Big Trouble in Little China

John Carpenter follows a truck driver pulled into a sorcerers’ war under Chinatown when his friend’s fiancee is abducted. A western is still visible underneath. Gary Goldman and David Z. Weinstein’s first script was a straight western: the Kurt Russell part a cowboy, Gracie Law a safe house keeper. W. D. Richter moved it into the present, turning the cowboy into a truck driver and her into a lawyer. Dropped from the credits, the two went to Writers Guild arbitration in spring 1986, which restored their full story and screenplay credit and left Richter an “adapted by” card. The real joke is structural: Carpenter centres the sidekick who thinks he is the hero. Barry Diller, then running Fox, did not get it and asked for an opening scene where Egg Shen explains events to a lawyer; Carpenter shot it, giving the joke away in the first minutes. On release the film stopped at 11.1 million dollars in North America. Carpenter later named this as why he stopped working for studios. A good fit if you want to watch Russell believe he is the lead while Wang Chi does the work, even after the opening says so. Not for viewers who cannot set aside the period Chinese cliches the underground mythology is built from.