes like pornography. Now, people watch pornography to watch a kind of sexual circus going on, but there’s no substance. I’m afraid that you can’t divorce violence from a story. You can’t divorce it from character. And the minute that you start doing that, you really are not… you’re really in a little trouble.

"There was a series of films in the United States called Friday the 13th, part I, II, III, IV, V… and one of the ways they made those movies was to make every teenage character the same. There was no character, no difference between them. And they did this on purpose. They did it so that the audience would yell and scream at these stupid teenagers because they were always getting killed. Now that to me is just another form of pornography. I don’t agree with it. I don’t think that’s right to do. Because all you’re doing is you’re debasing human value. I don’t mind seeing a movie where people are involved in some sort of violence, but you’ve got to have some sort of character content behind it. You gotta care about the people. There should be a consequence for violence. A violent act should come with it some consequence for the people, because violence has a consequence for everyone."

 

I think this says it all about Carpenter's distaste for the trends in both horror film, and in the action films that had, in his view, appropriated most of the techniques of horror and basically become horror films themselves, but without the emotional resonance. Carpenter acknowledged earlier that the market for horror is typically made up of people who want to engage with that material for entertainment, but that people who have experienced real horror don't need that kind of entertainment. With the ongoing cheapening of the genre, and its expansion into action/adventure films, however, horror has become more palatable than ever for general audiences. The violence we see in the biggest blockbuster films of the 1980s and 1990s was increasingly there not to stir up anything terrifying or disturbing in the audience's soul, but for mere entertainment, as the money flowed in and the studios geared their releases to be as profitable as possible. Disposable characters are killed for our enjoyment and we don't care about them. Violence has no real consequences. The plotlines are formulaic and the story beats are expected. And note the word Carpenter uses for this: It's a sexual circus. It's pornography.

 

The first question we have to ask, then, is this: is Big Trouble In Little China pornography? It's not a serious movie, after all - and it depicts tons of violence on screen, that is often over the top. My answer is simple: absolutely not. By the very standards that Carpenter has given, BTILC is not pornographic, because we care about the characters. The characters are intensely likeable in this film, they're endlessly quotable, and above all else, they're funny (like comedy characters should be). They aren't funny in a goofball, meta or "self-aware" kind of way, however - a sickness that plagues modern comedy films, in my opinion - because the situations they find themselves in are often deathly serious to the characters involved. Even though the movie is a metafiction, they don't know they're in a movie... with the possible exception of one of them, which we'll discuss later.

 

The main takeaway here is that this completely explains the comedic elements of the film: it's an answer to the cheap, pornographic violence of contemporary horror films, and their encroachment into action. Carpenter made the conscious choice to go in the other direction, and make an action movie taken over by comedy instead. The implications of this are to decry as farcical the most popular and lucrative types of film of his own day. This is, of course the "satire" and "commentary" elements most people are talking about when they use those terms to describe the film.

 

And now that we have all of this out of the way, we will briefly discuss the three most popular interpretations of the film, in my opinion. As said above, all are somewhat valid and present part of the picture, and I take no credit for coming up with them. Together they'll get us a few steps further to understanding this beautiful and bizarre picture.

 

COMMON INTERPRETATIONS

 

I. Jack Burton is a stand-in for American foreign policy/imperialism

 

Jack has almost no self-awareness, and thinks very highly of himself. He is boastful, proud and sticks his nose in where it doesn't belong, trying to solve problems he doesn't understand. He steals the show from the minority characters around him - who are more competent than him and have more invested in the situation - and takes the credit for their successes. Given the history of U.S. interventions in Latin America and Asia - with the end result often disastrous - it's easy to see how Jack could be read as a metaphor for the United States and its unfortunate record of meddling in the affairs of foreign countries.

 

When Egg Shen leads Jack, Wang and the Chang Sing warriors into the underworld beneath San Francisco, Jack notices the black, viscous fluid running like an underground river throughout the caves. When asked about it, Egg tells us that it's the “black blood of the Earth”. “You mean oil?” Jack asks. It's a seemingly obvious nod to not only Jack's very literal, superficial thinking. Egg Shen goes on to give a mythological explanation that hints at a rich world behind our own. But also, it is a somewhat literal example of the single-minded fixation of U.S. statesmen on resources when it comes to geopolitics.

 

After all, Jack really becomes entangled in this whole mess after his truck is stolen - but his truck is only stolen after he butts in to a street fight between two warring sides, the Chang Sing and the Wing Kong. Uncle Chu tells him, in one of the more famous lines that “China is here”, and that the same conflicts that have been occurring for generations have been brought to San Francisco. The two sides have been fighting for centuries - and yet, Burton has no problem picking a side (it's easy enough when your buddy Wang points at one side and simply says, “They're good guys”). This calls to mind perhaps the U.S. intervention into the conflict between the Viet Minh and the government of Saigon, or the U.S. involving itself in Islamic civil wars in our modern times.

 

For Jack, despite all his buffoonery, it's “all in the reflexes”. At the beginning of the film, when this line is introduced, he says “I never drive faster than I can see”: Jack adjusts the way he drives based solely on what he sees in front of him. The first shot of Jack driving the Pork Chop Express (originally the first shot of the film) shows him driving practically down the middle of a two-lane highway, going up and down hills at a breakneck pace. Jack breaks all the rules. He's short-sighted. But when a bottle, or a knife comes flying towards his face? He catches it, no problem. Jack is at his best when he's reacting - he's not about planning ahead or making decisions based on a measured approach.

 

All of this fits with the standard, Chomskian-style critiques of U.S. foreign policy: reactionary, short-sighted, and willing to take sides in wars that don’t involve them in order to get what they want. And quick for vengeance, too. Jack feels the sting of anger when he's beaten & embarrassed by the Lords of Death during Miao Yin's kidnapping: “Son of a bitch must pay.” This is even before his truck is stolen, and Jack is already hell-bent on evening the odds.

 

In the end of the film, when the ape-creature (called, “The Wild Man” in the script) hitches a ride on Jack's truck, perhaps this is a message that this way of engaging with the world will come to bite you in the ass eventually. You might seem to score a victory by simply barging in, mucking around and claiming all the credit... and remember, credit may be somewhat literal here, since Wang is literally in Jack's debt, and this also helps explain Jack’s investment into the situation (he’s still asking for his money even after the truck is stolen). Just before Jack leaves, one of the last things that happens is he gets paid. More than he even expected to get paid, in fact, how fortunate! But the collateral damage, and the inevitable resentment caused are not just going to go away. Jack carries off that negative energy with him even as he leaves Chinatown, seemingly having learned nothing from the experience.

 

II. Big Trouble is a satire of the American action movie

 

This interpretation is a variation on the previous one, with the main difference being that this theory is a bit more general in its scope, and focusing on the meta-fiction element. While one might take or leave the idea that the film is a commentary on America's foreign policy, the indisputable truth of Jack “stealing the spotlight” from Wang Chi, presentation as a fool suggests a satire of American action cinema. Just as the white male hero gets to be the star and win the day because the script says he does, so too does Jack get to be the star... even though he is obviously is not qualified to be the hero.[3]

 

Before Egg Shen leads the Chang Sings into their final battle against Lo Pan, he offers Jack a .45 magnum pistol. “Make you feel like Dirty Harry!” he says. This is both a reference to the fact that Jack is embodying the same archetype as Dirty Harry, and that studio wanted Carpenter to cast Clint Eastwood - the most famous “white guy with a gun” who is able to solve all his problems with violence. Even if he wasn't before, in short order he takes a magic potion provided by Egg Shen that allows him to “do things no one else can do, see things no one else can see”. Everyone who rides the elevator down to the final confrontation is confident, smirking, and feeling good about themselves to a comedic degree. “I’ve got a real positive attitude about this!” Wang says. Of course he does. This is a meta-fiction, a self-aware story, and the characters are going in to the final confrontation wherein there's a big action setpiece and good defeats evil. Because that's what is supposed to happen.

 

The stunt where Jack and Wang leap out of the way of the oncoming vehicle driven by the Lords of Death (shot in reverse, in a sequence that took a great deal of time and effort) hardly looks real. Calling the editing “time-expanding” would be a vast understatement. It's a stunt presented in a way that is so overstated that it's to the point of ridiculousness. Given the effort that went in to it, and Carpenter's skill as a director, it can hardly be called unintentional, or a technical blunder. But it's so unrealistic that it takes you out of the movie - which is another way of saying that it reminds you that you're watching a movie. It's a wink at the camera. These stunts you’re seeing are an illusion.

This movie is a joke at the action film's expense. The violence during the street fight is so sudden and over-the-top, and escalates so quickly, that on the first viewing it's completely forgivable to be unprepared for it, and either dismiss the movie as absurd, or think that this must be a dream sequence or something of the sort. What begins as a street fight eventually becomes a full-on display of magic and the supernatural, complete with bulletproof wizards appearing out of portals. This is Carpenter's commentary on the un-realism of the violence portrayed on the big screen at the time. Like most things in the film, it gets taken to comedic extremes.

 

The fast-paced explanations of the film's mythology that follow are... well, almost impossible for the audience to follow. Some reviewers have pointed out that while directors such as James Cameron would embed his exposition into scenes where the characters were on the move, and preferred to keep the backstory simple and the explanations concise, Carpenter purposefully puts all of his exposition into scenes where the characters are at rest. They're intentionally long-winded, sometimes with the characters breathlessly spitting out paragraphs as fast as they can. The audience is subtly being led to focus on the action and dismiss the story as nonsensical and unimportant, which was arguably a feature of the contemporary audience for action films.

 

When Jack Burton shows up at the White Tiger – the whorehouse where the abducted women are taken to work as sex slaves – he’s in a disguise. In fact, he's wearing the same outfit we wore in Used Cars (1980), which was a dark comedy film. As Jack bumbles into the scene, this is a hint as to the nature of his character, and the film itself: these action movies are a black joke.

 

Films are ultimately about storytelling, as Carpenter has said himself: “My master is the story. A director is just a storyteller.” But modern action films have stories that are unimportant: they're mere vehicles to deliver action setpieces. We all know what's going to happen by the end of the film, and thus the real sense of tension, of being unsure as to what will happen next, is diminished. We know that in the final battle, the last big action sequence, the hero will prevail. So what are we getting out of it? It's a flashy light show with none of the emotional resonance. You buy your ticket, take a cinematic rollercoaster ride, then get off – except, you’ve also participated in debasing human value by watching meaningless violence.

Again: Jack ends the film the way he began it, and seems to have learned nothing and changed not one bit. When Gracie Law says, “See you around Burton,” Jack responds with, “Never can tell.” Who knows when the vapid action star will strike again, in the guise of yet another Steven Seagal or Chuck Norris or Dwayne Johnson? This interpretation, in my opinion, gets a step closer to the matter.

 

III. Big Trouble in Little China is a farcical take on Jungian archetypes & the hero cycle

 

This interpretation is not nearly as common as the first two, but usually involves Jungian archetypes.[4]

 

It often goes hand-in-hand with an overall psychological read of the film. Jack 'steals' the role of hero from Wang Chi, who is capable to a degree that is actually unrealistic, who is motivated solely by a pure love for his damsel in distress, and who comes off as somewhat innocent and naive at times. Thinking wistfully of Miao Yin, he muses, "She's gonna put my whole life in order!" Anyone who has ever been married or in a long-term relationship of any kind should know how silly all that sounds. In a sense, Wang Chi represents the old archetype of the hero - the Jimmy Stewart, the Luke Skywalker, the questing hero represented in mythology and hailing from a simpler time. Jack is more like the action heroes of the time (and even today), who has 'stolen' that prominence in the zeitgeist. He's a tough-talking all-American guy from a working class background. So of course this kind of hero leads the movie rather than the old type of hero.

 

Now, as we explored in talking about the previous interpretations, Carpenter might certainly be saying that this is not necessarily a good thing. But, bigger picture, we might have a lot more sympathy for Jack Burton if we saw ourselves in him, and recognized that narrative-building around our lives is what our own brains do every day. We all tend to see ourselves as the protagonist of our own story. The people who help us - like Wang Chi or Egg Shen or Eddie - are just allies, mere sidekicks on our journey. The people who get in our way - like the Wing Kong, or Lo Pan - are the villains. One's personal journal is of supreme importance to oneself, and, if we face up to it, most of us are probably closer to the category of "fool" rather than "hero" in real life.

 

We can't dismiss the interest in "two worlds meeting" that existed behind the film, and the idea that Richter wanted the real dividing line between the world the audience understands and the world of the supernatural to be between the surface and the underground. Stories abounds throughout mythology about the hero going deep into a cave, or sometimes into the underworld itself, to slay the villain and rescue a princess or virgin.

 

Typically when one visits the underworld in a narrative, it can be taken as a symbol of going into the unconscious part of the psyche. This is a place of demons and monsters - irrational drives, absurd thoughts and feelings - as well as literal hells. The criminal underworld under Chinatown is a literal underworld. The Lords of Death, the street gang who are a few links in the evil hierarchy down and under the control of Lo Pan, have a name that conjures up figures and deities from the Bardo Thodol, The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Their name is equal parts mythological and shallow. Lo Pan is, in the mythos, a man who has become something of a devil. But symbolically, he is like an instinct, or a 'drive' - his goals and his very nature are almost totally carnal. And like such as a thing as a 'drive', he is not physically incarnated - though he wishes to be, oh does he wish to be! - and yet he has existed forever. "He becomes a dream," Uncle Chu tells us - a fantasy, a figment in the mind.

 

This is all in keeping with Jung's ideas on the 'collective unconscious': referring not to anything supernatural, nor a 'shared unconsciousness' (nor any of the other incorrect notions about Jung's ideas); rather, this term refers simply to material that makes up the psyche which is not personal, but common to all mankind. It is perhaps telling that the types of monsters they encounter in the deepest depths of the underworld do not even resemble anything Chinese - such as the centipedal monster that eats one of the Chang Sing warriors. Even "the Wild Man" doesn't look like any kind of creature I know from Chinese mythology. If anything, it seems more like a Dungeons & Dragons monster - and the Guardian of Lo Pan, as a floating sphere with many eyes, definitely resembles the monster peculiar to that game known as the Beholder. This is perhaps because these are supposed to be universal ghouls and hobgoblins of the deep, unconscious psyche, and not anything native to China.

 

Egg Shen and Uncle Chu's scene at the divination table is particularly telling. "An image of great difficulty at the beginning," Egg Shen says, seemingly describing the off-the-rails street fight wherein the Chang Sings are decimated, Jack loses his truck, and Wang loses Miao Yin - and their failure to come when they decide to launch an incursion into the Wing Kong exchange completely unprepared. The ram's horns are entangled, Egg Shen says, describing the image. But soon, he promises, the heroes will "bring order to chaos". Shen is suggesting that the events taking place are a story that has already been pre-ordained, perhaps by the forces of heaven. As he and Uncle Chu continue to discuss Lo Pan, they reveal that all the universe is divided between the power of "positive and negative furies", which are in constant conflict. This type of duality in the human soul was also central to Jung's work, and Lo Pan's curse is described as an absence of balance and the victory of evil within one's being. While Wang and even Egg Shen later give more literal rendering of the backstory of Lo Pan - involving a curse from the first emperor of the Qin dynasty - it is notable that, in the context of the story as told from a divined, mythological perspective, Lo Pan's problem is in his soul - his psyche. "Chinese black magic," he later says, his voice quivering. "My soul swims in it."

 

As for some of the other characters, we have the blueprint of Wang Chi, the traditional hero, rescuing Miao Yin. Then we have Jack and Gracie - who are both the hero and the damsel, and yet both somewhat foolish in their way - perform the same hero's journey as a doubles. These parallel stories indicate the difference between dream and reality, between fantasy and the mundane. Jack and Gracie are not idealized to the same degree, and through their relative incompetence we can recognize more of the "everyman" in them.

 

We shouldn't forget that even before Jack and Wang 'cross over' into another reality, the inciting incident - where Miao Yin is kidnapped - happens at the airport, a sort of in-between place, or gateway. When Jack is pursuing the Lords of Death, Wang Chi tells him to turn right. Jack asks where, unable to see anywhere to turn. Indeed, as the audience, it doesn't look like there's a road there. "Turn right now!" Wang cries, and Jack comes to a screeching, sudden turn down an alleyway that looks like it shouldn't have been there. It certainly didn't seem like it was there before! When they come to a stop before the street fight, the area becomes shrouded in mist. Apparently, even before they enter the underworld, they either cross over into Lo Pan's domain, or encounter a place in the 'real world' where Lo Pan has chosen to make an incursion. The idea need not be so much of a literal, physical boundary between two worlds as being between surface and underworld - indeed, this demonstrates that this is a world that is 'behind things'.

 

After she's captured, Margo Litzenburger writes in her cell that everything has become so strange, and compares the affair thus far to a kind of Alice in Wonderland. The protagonist leaves the normal world of safety, steps beyond a portal out into the wilds, or perhaps into the depths of the mind, where the normal rules no longer apply, then returns with something valuable. In this case, it is the salvation of Gracie and Miao Yin. Wang is the hero archetype, Jack is the fool, Miao Yin and Gracie are the anima, Egg Shen is the wise old man, Lo Pan is the shadow, and his legions are the uncooperative forces of the unconscious self. The repeated talk of dreams, myths & the occult - all themes in perfect keeping with Jung's focus in his work - may indicate that this is a story that can be taken as an allegory of the psyche. In this interpretation, the film is a playful representation of the encounter with the shadow.

 

The shadow is empowered by the mind of the person confronting it: when Jack begins the movie, he talks about being slammed up against the wall by an eight-foot tall maniac. He later describes Lo Pan as unnaturally tall, and he is described as increasingly tall as the movie continues (despite the fact that he doesn't even seem that tall from the audience's perspective): first eight feet tall, then ten feet tall, then finally when Gracie expresses dismay that Jack is going to fight Lo Pan since he's "twelve feet tall!". "Seven!" Jack corrects her. After the effect of Egg Shen's potion, which fills all of the warriors with confidence, the looming threat of Lo Pan doesn't seem so large.

 

THE MISSING INGREDIENT

 

As I said before, all of these interpretations have merit to them, and all shed some light on the meaning behind the movie. In combination, they're even somewhat greater than the sum of their parts, each elucidating different parts of the film's central message that provide an overall more clear picture of Carpenter's central idea. But what they mostly don’t emphasize to a sufficient degree is the element that is practically dripping from every frame of this movie: sex.

 

The entire plot is about sex. Major scenes are either sexually graphic, or in some way suggestive of sex. This is a movie that is, in some way or another, about sex. What do I mean by this? Well, before we get into the deeper meaning - which some of you reading this may have already figured out - I first want to go over all of the sexual imagery, metaphors, and outright sexual plot elements. Jung and his ideas about the hero's journey, archetypes and the collective unconscious may provide a useful language for analyzing the film. But, in short, Jung may need to take a backseat to Freud if we want to get down to the throbbing heart of the matter.

 

In the very beginning of the film, one of the first images we see is Egg Shen, talking to a man who he's looking to hire as his attorney. On the wall behind him, there's a phallic-looking obelisk - the Egyptian style of monument that appears even today, in Washington D.C., in the form of the Washington monument. The Ancient Egyptians were, of course, overtly fascinated with the phallus. Male gods were portrayed as 'ithyphallic' - that is to say, with huge erections - and their version of the creation of the world involves a god ejaculating reality into existence.

 

But this is, of course, that notorious first scene, which was a later addition. The first scene of the actual film is Jack Burton driving the Pork Chop Express. The truck is adorned with that stereotypical trucker-favorite: a decal of a sexy later, and complete with the phrase, "Haulin' Ass".

 

Before the inciting incident of the film, Jack spots Gracie and immediately walks over to hit on her. Just moments after, the Lords of Death kidnap Miao Yin. This is depiction of a violent attempt to take a sex slave. We later learn was just par for the course when it comes to their behavior. "They weren't acting on any orders from the Wing Kong," Eddie says. They just wanted to grab a girl. In fact, though it is overshadowed by the supernatural elements, Jack Burton's swagger, and the breakneck pace of the film, the real plot involves the revelation that a massive and brazen sex trafficking operation is going on all over the city. It's an evil seething underneath everything. Behind the San Francisco Chinatown that dumpy, middle-aged tourists snap pictures of on Egg Shen's tour bus, there is an evil power that no one can stop; one that abducts, dominates and rapes women.

 

One of the major plot events takes place at the White Tiger, a brothel where women who are apparently forced or otherwise coerced into working. When Jack enters the brothel, despite his knowledge of the sordid goings-on there, he can't help but gawk at the women. But this is all before Lo Pan's servants, the Three Storms, invade the brothel, blow a hole in the roof, and steal Miao Yin back for Lo Pan. What follows is a scene that is equal parts dark and humorous - and maybe this is why Jack is dressed the same as Kurt Russell dressed in a previous black comedy film - as we see the occupants of the White Tiger all scream and flee from their hotel rooms. The rooms are apparently occupied by a bunch of older and middle-aged white men and the young, female Asian sex slaves that they're engaged in intercourse with - since that is who we see predominantly fleeing their rooms. In the sky above the White Tiger, Wang Chi and Eddie behold the giant ball of green flame - the same ball of green flame the lawyer mentioned at the beginning of the film.

 

Why does the lawyer mention the ball of green flame at the beginning? This is, after all, apparently why the authorities are interested in questioning Jack Burton and may be looking into Egg Shen. The lawyer says that people are saying Shen was involved, and is a very dangerous man. Why he says this is something we'll discuss later, since Egg Shen was not there during the incident - but it's worth noting that he doesn't bring up the destruction of Lo Pan's Wing Kong exchange, nor the airport incident at the beginning of the film, nor the street fight where Lee Lem and his Chang Sings are massacred. The incident that the beginning of the film frames as really catching the attention of the authorities is: the fact that the roof got blown off the whorehouse. The exposition of the dark, seedy, sexual forces beneath the city.

 

Gracie and Margo are captured by the sex traffickers and brought to the prison cells, where there are dozens of other women imprisoned. Gracie is found hogtied in a manner perhaps meant to be evocative of S&M kinks. Eddie, Wang and Jack, before their rescue attempt, trade firearms in a comedic manner, with Jack trading for the biggest gun, Wang for the second biggest, and Eddie getting stuck with the smallest. It's a dick-measuring competition, of sorts. The phallic appearance of guns is referenced again when Egg Shen offers to give Jack Dirty Harry's gun - Dirty Harry's overly-large pistol has been interpreted as a phallic symbol by many film critics.

 

When we discover Lo Pan's goals, we learn that they're absolutely carnal in nature. As his spirit projection studies Miao Yin's sleeping body, he reaches through her, frustrated that his physical body is old and impotent, and his spiritual one cannot interact with her form. He is "trapped in this old man's crippled body". He yearns for sensual contact and pleasure. His curse dictates that he must both marry a woman with green eyes, and yet he must sacrifice her, compounding his sexual frustration. Upon seeing that both Gracie and Miao Yin pass his trial, he is overjoyed, since he can now, "Live out [his] earthly pleasures with Miao Yin" after using Gracie as a sacrifice.

 

The character is a veritable font of dark sexual urges, and this is unsurprising, given that he seems to have been named after a poem by Aleister Crowley which celebrates the deity Pan. Pan is a satyr-god, and he was known for being mischievous, lustful towards human women, and also for being the object of worship of many occultists and neopagans. Crowley's poem, "Hymn to Pan", is about lust. In fact, it is likely a love letter of sorts to a male lover who lived on the over side of the English channel in mainland Europe, whom Crowley was yearning for. The poem is visceral and explicit, but I will print it here in full so that there can be no doubt that the character of Lo Pan is meant to be an avatar for a form of dark, lustful sexuality.

 

Aleister Crowley’s “Hymn to Pan”

 

Thrill with lissome lust of the light,

O man ! My man !

Come careering out of the night

Of Pan ! Io Pan .

Io Pan ! Io Pan ! Come over the sea

From Sicily and from Arcady !

Roaming as Bacchus, with fauns and pards

And nymphs and styrs for thy guards,

On a milk-white ass, come over the sea

To me, to me,

Come with Apollo in bridal dress

(Spheperdess and pythoness)

Come with Artemis, silken shod,

And wash thy white thigh, beautiful God,

In the moon, of the woods, on the marble mount,

The dimpled dawn of of the amber fount !

Dip the purple of passionate prayer

In the crimson shrine, the scarlet snare,

The soul that startles in eyes of blue

To watch thy wantoness weeping through

The tangled grove, the gnarled bole

Of the living tree that is spirit and soul

And body and brain -come over the sea,

(Io Pan ! Io Pan !)

Devil or god, to me, to me,

My man ! my man !

Come with trumpets sounding shrill

Over the hill !

Come with drums low muttering

From the spring !

Come with flute and come with pipe !

Am I not ripe ?

I, who wait and writhe and wrestle

With air that hath no boughs to nestle

My body, weary of empty clasp,

Strong as a lion, and sharp as an asp-

Come, O come !

I am numb

With the lonely lust of devildom.

Thrust the sword through the galling fetter,

All devourer, all begetter;

Give me the sign of the Open Eye

And the token erect of thorny thigh

And the word of madness and mystery,

O pan ! Io Pan !

Io Pan ! Io Pan ! Pan Pan ! Pan,

I am a man:

Do as thou wilt, as a great god can,

O Pan ! Io Pan !

Io pan ! Io Pan Pan ! I am awake

In the grip of the snake.

The eagle slashes with beak and claw;

The gods withdraw:

The great beasts come, Io Pan ! I am borne

To death on the horn

Of the Unicorn.

I am Pan ! Io Pan ! Io Pan Pan ! Pan !

I am thy mate, I am thy man,

Goat of thy flock, I am gold , I am god,

Flesh to thy bone, flower to thy rod.

With hoofs of steel I race on the rocks

Through solstice stubborn to equinox.

And I rave; and I rape and I rip and I rend

Everlasting, world without end.

Mannikin, maiden, maenad, man,

In the might of Pan.

Io Pan ! Io Pan Pan ! Pan ! Io Pan !

 

 

Now, obviously, the poem says Io Pan instead of Lo Pan, but it certainly looks like it says "lo Pan", and the term lo is a somewhat archaic term indicating someone to look ("lo and behold"). It is possible that Carpenter either read it as "lo, Pan" without having heard it pronounced out loud, or simply changed the name so that it would sound somewhat Chinese (from an orientalist perspective, of course) but still look visually the same as the refrain of Crowley's poem. Lo Pan is, after all, not a real Chinese name: at the very least, Pan is being referenced, the half-man, half-beast deity of the satyrs, creatures who were known to abduct and rape women. But the occult connection alone seems to connect the character with the poem, given both that Lo Pan is, after all, a wizard, and furthermore that Carpenter was certainly interested in the occult and probably well-read in at least big names, such as Crowley.

 

Furthermore, Gracie tells us that his name is David Lo Pan, which may be, in-universe, simply an adopted name for doing business in America - though we must consider that it's awfully weird for a two thousand year old evil spirit to be named "David". That is, until we consider that King David, in the Bible, was a king known for both being righteous in battle, and defeated by lust. Consumed with sexual desire for one of his general's wives after seeing her bathing on the rooftop, he has an affair with her, then manipulates circumstances to try and have his general killed in battle. Lo Pan, who still thinks of himself as "a young man, a king, a warrior", is therefore given a first name that references a king. Furthermore, Crowley's magical system of Thelema was heavily inspired by Qabbala mysticism, so perhaps it is not a coincidence that he is named after a king of the Hebrews.

 

When Lo Pan's plan is coming to fulfillment, he has both women undertake the "Trial of the Burning Blade", where they each grab hold of a sword - another phallic weapon - which is presumably burning hot. I shouldn't have to explain that kind of imagery. Thunder is even wearing some kinky, leopard-print cufflinks. After the ritual, Lo Pan says they have "tamed the savage heart" - a symbol for satiating his lust. This is all done under control of his magic, as both women's minds are wiped and their bodies are at his command. This scene was so intense, that Peter Kwong, who portrayed Rain, believed that he was in a very serious action/thriller with dark and supernatural themes. He didn't realize until Dennis Dun's playful eyebrow raise during the final battle that the film was supposed to be a comedy.

 

Of course, the entire affair culminates in a monstrous, underworld wedding. It's a scene where Lo Pan is attended by priests, and a congregation of his followers - but his followers are gangsters and demons, and the backdrop is a flashy, neon shrine. It's equal parts spiritual and profane. The Hieros Gamos - or divine wedding, a coming together of the self, is a key image in both alchemy and Carl Jung's approach to symbolism of the psyche. It's as if Lo Pan is creating a blasphemous version. He penetrates Miao Yin with "the needle of love", giggling, writhing and moaning with almost orgasmic glee as he becomes flesh and blood again.

It also might be a bit funny to consider swapping "feet" for "inches" when recalling Lo Pan being described as unnaturally tall. Is it eight inches, ten inches, twelve inches? No, that's just a brag, seven inches at most!

 

Oh, and one more thing... it shouldn't be lost on us that the names of the two main characters are Jack and Wang.

 

THE IDENTITY OF LO PAN & THE THREE STORMS

 

So why all the sex stuff? Is Lo Pan a spirit of sex? Or of lust? I think that's close, but no cigar (and remember, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar).

 

More specifically, Lo Pan is the evil spirit of pornography. Remember what Carpenter said in the interview quoted above? "You’re talking about where the death and carnage is done like a ballet and that’s the only purpose of the movie. That becomes like pornography. Now, people watch pornography to watch a kind of sexual circus going on, but there’s no substance... I don’t agree with it. I don’t think that’s right to do. Because all you’re doing is you’re debasing human value. I don’t mind seeing a movie where people are involved in some sort of violence, but you’ve got to have some sort of character content behind it. You gotta care about the people."

 

I don't mean to imply that this movie is anti- literal porn: rather, it is against the pornographic form that cinema was beginning to take. The most visceral visual effects were being snatched up for use in the big budget pictures. The big budget pictures are just vehicles to deliver the sense pleasures we've learned that we can get out of cinema: special effects, a flashy lightshow, stunts, action setpieces. The plots have become less emotionally-resonant, have less substance, and have less humanity to them, as the story is ceasing to be served by the spectacle, and is now a servant to it. The things that disturb or upset the audience are being removed. The people making these decisions are bureaucrats and executives motivated by little more than making money, and it is probably no coincidence either that Lo Pan is revealed to be a banker.

 

As stated before, the film itself is not pornographic: Carpenter is not creating a mere satire, which would be a representation of the pornographic, vapid action cinema he was criticizing, and thus something that could be seen as part of the problem. Rather, the characters, who are likeable, distinct, and from the 'real world', are under attack from the influence of the dark, sexual, supernatural underworld. The "Evil spirits" who have descended from the archetypal realm to make a "big scene" are the forces of pornographic sense-gratification invading cinema. In the scene before the final confrontation, Egg Shen calls Lo Pan the "bodhisattva of the underworld" – implying that Lo Pan, through his magic, is leading other souls down into the hell of his lustful desires with him. (Note: The subtitles say, "boldest satyr of the underworld", which I don't think is correct, though it has an equally significant meaning if true, given that Pan is a satyr).

 

The Three Storms are a bit harder to make sense of. It certainly seems that they might symbolize something, appearing as a triad of seemingly otherworldly beings, who are named Thunder, Rain and Lightning. The movie begins and ends with a rainstorm, and rainstorms persist throughout the film – and Jack's last lines in the film actually make reference to all three, describing the thunder, rain and lightning during a storm. Nevertheless, the characters – or lack thereof – belie any attempt to fit them into a clean allegory.

 

That being said, the big clue is that when the Three Storms first appear. When their arms cock back to throw their knives and begin their salvo of over-the-top violence, there is a mechanical noise, while all three move in unison. It's a subtle hint that these are automatons – mere avatars or creations of Lo Pan. Thunder, in fact, literally dies the moment he realizes Lo Pan is dead, expanding until he explodes (in one of the most bizarre scenes in the film). Some have even theorized that they were not even mortal until Lo Pan became mortal, tied as they are to his essence – and it is hard to believe that even with a magic potion that Wang could kill one of them with a sword, since we witness bullets going straight through them, and Jack's fists doing absolutely nothing against them.

 

The Storms are harbingers of pornographic film violence. They first arrive during a street fight, a violent encounter that only seems to escalate at an accelerating and almost unrealistic pace. The appearance of The Storms marks this scene going off the rails not just into absurdity but into magical territory. It's not for nothing that this scene likely inspired videogames, such as Mortal Kombat – Raiden is a dead ringer for Lightning, rice hat and all – and some have described this scene as like a videogame.[5]

 

When Gracie asks who The Storms are, she says, "Are they magicians?" "Sort of," Eddie answers. "It's hard to explain." They're magicians because Lo Pan is a magician, and they were made by his magic - but only a deeper level, they're mere automata, or golems. They're avatars of movie magic, beings that fly in on wires, creating flashy effects and causing the kind of sensory ballet and satisfying violence we crave. If I had to guess at the symbolism of their names, it would be that Thunder is the swelling, powerful loins, Rain is the surging bodily fluids, and Lightning is the "fire in the belly".

 

EGG SHEN, CINEMATIC WIZARD

 

So, Lo Pan is the Evil Spirit of Cinematic Pornography, the Three Storms are automatons created to bring that onto the screen and create the sexual circus. But what about the other wizard who opposes them, the one we know and love as Egg Shen? A simple look at his name reveals that his last name is the Chinese word for a God, and Egg seems to merely be an English word. So, he's a God inside of an Egg, perhaps: he has the expansive power of a God localized in a small place. Or perhaps he's a God on the other side of a shell - a God that is hidden. And who is God in the world of film? The filmmaker.

 

Egg Shen is the director: he's a loose representative of Carpenter on the screen. He's the storyteller, reading the divination table and explaining the story of the film. He's the tour guide, the one telling the story of Chinatown to the tourists, and showing them the world of the film. He's the magician, and the film notably starts out with him showing off a bit of movie magic - the lightning effect that was very common in Hollywood in those days, its the same effect used to create the Emperor's lightning in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi - and he reminds us, "that was nothing." And he's the one who frames the story at the beginning of the film. “My master is the story," Carpenter says. "A director is just a storyteller.”

 

While many have dismissed the importance of the first scene, since it was requested by the studio, we must remember that Carpenter still wrote and shot the scene, and it was Carpenter who decided how it was that Jack Burton would be set up to appear more heroic. Given that he was asked to add the scene for the purposes of pumping up Burton in the minds of the audience, it’s funny that the scene he chose was not a scene of Burton, but of Egg Shen, sitting in an office with a lawyer who is grilling him. The lawyer supposedly wants to work for Egg Shen, acting as if he’s on his side, and he’s asking about Burton. This is Carpenter, having demands made of him by a bureaucrat. And what does Egg Shen tell the lawyer, angrily, multiple times? "You leave Jack Burton alone!"

 

This aspect of the theory addresses why Egg Shen was said to be 'involved' in the incident at the White Tiger, even though his character wasn't there. The reason why he was said to be 'involved' with the green flame incident is because he was involved, insofar as he is a stand-in for the director. He is the force manipulating the film to strike a blow against the forces of Lo Pan. He wants us to leave Jack Burton alone because the entire point of the film is to recognize that the vapid action movie, where good triumphs over evil, is actually a false depiction. It's a mere fantasy, an illusion, and it does nothing to help good triumph over evil here in the real world. The problem is compounded by the fact that going to watch pornographic film violence "debases human value" - so actually, in the real world, evil is winning.

 

The incident the lawyer asks about is when the roof is blown off of the whorehouse, since this is the scene where we see the giant ball of green flame, and this is why Shen is a very dangerous man. But who was it who was "blowing the roof off the whorehouse"? Carpenter. The film is a criticism of Hollywood, and more specifically the big budget action films of the time, not merely as vapid or as exemplars of American arrogance, but as a sexual circus. And remember: it's not consensual. It's domineering, seedy, and forced. Powerful men with a lot of money are turning the theater into a whorehouse - a form of cheap entertainment for the masses. And given what we've learned, and been able to prove in recent years about the depravity of real world Hollywood executives, directors, and producers - Harvey Weinstein, Roman Polanski, Bryan Singer, etc. - maybe there's a more literal criticism of the real world as well as the dream world.

 

It is Egg Shen who says that "the evil dream must die", referring to Lo Pan. Egg Shen is the one who was the "resident expert on Lo Pan" long before the events of the film began, and who has been fighting him since time immemorial. Egg Shen wants to use a dream to kill a dream, and the dream he's using is Big Trouble in Little China, the story he’s telling. The thing up on the screen is a dream, a fantasy - and Carpenter has used those exact terms to describe cinema. It's Shen who gives the Chang Sings, Wang Chi, and Jack Burton the magic potion, which allows them to "see things no one else can see", and do what no normal man can do. What they can see, after drinking it, is that they're characters in an action film - and obviously, since they're coming to the final confrontation where good always defeats evil, they realize that they're going to win. Thus they gain the powers that action movie heroes have: incredible luck, the ability to soar around on wires, and above all the script's dictates that the heroes win in the end.

 

Egg Shen cannot confront Lo Pan directly: he duels with Lo Pan during the final confrontation and it comes to a standstill. Similarly, Carpenter can't meaningfully take on the zeitgeist of Hollywood in the real world. But he can tell a story about it, and create a character that takes it on. Videogames are referenced, as Lo Pan mashes his thumbs to control his projected, illusory warrior in the battle against Shen's. And above all this reminds us that the cinematic depictions of conflict between good and evil are nothing: they're a projection on the wall.

And, as a quick aside, when Shen defeats the final Storm, Lightning, it’s been noted that the blast creates the Chinese character for “carpenter” on the wall. This is, of course, just Carpenter signing his name. While he defeats the last of Lo Pan’s automata, the name of the director appears: a hint that Shen is connected with Carpenter, since both of them are subduing and dominating the “movie magic”: lightning.

 

It is Egg Shen who steals the film from Wang Chi, the rightful hero, and gives it to Jack. He does this in the opening scene, by telling us that Jack "showed great courage", and "we are in his debt". But by "we", he doesn't mean Chinatown, he means the global "we" - us, all of us, the audience. A wholesome, traditional hero like Wang Chi simply would not do for the main character of this story - in order to blow the roof off the whorehouse and expose the superficiality of modern cinema, he needs a hero plucked out of modern cinema. Jack is clueless and irresponsible, just like modern action stars, and it is only by his courage - which might as well be synonymous with stupidity, given the powerful forces he confronts - that he can confront Lo Pan.

 

Furthermore, Wang is not a perfect character, and if he lacks anything, it is forthrightness. His naivete verges on dishonesty: he doesn't want to admit to himself that Lo Pan appeared on the street, so he doesn't want to admit it to Uncle Chu either, and even lies to him. It could be suggested that he tries to get out of paying Jack by trying to knock him out with the bottle at the beginning of the film, but he fails to count on Jack's famous reflexes. He's plenty brave, but he isn't brave to the point of stupidity - or perhaps we might say, by way of allegory, honest to a fault, like Jack is. Jack is the perfect character for exposing the empty action hero because he says the quiet part loud, quite literally. And we need to hear it.

 

Carpenter always saw himself as an anti-authoritarian director - this is the man who made They Live, after all. True to form, he always fought with the studio big wigs, and usually found the commercial success of his films lacking during their initial release. Thus, Egg Shen does "peasant magic", and Lo Pan, a rich and powerful man, is contemptuous of it. Meanwhile, when Jack tells him that "beggars can't be choosy," Lo Pan decrees, "But I can!" Again, the money and power in Hollywood is something which Carpenter cannot really challenge in real life. He can only challenge it in the illusory world of film. But in the film-world it is not his stand-in Egg Shen who is powerful enough to defeat Lo Pan, since that would not be an accurate depiction of real life. "You never could beat me, Egg Shen," the evil one declares. The hope would be that by showing us Jack Burton as the hero - a man who learns nothing, and makes no real character change in the film, and defeats the bad guy merely by virtue of being on the right side of the script - we might recognize the shallowness of big budget action cinema.

 

At the end of the film, Shen is puffing on a pipe as they celebrate at the Dragon of the Black Pool. He has a slight smirk on his face, but then he tries to simply slip out the back door. The defeat of the evil is a literal pipe dream. This is Carpenter telling us that the film making any impact on the real Lo Pan - the pornographic forces seething underneath our society in the real world - is wildly unrealistic.

 

The audience, speaking through Margo (a reporter, after all), is distressed when Jack leaves without even kissing Gracie goodbye. Jack does not undergo a character change, as offered to him by Gracie. He could settle down with her, or maybe she could go on the road with him. Maybe it would be a positive character development for Jack. But no - the neat love story at the end of the picture is part of the easily digestible Hollywood dream, and it's actually one of the more pernicious parts of that dream. When James Bond beds a new woman at the end of every film, there is usually a pretension of some romance - as if this is something actually loving or meaningful between the two characters. But in truth, the female character is merely a means to an end - an empty vessel being used to feed the audience a sexual fantasy. She's disposable and there's a new one next time around.

 

Carpenter allows this love story to play out for Wang Chi and Miao Yin, but Jack's stubborn lack of growth is a major hint about the lack of any substantive change to reality because of the film. And lo and behold, the Wild Man is still alive and kicking at the end, appearing for a scare ending straight out of the horror genre. The evil survives.

 

DOUBLES & TRIPLES

There are just a few more loose ends to tie up. By no means have I set out to explain every last creative decision in this film, and I think with the blueprint I've provided you can probably view and analyze the various scenes in successive viewings of the film with new eyes and come to your own conclusions. That being said, I have a few more ideas that are a bit more speculative but I think fit with the overarching ideas behind the movie. They mostly have to do with the various duplicates and triples we encounter throughout Big Trouble.

 

You may have noticed that there are multiple love stories in the film: three of them, in fact. We have Wang Chi & Miao Yin, Jack Burton & Gracie Law, and finally Eddie Wong and Margo Litzenburger. The multiple partnerings over the course of one film - while common in the Hollywood milieu - is nevertheless conspicuous, especially given that both the dual-protagonists have their love interests stolen from them, and placed in the same clothes & make-up, and made to look identical. Meanwhile, Eddie and Margo, we are told, are crazy about each other, and seemingly start a relationship by the end of the movie, seemingly out of the blue.

 

The entire film culminates in a black ritual of a wedding, and one that is immediately somewhat sacrilegious by its polygamous nature. When Gracie and Miao Yin's eyes go milky white, it is Lo Pan dominating them, making them into sexual objects, as pornography has the power to do. By erasing their characters and making both women the same, Lo Pan has done to them what Carpenter complained the Friday the 13th films did to that franchise's characters. They become marionettes, merely there to be used and even discarded, for the edification of the powerful, and the entertainment of an audience. As to the significance of Lo Pan offering up two 'girls with green eyes' to appease both Ching Dai and the First Emperor, we first have to discuss Miao Yin's place in the film.

 

Miao Yin's name translates to "cat-like", and while this may be intentional, I think her name was probably chosen primarily because it contains the word "yin", the feminine principle in the Chinese philosophy of yin/yang. Positive and negative furies, remember? (This is the film's way of talking about the yinyang philosophy). Miao Yin is the ideal feminine. Why is she ideal? Because her eyes are green, "like creamy jade" as Wang Chi describes them - and we of course know, and are told, that "Chinese girls don't come with green eyes". Lo Pan guesses (or perhaps has learned somehow) that her father was a holy man. As for jade in Chinese culture, it is a symbol of great value, of heaven, and of basically all that is good in the world. The original meaning of jade was that of a precious stone of great virtue, and possessing jade indicated one was benevolent(仁), righteous(義), wise(智), etc. In Chinese, describing someone as a person with jade means they are virtuous and filial to his ancestors. Jade is the “stone of heaven”, and is associated with grace and beauty.

 

The character for a wizard(巫) in Chinese derives from a depiction of two pieces of jade offered together to gods and ancestors. Lo Pan, a wizard, offers two pieces of jade - that is to say, a woman with grace, who is virtuous and forthright (Gracie Law), and a woman descended from a holy man, with seemingly miraculous eyes (Miao Yin) - to a god, Ching Dai, and the First Emperor, who is in some sense the ancestor of all China. Perhaps this is the symbolism of the ball of green flame as well - heralding that Lo Pan has found the jade he is looking for as an offering.

 

In any case, I have already argued that Wang Chi and Miao Yin occupy roles as more traditional "hero" and "damsel" in a rather orthodox myth or faerie tale. Wang Chi is good-hearted, but stubborn, and a bit naive at times. "To the army and navy, and the battle they have won. To America's colors, the colors that never run!" he toasts, before drinking the magic potion. Wang Chi is speaking in terms that seem like they're from another time; he sounds almost like a WWII-era protagonist. Action movie heroes in the 1980s don't talk like that, and the films that were out at the time were probably more likely to have a general appear as a bureaucratic asshole or even the villain of the film rather than one the side of good. This was a cinematic era about anti-heroes, and usually they were critical of "the man" or the Military Industrial Complex.

 

Meanwhile, Miao Yin barely has any lines in the film, her most notable being to tell Lo Pan, "I don't belong to you!" She dutifully resists the improper advances of the rapey antagonist, as the script requires her to do. We don't even have to interpret the line as it meaning that she belongs to someone else - perhaps this is the character of Miao Yin raging against the pornographic drive to turn her into an object - but regardless, she mostly passes the time in the film comatose, and without agency. She's a damsel straight out of the 1950's or before.

 

As for Eddie and Margo, these two strike me as the most realistic characters depicted, and probably most like the audience members. They're fairly ordinary, other than their involvement in the crazy shenanigans going on around them. Margo is comically ineffective, unable to find her pen in her purse just as Gracie is declaring that "her pen is mightier than your sword!" Mostly, she's just trying to understand what's going on around her - she wants to get the story. She wants to understand the story playing out in the film. Both she and Eddie, being characters from the film world, do understand the situation to some degree. But ultimately, when Jack asks for the truth, in Eddie's words: "We don't know." They're as clueless as we are, and about as powerless.

 

They end up together in a sudden romance because that's the aim of the modern cinematic experience: you go to the theater, see a "popcorn movie" for the purposes of mere entertainment, and if you brought a date, you hope the love story being depicted on screen helps translate into fireworks for you and your date off screen. The movie theater has long been a place to either take a date, or hook up. The love story in a blockbuster action flick is practically a requirement. Carpenter caught some flak for not including any female characters in The Thing, and part of the reason is because then there's no way to work in a love story. It's so ingrained into the audience's expectations and the industry model for cinematic entertainment that it's seen as a huge downside from a business standpoint if the film doesn't have one. In any case, Wang and Miao Yin get their happily ever after love story, and Eddie and Margo hook up accordingly. They do this in lieu of attending the last battle because, in universe, they wouldn't be very helpful, but perhaps the meta-explanation is that they aren't the kind of characters who can take a potion that makes you into an action hero. They're more like observers, on the sidelines - like the audience.

 

To consider Jack & Gracie, the only further questions involve Gracie Law. Given that her parents were originally missionaries, it may be fair to consider the fact that "grace" and "law" are built right into the character's name, and furthermore that this is the main tension especially in protestant theology: the competing wills of God to fulfill his grace, which demands mercy for mankind, or to fulfill his law, which demands punishment. Gracie thus represents the balancing of these two virtues - which works perfectly with her as an avatar of jade. But she's fundamentally a western woman - concerned with protecting Tara's civil rights, for example. Ultimately, however, there is something about Gracie's character that is just as absurd as Jack Burton - she occupies that middle world between a character that acts bravely and foolishly.

 

Cattrall was cast at Carpenter's demand, despite the studio being uncomfortable with her appearance in raunchy comedies. Furthermore, in the film's universe, Wang Chi refers to her as "trouble", and the residents of Chinatown seem to regard her with an almost friendly dismissiveness. Cattrall said of her character: "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". This is certainly true - but Jack's brawn is about as effective throughout the course of the film as Gracie's brains. She'll eagerly run into the heart of the Wing Kong exchange to shout high-minded ideals at a force that is way more powerful than her and that doesn't care about high-minded ideals. "I don't make the rules around here," the blank-faced security guard replies. As a lawyer, Gracie should know how bureaucracy works, and how ineffectual such an attempt really is... but in the film world, all that matters is speaking truth to power. In this sense, Jack is to a Chuck Norris or Steven Seagal as Gracie is to Tom Cruise in A Few Good Men or even Atticus Finch. The cinematic fantasy that the well-intentioned, conscience-driven lawyer is going to achieve justice working through the system. Their fire, bluster and wits will be enough to make a meaningful difference... but only up there on the screen.

 

As we discussed above, the fact that the two do not end up together represents Carpenter blue-ballsing the audience of their expected love story at the end of the film - to remind us that this is a pipe dream. Jack can't have a meaningful character change -  all he can do is celebrate his own glory, relishing in the fact that he, Jack Burton ("Who?") "shook the pillars of heaven". As the audience demands that he kiss her goodbye, which might at least give us the hint that a change is possible, Jack refuses. Thus, while there is an implied love story, and the characters do kiss earlier in the story, and clearly share some feelings for one another, it is not brought to completion.

 

One final thing with the theme of threes. Lo Pan possesses his Three Storms: three servants or automatons that carry out his will. His evil underworld hierarchy seemingly consists of three levels: at the bottom are the Lords of Death, who are mere errand boys for the Wing Kong, who then answer to the supernatural monsters and sorcerers, including the Storms and Lo Pan himself, deep below the Wing Kong exchange. In addition to this, there are two Lo Pans - or are there three? There is the Lo Pan in the wheelchair, and projection Lo Pan we see on the street. But there is also the mysterious "Wild Man", who again looks nothing like a being from Chinese mythology, seems to carry out Lo Pan's will as well, and survives presumably to take revenge on Jack after the end of the film. The idea of a less evolved human or "caveman", or half-man/half-beast (not unlike the deity Pan) have long been symbols of the animal instincts in man, his irrational desires and basest passions. While you can kill Lo Pan the character, perhaps you cannot kill the underlying reasons for the Evil Spirit of Pornography existing in the first place: the base-level thirst for sex and violence that cinematic pornography satisfies. That's why he continues to haunt Jack at the end of film, and part of why the "victory" is so illusory and hollow.

 

So, perhaps the Wild Man represents the desires of the flesh. The Lo Pan in the wheelchair represents the desires of the mind. He has a devilish wit, banters expertly with Jack Burton, ridicules his understanding, and expresses almost existential concerns about his self-image. Meanwhile, his body is worthless and impotent. Jack even says he belongs in a mental asylum. The projection Lo Pan, meanwhile, is his spirit, his drives. This is the version that quivers with lust, yearns for Miao Yin, and beckons Jack forward to hit him with eerie glee. He is seen prowling the alleyway in the guise of a homeless person after Jack takes his hard right turn into another reality. He is reaching out his black-magic soaked essence to seek for what he wants in the world above: he is the part of Lo Pan that seeks.

 

Lo Pan's wedding, as he intended it to proceed, was also between three partners rather than between two. As for the meaning of all these twos and threes, again I can only speculate. Jung did argue that the quaternity, a harmony of four parts, is the true symbol of wholeness, and the number three symbolizes a sort of incomplete wholeness. It's the minimum number of sides and points to get some kind of shape, but the imagery of quaternity is yet a further step towards a fully individuated psyche. Lo Pan is not there, and cannot seem to get there. He is fundamentally out of balance with the forces of reality.

 

 

YOU ARE NOT PUT UPON THIS EARTH TO "GET IT"

 

In the end there is a great deal that will remain open to interpretation, and that is simply wonderful. While I have offered my own stab at it, if nothing else, I hope that this essay has at least inspired one or two people to see something more in this film rather than a superficial action-romp. Or maybe to see something more in cinema in general. My rules of thumb are twofold. 1). If you find yourself still thinking about a film even long after you've seen it, there's probably something deeper going on there that really connected with your intuition. Interpreting and analyzing the film, rather than taking the mystery out of the experience, in my mind does the opposite. The film really could mean anything to anyone, and diving into your own take on it will help you understand why a movie really connected with you, if nothing else. As for 2). When the director reminds you that you're watching a movie, pay attention.

 

I would place this film in the category of a handful of others from the late 1980s that served as a sort of self-reflection on the over-the-top violence and cheap entertainment that was overtaking cinema. Industry was crushing the art. We saw this in Last Action Hero, and even in the James Bond film of the late 1980s, License to Kill, both of which were sort of self-examinations: about action films more broadly and about the most popular franchise of action films. However, when we went into the 1990s, the trend didn't abate. You could argue that now, on the eve of the 2020s, the Evil Spirit of Cinematic Pornography is more powerful than ever. The industry did not listen when Carpenter told us all to “leave Jack Burton alone”.

 

It's become possible to dazzle audiences with more technically brilliant visual displays than ever. A hundred cheaply made horror films released by studios that simply grind them out, and in which terribly-written characters have depressingly horrible things happen to them for no greater meaning - and they're pumped into the Redbox and onto the major streaming platforms. They're consumed and forgotten about. Action films and big summer blockbusters are accepted as being a sort of dim-witted genre that you shouldn't have to think about too much. And the vast number of remakes, reboots, sequels and various other ways to capitalize on well-known intellectual property presents it's own new set of problems that Carpenter didn't even see coming.

 

They've been talking about remaking Big Trouble In Little China for a few years now – and it seems as though they're dead set on doing it with the Rock as the star of the film. I'm ambivalent about it. On the one hand, there's a sick irony in it: that they might actually take Big Trouble and make it into a form of pornography itself, without even really understanding what they were doing. On the other hand, I like the Rock, there are still some clever directors around, and in the right hands they might make something new out of this now-popular cult material that actually resonates or at least stays true to the spirit of the old film. But I doubt it. I'd wager that the most intelligent it's likely to be would be if the filmmakers end up making an undoubtedly over-the-top satire of action films, or a goofy commentary on U.S. imperialism. We've seen plenty of these in recent years. Most of them are heavy-handed and are not very good, so I'm cynical about the whole thing.

 

And Carpenter feels cynical also. "They want a movie with Dwayne Johnson," Carpenter has said. "That's what they want. So they just picked that title. They don't give a shit about me and my movie. That movie wasn't a success."

 

It may not have been a commercial success. It may not have succeeded in destroying the cinematic evil that is cursing us all. But there is at least that glimmer of magic, that hint of something more, and those characters that we all love... and those elements will keep people thinking about this film for a long time to come. If the film is indeed Carpenter's radical attack on the cheap, pornographic nature of popular cinema, perhaps this message can lead us to reflect on what makes cinema a great artform in the first place, and how we can recapture that magic. 

 

---

[1] These concerns are detailed in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CsDEsb-cJ0
I leave this here so that people can make up their own minds – although I must say that personally, I think it’s entirely fair to say that anyone who was offended by the movie simply did not understand it, and probably didn’t even try to understand it.

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKpC3Jv2Qwg

[3] https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/stop-making-sense-the-lunkheaded-genius-of-big-trouble-1610461836

[4] Fair warning, this link is to a right-wing/Christian conspiracy theory website where they see Satanic conspiracies in all Hollywood movies; nevertheless, this guy has some interesting observations: https://jaysanalysis.com/2018/11/21/big-trouble-in-little-china-1986-esoteric-analysis/

[5] https://www.gamesradar.com/the-three-storms-are-the-best-bit-in-big-trouble-in-little-china/