Forget About Killing Bill, There's Big Trouble in Little China!

It goes without saying that the primary role that Asian-Americans have played in American films over the last few decades has been as martial arts experts. Most of the popular American films featuring this aspect of Asian culture have come to the fore in the last fifteen years, but almost twenty years ago a big name director made what was probably the first American film to feature Asian martial artists as both the heroes and villains of the story. What is most interesting about the movie Big Trouble in Little China is how it subverts what has turned out to be quite prescient expectations of martial arts movies made in America.

Big Trouble in Little China is a hybrid movie that doesn't fit easily into genre and that upsetting of expectations extends into the cultural milieu as well. This film was made in the mid-80s, during the height of the action hybrid blockbuster era defined by the Indiana Jones movies and destroyed by the likes of Bruce Willis. Early on the movie sets up expectations that its hero will be in that mold as the instantly recognizable actor Kurt Russell swaggers and speaks with a John Wayne bravado. This makes the transition of the central heroic figure to the lesser-known Asian actor all the more striking. All too often, American films set among the Asian subcultures construct their all-American hero in such a way that he comes to be seen as not just saving their lives, but educating them about America. Big Trouble in Little China turns that convention on its head by having the character we expect to always know best and have the answers consistently being put in situations where he must turn to the Asian character we initially expected to fulfill the sidekick role for answers. In this way, this almost forgotten action/comedy succeeds both in illuminating the manner in which cultural divides are typically presented in Hollywood films, and in undoing those very stereotypes.

What may be most remarkable about Big Trouble in Little China is the way that it takes elements from standard B-movie or even old movie serial fare-ghosts, wizards, demons-and subverts them in such a way as to make the Asian elements the mainstream and the American elements the foreign intruders. This is perhaps the first mainstream American film in which Asian-American women are not relegated to either being prostitutes or wives of white men. Almost every supporting and background character in the film is Asian and the movie makes it claim to historical importance based on the fact that it demands its non-Asian characters respond and react to that culture rather than the other way around. Equally important, alas, is that the film was not a commercial success when released. Of course, there are any number of reasons why a move doesn't achieve mainstream success, but it certainly must be taken into consideration that one of the biggest reasons for this movie's failure to find a big audience was that Americans were not ready at the time to embrace a film that actively-even defiantly-cast its American characters as inferior in thought and physical ability to its Asian characters.

Big Trouble in Little China has all the cinematic qualities one typically finds in a successful action adventure film-quick editing, stylish fight scenes, and a pulsing soundtrack-yet it did not quite catch the attention of mainstream film going audiences in ways that similar movies have lately. It would be very interesting to see how differently the reaction would if the same movie were released into today's market that has come to accept Asian-American heroes much more readily.