BIG TROUBLE in little china: C/D?

For a while Carpenter had the kind of golden b-movie writer's touch I would kill for. Some of his movies are One-Liner Paradise. I loved this movie so much as a kid because every character has great lines, and it helps the whole film be so memorable. Plus the special effects/post-Ghostbusters mysticism (which is probably a main reason why I also liked Mortal Kombat the first time I saw it).

"Zu Warriors" is AMAZING but yeah two totally different movies. Love the pervading sense of fantasy in that one.

well overall two different movies, but you can't see the connection in terms of the zany humor, the overall manner of plot construction, the nature of the fights and their use of wires and FX etc.?

i mean big trouble is like strong doses of HK fantasy/mythology/martial arts self-consciously filtered through wisecracking '80s american action cinema.

did carpenter ever return to the tone of this film again?

not really, unfortunately

william friedkin was a huge fan of asian genre cinema, including HK martial arts and Japanese yakuza films. but with a few exception moments or set pieces I don't see much of that fandom in his films. esp. not the HK-style action aesthetics.

american genre cinema of the 70s and 80s might have been more interesting had more directors taken cues from HK cinema.

Big Trouble harkens back to the good old days when John Carpenter movies were fun

sometimes parts of the movie blend with Golden Child in my head which makes a p awesome mashup

Big Trouble in Little Golden Child

Golden Child has been sitting on our shelf for ages, tempting us but never looking THAT good. Should we watch it?

i am kinda partial to it, but that is fuelled by childhood nostalgia so ymmv :)

Huh.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/06/01/the-rock-to-star-in-big-trouble-in-little-china-remake

I just don't understand why. This film isn't even that good.

after three or so viewings i feel comfortable reiterating that this film is pretty awesome but not in a single way that any remake would possibly capture. i mean this is true of most remakes but this one in particular is just baffling.

Yeah, it's a good film but I agree just not worth remaking. Also without Russell's humour I just don't see any point.

(that's what I meant by 'not that good', not that its shit, just not really great)

yeah i imagine they would retain the plot, but who cares about the plot?

not really a "good movie" IMO but interesting as a suggestion of where US genre cinema might have gone had it borrowed more heavily from contemporaneous HK stuff.

Awesome? That seems to be rating it on the high side. Obviously, the film is about as deep as a saucer and not meant as anything more than a good way to waste a couple of hours. It certainly succeeds on those terms.

What the fuck? I watch this film every night. FPd all of you.

the remake of btilc was p much "the mummy" tbh

Russell was great at balancing dumb action movie swagger with self-aware dorkiness. I like the Rock as a choice, but it will be a totally different film.

I thought it was really great because it was a post-Ghostbusters/Star Wars take on b-movies, with all the special effects and cool supernatural stuff. It was like a Kung Fu mix of Indiana Jones and Rambo.

So much of what's lovable about the film is Russell's goofery and John Wayne impression, the way everybody is really emphatically talking past/at each other in this absurd situation, and the generally gleeful ridiculousness of the script, set amidst lots of charming practical effects and sets and stuff. The story is just a dumb setting for that, it's not like it's a classic tale that you can sorta imagine maybe being good brought up to date with a new cast. Or could have sorta imagined, once, but no longer can after the past eons of terrible generic remakes.

i enjoy this movie, but i also enjoy gunga din and i that would be a really fucking stupid movie to remake as well

feel like the original has a "just hangs together, barely" aspect to it that a remake will surely crush

dude is already doing a jack burton imitation in a lot of movies anyway

also this movie wasn't remotely a hit when it came out - is the rock dying? is this his make-a-wish foundation request?

you'd think the smarter road if you want to make a nu-carpenter remake with the rock would be snake plissken

Escape From Witch Mountain

haha yeah i did realize after the fact he's already done some VERB FROM A PLACE movies. But still, remaking a cult dystopia hit makes a lot more sense today than remaking a cult camp kung fu flop

Dr. Casino otm, loveable goofery and gleeful ridiculousness are v apt.

the key to the movie is that wang rules and if they miscast him/diminish his importance nothing else will matter

When is the buckaroo banzai remake happening

The thing is, an an Escape to Witch Mountain reboot hardly makes a ton of commercial sense either! Though apparently it did pretty good. Maybe the rock has just committed himself to using his stardom to force forgotten properties of his youth back onto the American public. Buckaroo Banzai not so unlikely really.

The lamest thing about remake-topia is that it never actually enables a proper do-over a movie to bring out its best ideas. Like, I just watched D.A.R.Y.L. recently (dunno why I'm picking that, maybe witch mountain made me think of it), and it's got many charms but many faults, and I just caught myself thinking "why can't the Rock remake D.A.R.Y.L. instead?" which is crazy because obviously it would just be awful and certainly missing everything I found really lovable out it (mainly: gentle early 80s woodsy suburban milieu, kids dressed exactly like me at that age).

otm about Wang. Also Egg.

also lo pan

i dunno, seems kind of like trying to remake rocky horror (which it seems is also happening)

maybe they can make it funny and exciting this time

Dr c, the original escape to witch mountain was a hit with two sequels. Remaking that makes a lot more commercial sense than this.

Second sequel was direct-to-TV, but yeah, true, hit. But it still has to be one of the more obscure big-studio properties to get a remake in the last decade, right? Up there with Dark Shadows at least - I can't recall one time in my adult life that anybody has ever brought up the original films to me or anything, they had basically zero pop-cultural presence when The Rock's movie was greenlit. Darby O'Gill, your number's gotta come up soon!

Excuse me; I am of course thinking of Merlin Jones.

Well dark shadows was 100% a makeawish foundation movie the Depp burton brand spent some cred on, but Disney is always looking to revive kiddy properties. Escape from witch totally fit in with their steez.

Disney also made a witch mountain TV movie in the 90s

all the more argument for corporate synergy to bend The Rock's revival of Snake Plissken into a Witch Mountain followup, is all I'm saying

I hope Carpenter and W.D. Richter get as much money as they can from this and release their own Rifftrax-style alternate commentary track.

the dark shadows thing was kind of out of nowhere. the last time that show had much currency was when, well, it was briefly (unsuccessfully) revived in the post-twin peaks era. i guess they thought "vampires! twilight!" a greenlit it? the tone of the film had basically nothing to do with the old TV show, anyway.

http://www.ew.com/article/2015/06/08/dwayne-johnson-john-carpenter-big-trouble-remake

“I loved reading the reactions from the fans, that they were so polarized – I’m the same way,” the star told EW at Saturday night’s taping of the Spike TV Guys Choice Awards. “My response is: know that I come to the project with nothing but love and respect for the original, which is why we want to bring on John Carpenter.”

...“I loved the original when I was younger and I loved the main character – all the characters,” said Johnson, who will fill the role Kurt Russell played in the earlier film. “It felt like if we surrounded ourselves with the right group of people, the right writers who loved the movie too and wanted to honor it, bring on John Carpenter in some capacity … If we did that, then we have a shot at hopefully making something good.”

“Let’s see what feels good, what we can come up with and then go from there,” Johnson said. “And as we write it, if the whole thing starts to stink up, then we thank everybody for their efforts and accept this just couldn’t make it.”

points for admitting the possibility of this stinking up

chris pratt would be a better choice for jack burton

nah too obviously a doofus

i mean chris pratt basically ~is~ jack burton

Trade paperback of the boom studios comic is coming out today. Has anybody kept up with it? I only read the first issue and wasn't into it at all.

http://www.amazon.com/Big-Trouble-Little-China-Vol/dp/1608867161

I know, there's a problem with your face

The thing is to make them drop their guard.
I'll Try
The thing is to look stupid.
He does!

Boring

This perfectly illustrates the problem with overly abbreviated communication. Yes, it may save time and keystrokes to say "Boring", but more accurately, what you meant to say was, "Personally I found this to be boring." This kind of amplification and expansion, while time consuming, also has the effect of removing the idiocy from what you said and replacing it with a measured and true statement of fact.