Films with hidden meaning: Big trouble in little China

I like to watch Big trouble in little China. However most people would look at it and see a good side and a bad side. But the reality is quite different. Basically you start with 2 people playing cards. One guy is winning: the white one: the other are losing. The chinese guy left then tries to beat the other with a bet: which is obviously a cheat. It is to cut a bottle in two, and obviously the bottle flies at the other charactes, but he catches it. Then they end up driving into a fight. Where there are two stret gangs fighting. After this they end up losing a truck and a woman who is coming from China.

They are taken by a man who is more demon than man(through a curse making him immortal). They are helped by a mage and another street gang. It seems like a clear case of good versus bad. But it isn't!!!
Because at the very start is the mage who is helping them explain to a lawyer the aftermath. He explains he used Chinese black magic. Notice that Chinese BLACK MAGIC. So the person helping them is not a good guy he also is bad. The street gang will also be bad.

The person who he is helping get his wife or girlfriend who was kidnapped also tried to cheat him and send a bottle to his head( by pretending to chop it in half).

All sides are bad. The white guy: I refer to him as that as it is the easiest way to explain the film) ends up in a situation , as does the other person who also loses his girlfriend/wife.

But the mages(effectively the leaders of each side in the final battle) are bpth bad asd are both street gangs.

Isn't this just like the situation we end up in today. It is never one good side and one bad. It is always all bad sides(or led by bad people).
We end up defining bad sides by what has happened to us and nothing else: by what is most convenient.

I should also say that the person who at the start tried to cheat the other: with the bottle trick: is supposed to be his friend. But obviously isn't but he helps him anyway.

THE MODERN WORLD COCA COLA VERSUS PEPSI
The choice of sides you take makes little difference.

reply to post by werewolf99


I think you have a very valid point. I just have no clue how you ended up using that movie as a reference. I though it was strictly a "get ____ and eat junk food" kind of movie.

reply to post by werewolf99


I like your analysis. You must really annoy people when watching films. I do the same. My girlfriend won't watch some of them with me anymore.

I think a great writer understands that in real life there are no true villains, there are only people.

My favorite novels and movies are ones that write each character as a human being. Instead of the "muwahahaha" bad guy versus the all American GI good guy type character.

I love "Big Trouble in Little China" BTW. It's impossible to be in a bad mood after that film.

If you're writing and really doing your job, you know most of your characters inside and out, forwards and back. Most of the information you will never need for what you actually write, but all those details will help you know absolutely how to make them live on the page so that they aren't just narrow stereotypes.

That's why so many of today's movies are so pallid, IMO. The scriptwriters of today are writing off the movies of yesterday whereas the scriptwriters of yesterday were writing more off the novels they grew up with. They had better characters and better storylines as their examples.

reply to post by werewolf99


Awesome movie!

S&F for just making a thread about it.

I agree with defining good versus bad by defining our circumstances. I have seen the movie a dozen times and never saw it that way. Still not sure I do. But then again I am a little tone deaf to nuanced things like that. I just see it as gritty (in a cheesy 80's way). More true to life, nobody wearing white or black hats.

No worries though. "Everybody relax, I'm here."

I never really saw it as a classic or clear cut good bad. It seemed more like two guys trying to get their girlfriends back, so the two guys are really only helping each out as allies of convenience and victims of circumstance and they're really only as good as you want to decide they are. And it's them v. everyone else.

I think you are wrong about the 'bottle trick'...those two guys were genuine friends and Russell's character really tries to cut the bottle in half. He obviously didn't have the skill...though he had the ego.

His friend (who has skill) was badass enough to catch it in midair before it hit him.

We, my friend, saw two completely different movies.

intelligenthoodlum33
I think you are wrong about the 'bottle trick'...those two guys were genuine friends and Russell's character really tries to cut the bottle in half. He obviously didn't have the skill...though he had the ego.

His friend (who has skill) was badass enough to catch it in midair before it hit him.

We, my friend, saw two completely different movies.

They look to me like iterations of the Twin Hero motif, each helping the other to unite with thier feminine half (Kim Cattral and the Mao Yin) to form a Quaternity. Together they represent the four-fold symmetry of the psyche.

At about 1:38 the two old men give the heroes an I-Ching reading. So this is definitely about Taoist conceptions of yin and yang. Our Western notions of black & white good & evil might not be applicable because yin and yang are constantly changing... eventually changing into their opposites, and there is always a bit of one in the other, and there is a hidden harmony and unity that governs them both - the Tao.

reply to post by intelligenthoodlum33


You've got that scene backwards. It is Dennis Dunn's character (wang) who tries to cut the bottle -- he is down to Jack Burton (Russell) after a night of gambling, and proposes that he can cut the bottle in half for double or nothing.

After missing he theorizes that his mind and spirit were not one because he is so excited to go to the airport to get Mao Yin.

Love that movie. Just love it.

"It's all in the reflexes..."

"You know what Jack Burton says at a time like this?"
"Who?"
"Jack Burton! ME! Old Jack always says, What the hell..."(throws knife)

Jack Burton is not bad. How very dare you, sir or madam.

Jack Burton is awesome.

....and that kids, is why you shouldn't do drugs!!

intelligenthoodlum33
I think you are wrong about the 'bottle trick'...those two guys were genuine friends and Russell's character really tries to cut the bottle in half. He obviously didn't have the skill...though he had the ego.

His friend (who has skill) was badass enough to catch it in midair before it hit him.

We, my friend, saw two completely different movies.

I think we definitely did, in the one I saw Jack catches the bottle.

"We really shook The Pillars of Heaven, didn't we, Wang?"
"No horse---t, Jack."

"Aren't you even going to kiss her goodbye?"
"No."

Part of me wanted a sequel to that film so bad and I think that's why it is legendary. Jack Burton was a character that you simply KNEW had more than this one crazy adventure. It was like his life was a cosmic joke of right person in the wrong place.
OP, you started my weekend off right. Cheers!

reply to post by khimbar



One of the classic movies... LOVED it... The Pork chop express!!!! "Son of bitch must PAY!"

I can see the logic slightly... but Egg Shen IMO was nice.. as long as you didn't attack him. lol.

(Just saw that the actor that played Egg Shen (Victor Wong) died in 2001!!)
I loved him in Golden Child too..

khimbar

intelligenthoodlum33
I think you are wrong about the 'bottle trick'...those two guys were genuine friends and Russell's character really tries to cut the bottle in half. He obviously didn't have the skill...though he had the ego.

His friend (who has skill) was badass enough to catch it in midair before it hit him.

We, my friend, saw two completely different movies.

I think we definitely did, in the one I saw Jack catches the bottle.

Doh! I stand corrected. It has been awhile.

reply to post by jpkmets


I agree 100% with your explanation.

Can't believe I got the characters mixed up.

I think you are reading too far into a campy B action movie (that happens to be AMAZING when watching plastered, I have a drinking game to go along with this movie to help in that matter). The idea of the movie was to finally put an everyman into the role of action hero. Jack Burton's only heroic action is at the end of the movie when he kills the bad guy, up until then he can't even work his uzi right (and constantly seems to find shelter in elevators...), but that is the point. A real person put into a situation like Burton, wouldn't be able to pick up a gun and instantly get headshots and mow down his adversaries like Arnold does.

Actually in an old book I saw the split a bottle in two trick: though no longer have the book and so no proof: and the point was that youput it sideways and it hit into the other persons face. They must have had many guffaws in the 1950's when the book was made at the glass shattering on their friends face.

I suppose the book was wrote in different times: long before me.