There aren’t many movies that can be deemed 100 percent safe from being remade or rebooted, but if the film community had its way, John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China would be added to the club in an instant.
While we’ve so far managed to escape the wrath of the enduring 1986 favorite being slapped with the fresh coat of paint that nobody asked for, Dwayne Johnson and his Seven Bucks production company have been threatening to do just that for close to a decade, with producer Hiram Garcia admitting as recently as last summer that it was still on the cards.
Based on the fact that a Big Trouble in Little China appreciation post on Reddit quickly devolved into the comment section making it abundantly clear that the fantastical action comedy should be left well alone, it’s clear that we’d be one step away from a full-blown riot if Johnson were to mount a reinvention of what ranks as one of the most dementedly entertaining genre films that’s ever been made.
Like all great cult hits, Big Trouble in Little China flopped at the box office and never really got its due until after it had been released, and it continues to find a brand new audience with each passing generation. As much as Johnson managed to spectacularly overcome the cynicism that greeted the initial announcement of his plans to refresh Jumanji, Carpenter’s stone-cold slice of gloriously batsh*t insanity feels at least several steps too far.
Remaking the Carpenter back catalogue has very rarely yielded results that were anything better than mediocre anyway, and the sentiment is clear that Big Trouble in Little China should remain untouched and unsullied.