Big Trouble in Little China Remake In The Works - Starring "The Rock"

[Steven Bogos]

Big Trouble in Little China Remake In The Works - Starring "The Rock"

Kurt Russel and John Carpenter's masterpiece Big Trouble in Little China is reportedly getting a remake.

Big Trouble in Little China has the reputation of being the movie that made legendary filmmaker John Carpenter (Halloween, Escape From New York) so disillusioned with the industry, he stopped making Hollywood movies. Despite its massive commercial failure, the film went on to become a cult classic, and now, Hollywood is finally looking to cash in on that with a remake staring everyone's favorite pro-wrestler-cum-actor Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.

Variety [http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/dwayne-johnson-talks-star-big-799296] are both reporting that Johnson is in late-stage negotiations to star in the movie, most likely filling Kurt Russell's old shoes as trucker-cum-sorcerer-slayer Jack Burton.

The film, which is being produced by 20th Century Fox, has Ashley Miller and Zack Stentz at its helm - the good folks behind the sci-fi hits Thor and X-Men: First Class.

For a quick refresher, Big Trouble in Little China follows Russel's Burton as he stumbles into a generations-old battle between the forces of good and the 2,000-year old evil sorcerer: Lo Pan. With a strong comedic focus, Big Trouble in Little China broke a lot of 80's action movie stereotypes by having a main "hero" who wasn't completely infallible and invincible. Jack Burton was just a regular guy in the wrong place at the wrong time.

What do you guys think of this? While I am a big fan of The Rock and his work, Big Trouble in Little China is just one of those movies that you don't mess with.

Source: Variety [http://variety.com/2015/film/news/dwayne-johnson-big-trouble-in-little-china-remake-cast-1201509737/]

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[Baresark]

I like Dwayne Johnson... but you don't touch this movie. It's not even good because of nostalgia... it's just good. It's an interesting fun to watch movie that has much better acting than a lot of action oriented movies of the era had.

Captcha: question everything... this is making me do that.

 

[Fiz_The_Toaster]

There are not enough words in the English language to properly convey how much I dislike the remake and my feelings in general.

I would probably summon Cthulhu by accident if I tried.

This is one movie you don't touch. This is one of the movies that typified the 80s, and you just leave it the hell alone. It's still an awesome movie and I really don't understand why someone has to touch it again.

 

[Pinky's Brain]

Regardless of how unnecessary this is ... how is this movie even supposed to be made in the current environment?

Big trouble in Little China is like Starship Troopers ... it doesn't matter how over the top you do the racism and militarism, you'll still get called a racist or a fascist and I don't see current Hollywood just taking that in stride. They'll probably devote half the movie to explaining how wrong it all is.

 

[Hairless Mammoth]

Seriously, no. Not this one. I've even scared they'll change Lo Pan, because his design might be "offensive."

They'll just find anything from the 80s to try and make a quick buck on. There's always been a trend for TV and Hollywood to go back 30 years and pull ideas from the past, because that's when the writers and some of the target demographic were kids. Although, it seems like they've kicked it into high gear in the past few years. I can't wait for 5-8 years to pass and movies with titles like "Goosebumps" or something else from the 90s to pop up.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

...and I really don't understand why someone has to touch it again.

Because Hollywood has completely run out of originality at this point and is desperately grasping for anything they haven't made a reboot from a reboot of yet.

 

[flying_whimsy]

I am totally game for a remake: the originally didn't hold up well when it was made, let alone now. The Rock is a good casting choice, too. Although it would be kind of funny to see an old Kurt Russell playing the part again.

The movie that really smashed the infallible action man stereotype was Die Hard. Kind of funny considering that's basically what he is now.

 

[Dango]

That sounds like a horrendous idea. Nothing in that movie would translate well to modern film.

 

[DoctorM]

I always wanted a sequel, but please not this... ever.

 

[OverEZ]

At least it's not Vin Diesel?

 

[Jaeger_CDN]

In the immortal words of Egg Shen "You leave Jack Burton alone!"

I know John Carpenter meant to make a sequel to the movie but please not a remake

 

[the December King]

I personally would not like to see a remake, for tons of reasons, but the first one to pop into my head is that I can't really picture 'The Rock' pulling off the 'regular-joe-come-hero' bit. He looks too much like a guy who kicks people's asses.

 

[FogHornG36]

I like the idea of seeing guys trying to karate kick the rock only for them to bounce up like he was made of actual rock.

 

[Therumancer]

Really, really, bad idea, there is no reason to remake this movie at all, it's awesome just the way it is, there is nothing they could do but create an inferior version of it.

John Carpenter has done some great stuff over the years, and there are a few movies I think could benefit from being remade. Top among them is probably "Prince Of Darkness" simply because I think the original version failed because it went over too many people's heads at the time, and I think movie goers have become a lot more familiar with those kinds of concepts. What's more I think it could actually benefit from some better special FX. Another movie he did that I think could stand a remake is "Ghosts Of Mars" that's another one that flopped but it had some awesome concepts in it, not even a just-then-starting Jason Statham could save that one, I could see an update being a good thing there as now we can do things that just weren't possible at the time, and what's more the population has geeked out enough for a concept like that to get a better reception. "Big Trouble In Little China" ... that's just perfect though, it did what it set out to do perfectly, and what's more while I can see modern Hollywood re-doing some of the horror movies above, I do not think the current liberal Hollywood could touch this one without ruining everything that makes it great. Nowadays people in Hollywood would probably insist it's racist or something, when really the Chinese action cinema makes comedy-action movies in a similar style themselves, Jackie Chan having made a career out of doing goofy movies both here and overseas for example, ironically we'd probably take the subject matter more seriously than the Chinese would, and let's face it, this is not a movie that is supposed to be taken seriously on any level, it's an ongoing mockery of action movie tropes making fun of the old school "Western Tough Guy" at the same time it's engaging in a weird combination of mocking and worship of old school Kung-Fu movies.

I wouldn't even want to see the current version of Lo Pan, Hollywood is so PC that it couldn't even give us a proper Mandarin in Iron Man.... and no offense, I was deeply disappointed by that. I mean we replaced a badrse super scientist with 10 "magic" rings that has come close to conquering the world through sheer might with a washed up actor fronting for a bad guy based on a deeply butchered version of Extremis.... If they can't do "The Mandarin" they aren't going to be able to capture what makes Lo Pan amusing... or understand it's as much worship of the quintessential martial arts movie mystic bad guy as it is a mockery as the movie mocks everything in it.

 

[jhoroz]

The whole point of Jack Burton is that he's just some random schmuck way over his head and for the most part, completely ineffectual as an action protagonist. He gets by more on his luck and the help from those around him rather than his own competency. Casting the Rock just seems like a bad idea.

 

[Fiz_The_Toaster]

There are not enough words in the English language to properly convey how much I dislike the remake and my feelings in general.

I would probably summon Cthulhu by accident if I tried.

At least then the film wouldn't get made.

God I hope so.

At the very least make the people in charge forget about what they're going to do. Drive them insane so that every time they think about doing this remake they scream in terror and crawl in a dark room.

Why no, I'm not being unreasonable. >.>

 

[FalloutJack]

I'm not going for it. We don't mess with Kurt Russell, dammit.

 

[Neonsilver]

Isn't this a so bad it's good kind of movie? Is it even possible to create this kind of movie intentional?