American Wuxia

Patiently we waited in the AFI Silver Theatre lobby, milling amongst the display cases laden with pop culture relics recalling our childhood. While starring at the synthesized one-hit records and Rubik’s Cubes, we would hear the muffled roar of Brazil’s climax, signaling that its showing was running late. We didn’t mind.

Hey, we were simply waiting for Jack Burton.

When John Carpenter’s oddity barreled into mid-1980s theaters, the likes of The Goonies and Gremlins formed audiences’ conception of fantasy adventures with their amusement-park-ride décor, light-show magic, and deformed monster suits. General assumption dictated that Big Trouble in Little China was more of the same, and the trailers only reinforced that notion. But Carpenter—who, with the acclaimed and commercially successful Starman, had just shaken free of the horror genre after a string of hit movies—Carpenter had something different in mind. Something that mainstream American audiences or critics knew nothing about.

A riff on wuxia, done up sai yan style.

Also known as “Hong Kong swordplay,” wuxia long has been a crazy subtext to the martial arts cinema. Combining kung fu philosophy and swordsmen traditions with a mishmash of fantasy, comedy, horror, and tragic romance, wuxia movies play a melodeon of emotions, flipping and flying along on wires among lavish sets and colorful costumes mimicking a symbolic edition of ancient China. Although the genre’s roots reach back as far as the 1920s, the heyday of wuxia really started during the kung fu boom of the 1970s. The following decade, though, began with a radical reworking of the mythos—Tsui Hark’s Zu, Warriors of Magic Mountain. After the international success of Star Wars, Hark borrowed that space opera’s special effect techniques and Saturday matinee storytelling to translate what had been a style heavy on Buddhist and historical tradition to something more buoyant and randomly adventurous. The more dramatic traits of wuxia were and are still present, but in many of the popular specimens, they fight for screen time with the insanity.

It was this version of wuxia that Carpenter discovered and fell in love with, so much so that as he rode his recent Hollywood success, he decided to create his own Hong Kong fantasia, but from his perspective. Which, in the end, turned out to be ours.

As we finally drifted into the screening room, we were engulfed by an art deco cavern. The Silver has three theaters, two of which resemble the stadium-seating efficiencies of modern multiplexes. But the third has been restored to its mid-20th century form, its tapestry wallpaper embellishing between the wood carvings roiling on the walls. The ceiling feels a mile or two away. The screen is simply huge, while the seating dwarfs the 50 or so now finding perfect seats everywhere.

As the lights dim and the old Fox logo appears, there’s a strange stillness I can’t place. It is anticipation: As soon as Egg appears, questioned by his cynical lawyer, an ovation rises in the darkness, followed by giggling and geek-riven glee. The Three Storms get a even louder one when they appear in their grandiose entree. Ole Jack, meanwhile, got complete silence, because everybody wanted to hear every single line.

It’s been a long time since I’ve sat in a theater watching a movie everybody with me adored. Maybe it’s been never.

Big Trouble in Little China flopped back in Big 80s, eclipsed by, all things, Eddie Murphy’s The Golden Child. Critics shamed Carpenter for using Asian stereotypes in his movie, never realizing that the director actually was paying proper homage to the films the Asian industry was churning out. Those critics, and unfortunately the mainstream audience, were unfamiliar with Hong Kong cinema; their ignorance led to misunderstanding, and Big Trouble ended with the dreaded “ahead of its time” tag.

Over the years, Carpenter’s fun opus found its fans and slowly rose in estimation, strangely coming to help define the cinematic artistry of the decade that spurned it. Blame Jack Burton.

Sitting in the Silver, loving every minute of a movie I knew far too well, I realized two things. First, akin to the screening of The Terminator, I noticed things I never did before, but this time, it had to do with Carpenter and writer W.D. Richter’s (Buckaroo Banzai) sly character humor. Jack is Jack, and Egg is bemusingly sage-like, but I’ve never noticed how hilarious the globs of exposition were ratta-tating from Kim Cattrall’s Gracie Law, nor how gloriously earnest Dennis Dun’s Wang Chi tried to be.

The second is, well, Jack himself. The accepted great joke of Big Trouble in Little China is that Jack Burton thinks he’s the hero, but he’s really Wang’s sidekick. With one big exception, Jack doesn’t accomplish much heroic, and instead stumbles around completely out of his depth among a dozen Chinese hells, elemental henchmen, and Six Demon Bags.

Just like the audience.

That’s the honest fun of Big Trouble—Jack is one of us. For all of his bluster, Jack’s perspective is the same as his creator’s—the outsider experiencing Chinese magic and mythology for the first time. Carpenter knew he could never make a pure wuxia movie, so he made a twisted translation with a familiar cliché. The real joke of Jack Burton is that he’s more than a confused sidekick—he’s a Western hero waylaid in a Chinese wuxia movie, the modern cowboy equipped with his one-liners and bravado hopelessly out-of-place. Jack grounds the wuxia insanity with well-intentioned buffoonery, allowing his audience to both laugh and learn. We know Jack, even though Kurt Russell is playing a parody, and Burton calms the strangeness by entertaining us with what we know.

Big Trouble in Little China transcends nostalgia because it’s a preface, a guided introduction to another culture’s unique genre. Years later, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon would become a surprise hit escaping the art house, opening the multiplex door for modern-day wuxia. Every year, Hong Kong fantasies perform for the mainstream—from House of Flying Daggers to The Banquet to Hero. This time, audiences were ready for the magic.

Thank Jack.