40 Years Later, This Cult Classic Still Can’t Find A Genre
Big Trouble in Little China was a genre-bending masterpiece ahead of its time.
Cult is a four-letter word. It conjures images of weird cult leaders running compounds like Jonestown in order to swindle money and brainwash vulnerable people. But a cult classic? Why that’s just a movie! Granted, it has a tinge of a slur to it. These aren’t films universally appreciated by the masses. These are movies overlooked in their time but given second life thanks to underground enthusiasm. The kind of movies people talk about when someone complains about how there’s nothing to watch anymore and needs a hidden gem to discover. The kind of movies like John Carpenter’s 40-year-old masterpiece Big Trouble in Little China.
The big trouble with Big Trouble in Little China, and part of why it missed the mark theatrically, is that it's too big for a single genre. It does too many things too well to be ignored. Supernatural gangfights in Chinatown put you squarely in a martial arts picture only to be yanked through the fourth wall into a self-effacing satire by the wry charm of Kurt Russell. It’s a buddy cop movie with a damsel in distress, except there’s two damsels. There’s high fantasy magical rituals and a Freightliner FLC-120 semi-truck called “The Pork Chop Express.” It is a celebration of movies and what is possible onscreen. It does not concern itself with commitment.
The identity crisis started early for Big Trouble in Little China. The original script set it as a western until it was rewritten by Hollywood script doctor W. D. Richter (he called it “awful”). That DNA still remains in the final version, albeit subversively. One of the great tropes in westerns is the notion of competence. Think of any cowboy hero and its easy to imagine them being great at everything. Shooting guns, riding horses, fixing barns, playing cards. Russell’s Jack Burton has all of the bravado but doesn’t understand he’s more lucky than good. He’s not an anti-hero, he’s an un-hero in the vein of Inspector Clouseau. A bumbling, charming buffoon saved time and again by his sidekick, Wang.
If you’re keeping a hero scorecard, then Dennis Dun’s Wang comes out as the hero here. His fiancée has been kidnapped to appease Lo Pan, a ghost with an immortal curse who needs to marry/murder her to be reborn. Wang is the one who guides Jack every step of the way and fights most of the fights single-handed. Turns out Ol’ Jack is a bit of a butterfingers. He fumbles an ammo reload, knocks himself out after shooting into the ceiling, gets stuck underneath an armored guard, and this is just during the climactic fight scene where Wang is KO-ing people left, right, and center.
It’s easy to see why Burton’s dumb American schtick didn’t resonate in 1986 during the macho peak of Reagan’s America (a cowboy actor, by the way). The fact that it was also aimed at calling out Hollywood’s longstanding stereotypes of Asian cultures didn’t help. But in 2026, it’s aged like baijiu. Burton’s ethnocentric confidence centers a movie that likes to run off in new directions and leave him a step behind. This, too, feels ahead of its time. Trouble is it was only about a year ahead.
The blockbuster success of The Princess Bride the following year proved a streamlined version of the genre-blending idea still worked. It also features a bantering, cocksure dude waltzing through fantastical scene after fantastical scene. In the end he saves the girl, and the whole of it is told to us in the present day under the guise of a bedtime story. But because it’s a western bedtime story, not an eastern one, it clicked. It’s doubtful many of Big Trouble in Little China’s U.S. ticketholders caught nuanced nods to Diyu, the many-leveled Chinese hell that includes an upside-down torture for men who kidnap women.
Trying to make sense of Big Trouble in Little China is a fool’s errand.
Big Trouble in Little China feels akin to an improv sketch where the traditional “yes, and” is replaced by “why not?” The villainous Lo Pan, masterfully portrayed by James Wong, spends most of his onscreen time as either a decrepit old man in a wheelchair or a floating apparition. An unusual choice for something that feels like an action movie, but ultimately isn’t. So why not?
Odd creatures and beasts populate the corridors of Lo Pan’s lair too, because why not? A floating pustule covered in eyeballs serves as, essentially, a security camera that alerts Lo Pan when it spots Burton, Wang, and company. Other scenes even used security cameras. So why make the choice to include this thing? “Why not” is why. How many times have you seen security camera footage in a TV show or movie? A gazillion. And how many times have you seen a flying glob of eyes? Once. That’s ultimately its heart and soul, a supernatural movie that celebrates literal movie magic.
Big Trouble in Little China can be almost anything you want it to be. It’s held up by an incredible ensemble cast that makes the myriad of scenes actually work. Victor Wong as Egg, Donald Li as Eddie, Kim Cattrall as no-nonsense lawyer Gracie Law, the list goes on. You don’t get tired of watching them, and that rewatchability is key because we keep coming back. Sometimes you watch it to convince yourself it’s pure ‘80s action. Other times you think it’s fantasy. Maybe sci-fi? No, it’s a martial arts epic. Actually, maybe a buddy comedy? In the end, Lo Pan gives it away each time. As he famously tells Jack (and us), “You are not brought upon this world to get it.” Maybe we will in another 40 years.
