50 Fun Facts About Big Trouble in Little China

In Big Trouble in Little China, how does Jack Burton finish his motto, 'It's all in the…'?

Reflexes: he says it after grabbing the bottle Wang fails to slice in a double-or-nothing bet, and the unpaid debt is why Jack tags along to the airport.

In which city's Chinatown is Big Trouble in Little China set?

San Francisco is also where protesters leafleted a location shoot in 1985, complaining that the film was about a 'smart-aleck' trucker and his Chinese 'yes' man.

Jack Burton's actor first worked with director John Carpenter playing which singer in a 1979 TV film?

Elvis Presley: that TV biopic began a partnership, and this was their fourth film together, yet the director admitted he 'didn't see' his old friend as Jack Burton at first.

What is the nickname of Jack Burton's semi-trailer truck in Big Trouble in Little China?

The Pork Chop Express lives up to its name: Jack is hauling a load of pigs to market when the story starts, narrating his own legend over the CB radio as he drives.

Who plays Jack Burton in Big Trouble in Little China?

Kurt Russell wasn't sure how to play the part until he saw the joke: a hero, he said, 'who has so many faults' and 'falls on his ass as much as he comes through'.

Which two stars did John Carpenter first want to lead Big Trouble in Little China?

Clint Eastwood or Jack Nicholson were his hope for a marquee name to compete with Eddie Murphy's rival fantasy, but both were busy, so the studio got the up-and-coming actor it wanted.

The star of Big Trouble in Little China modelled Jack Burton's bravado on which older Hollywood actor?

John Wayne's swagger is turned up until it is comic: Jack talks like the man in charge while his friend Wang does most of the skilled fighting.

Who plays Wang Chi, the friend whose fiancée is kidnapped, in Big Trouble in Little China?

Dennis Dun got the part only days before shooting began; it was his second film, and he trained every day to pass as the expert swordsman of the pair.

Which actress plays lawyer Gracie Law in Big Trouble in Little China?

Kim Cattrall won the part although the studio pressed the director to cast a rock star, and she played Gracie, in her words, as the brains to Jack's brawn.

Which actor plays the sorcerer David Lo Pan in Big Trouble in Little China?

James Hong came back to the role in all but name in 2014, voicing Ho Chan, a renamed Lo Pan, in a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles episode that borrows from the film.

In Big Trouble in Little China, Lo Pan must marry a woman with what feature to lift his curse?

Green eyes are what the sorcerer needs in a bride to become flesh again, and when a second green-eyed woman falls into his hands he decides to marry both and sacrifice one.

In Big Trouble in Little China, which emperor cursed Lo Pan to live without flesh some 2,000 years ago?

Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, beat him in battle and cursed him to exist as a ghost, able to borrow only a frail old body until the right bride restores his flesh.

What is the name of Wang Chi's kidnapped fiancée in Big Trouble in Little China?

Miao Yin has barely stepped off her flight from China when a street gang snatches her at the airport, dragging Wang and the debt-chasing Jack into the hunt.

What are the names of Lo Pan's three supernatural warriors in Big Trouble in Little China?

Thunder, Rain and Lightning, known together as the Three Storms, appear in the middle of a Chinatown street battle and slaughter one side, the first sign Jack has driven into something supernatural.

Which two ancient societies fight the street battle Jack Burton blunders into in Chinatown?

Chang Sing and Wing Kong clash when a funeral procession turns into a battle; the Chang Sing later fight beside Jack and Wang, while the Wing Kong turn out to serve Lo Pan.

How do Jack Burton and Wang first get inside Lo Pan's front business in Big Trouble in Little China?

Posing as telephone repairmen gets them through the door, but they are captured within minutes, tied up and hauled before Lo Pan, who now looks like a frail old man in a wheelchair.

Which sorcerer pours Jack and Wang a magic potion before the final battle in Big Trouble in Little China?

Egg Shen also opens the film, vouching for Jack to a lawyer in a prologue the studio chief ordered after shooting because he found the hero not heroic enough.

What does Jack Burton do as the climactic wedding fight begins in Big Trouble in Little China?

Knocks himself out: the star, who couldn't do kung fu, suggested gags that kept Jack out of the action, and the director called him a sidekick who thinks he's the leading man.

How does Jack Burton finally kill Lo Pan?

Returns a knife thrown at him: his own first throw misses, the sorcerer hurls the blade back, and Jack snatches it from the air and buries it in Lo Pan's forehead.

What happens to one of Lo Pan's warriors when he finds his master dead?

He swells up and explodes: expanding his body is this warrior's power throughout the film, and rage at his master's death inflates him past bursting point.

In the final scene of Big Trouble in Little China, what has stowed away on Jack Burton's truck?

The Wild-Man, the shaggy beast that earlier carried off Gracie, is riding on the back of the rig as Jack, who has just turned down her offer to come along, drives off alone.

The first script for Big Trouble in Little China, later rewritten for the present day, belonged to which genre?

Western: the first draft followed a cowboy, and the rewrite moved it to the present so audiences had only one strange world to swallow, the one under Chinatown.

Which screenwriter rewrote Big Trouble in Little China, turning its hero into a blowhard trucker?

W. D. Richter rewrote it nearly from scratch, yet a Writers Guild ruling left him with only an 'adaptation by' credit and gave the original pair sole screenplay credit.

The rewriter of Big Trouble in Little China was also asked to direct it, having made which cult film?

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai had baffled audiences two years earlier, and its director passed on this job, saying he wanted something smaller than another big action-adventure.

The studio rushed Big Trouble in Little China into production to reach cinemas before which Eddie Murphy film?

The Golden Child also sends a Californian everyman into a plot of Eastern mysticism; Carpenter, who had turned down the chance to direct it, came to call it 'basically the same movie'.

Which fighting game series, launched in arcades in 1992, counts Big Trouble in Little China among its inspirations?

Mortal Kombat co-creator John Tobias has said Lo Pan had a 'superficial influence' on its sorcerer Shang Tsung, both of them drawn from the white-haired mystics of old kung fu films.

Most of Big Trouble in Little China's Chinatown, sewers included, was built for the cameras where?

The Fox lot in Los Angeles held designer John Lloyd's Chinatown of three-storey buildings, streetlights and sewers; the director said such stylised fights and effects were impossible on real streets.

John Carpenter said shooting the kung fu battles of Big Trouble in Little China was much like photographing what?

A dance: his choreographer planned every move in advance, and he filled the gaps with what he called 'every cheap gag', from trampolines and wires to reversed film and upside-down sets.

Which effects house, set up by a Star Wars effects veteran, built the monsters of Big Trouble in Little China?

Boss Film Studios found one of its hardest jobs in Lo Pan's floating spy: the puppet needed several puppeteers, dozens of cables and a matting system built just for it.

In Big Trouble in Little China, Lo Pan's floating scout, the Guardian, is a creature covered in what?

Eyeballs cover the leathery, medicine-ball-sized Guardian because it is Lo Pan's remote sight: twice it spots the heroes creeping into his palace and reports back.

John Carpenter said the offbeat characters of Big Trouble in Little China reminded him of the 1930s comedies of which director?

Howard Hawks: the films he named were Bringing Up Baby and His Girl Friday, yet in the same breath he insisted there had 'never been a movie like this one, ever'.

Who worked with John Carpenter on the synthesizer score of Big Trouble in Little China?

Alan Howarth had recorded with him for years; Carpenter wanted synthesizers and rock and roll here because other American films about Chinese characters used what he called 'chop suey music'.

John Carpenter sang the Big Trouble in Little China theme with which two friends?

Tommy Lee Wallace and Nick Castle, friends from film school, joined him as the Coup De Villes, and the trio even shot a music video, though Carpenter sang the lead himself.

After Big Trouble in Little China flopped, John Carpenter left the big studios and made which of these cheaply?

They Live (1988), one of the low-budget independents he retreated to, opened at number one; this film had earned back about half its cost and left him swearing never to work for the Hollywood studios again.

Which blockbuster from the same studio opened sixteen days after Big Trouble in Little China and far outgrossed it?

Aliens arrived on July 18 and took about eight times as much; this film's star has since blamed the studio's handling of the release.

Which critic said Big Trouble in Little China 'began to recycle itself'?

Roger Ebert gave it two stars: he found the first half hour fast-moving and visually spectacular, then watched the heroes survive one underground chamber only to fall down a chute into the next.

Which famously harsh writer praised Big Trouble in Little China as 'a cheerfully blathering live-action cartoon'?

Harlan Ellison recommended it in his magazine film column as a tonic for a bad night, with 'some of the funniest lines spoken by any actor this year'.

Which publisher's 2014 Big Trouble in Little China comic was co-written by John Carpenter?

Boom! Studios launched it in June 2014 with The Goon's creator Eric Powell writing alongside Carpenter, and the story picks up right where the film left off nearly thirty years before.

In 2015 which star began developing a Big Trouble in Little China remake with himself as Jack Burton?

Dwayne Johnson said he wanted the original director involved, though Carpenter replied that the two had not spoken; by 2018 Johnson's company was planning a continuation instead of a remake.

Which director named Big Trouble in Little China as an influence on his take on Marvel's Thor?

Taika Waititi showed clips of it when pitching Thor: Ragnarok to Marvel, saying Jack Burton 'is a buffoon but he's lovable', which is how he wanted audiences to feel about Thor.

In Big Trouble in Little China, the old sorcerer's 'wind, fire, all that kind of thing' is kept in a six-demon what?

Bag: it is produced right after the potion toast, and Jack's deadpan 'Terrific, a six-demon bag. Sensational' shows he has no idea what he has just been told.

What is the name of Gracie Law's reporter friend in Big Trouble in Little China?

Margo Litzenberger is an eager reporter who joins the rescue plot, and by the final scene she has paired off with Wang's friend from the restaurant.

Which friend from Wang Chi's restaurant joins the plan to rescue his fiancée in Big Trouble in Little China?

Eddie Lee goes in after Jack and Wang with Gracie, only to be gassed and chained up beside the very men he came to rescue.

Producers pitched Big Trouble in Little China to John Carpenter as an adventure in the mould of which film series?

Indiana Jones was the model its backers had in mind, and reviewers reached for the same comparison; what they got instead was a hero who blunders through his own adventure.

A 2016 crossover comic sent Jack Burton into the world of which other John Carpenter hero?

Snake Plissken, the antihero of Escape from New York, was first played by the same actor as Jack, so the comic was announced as a meeting of twins separated at birth.

The actress who plays Gracie Law took the role partly to escape being typecast by which two comedy hits?

Porky's and Police Academy had made her 'a comedienne', she said, after years typed as a dramatic TV actress; Gracie let her be serious and funny in the same film.

The effects chief on Big Trouble in Little China said it was probably his crew's favourite job since which 1984 film?

Ghostbusters, the 'possible exception' he named, was the hit his new company had been set up to make two years before.

The actor cast as Wang Chi had caught John Carpenter's eye as an undercover cop in which 1985 film?

Year of the Dragon was his first film, and the protests it drew over its picture of Chinatown made this production's backers tread more carefully a year later.

In Big Trouble in Little China, what is the day job of the old sorcerer who leads the fight against Lo Pan?

Tour bus driver: he gives that as his occupation to a lawyer in the opening scene, and later his bus is the getaway vehicle that carries the escaping heroes away from Lo Pan's building.

In Big Trouble in Little China, Wang jokes that a Chinese sign reads 'Hell of Boiling Oil' before admitting it says what?

Keep Out: the deadpan works because the place really is a gateway to the Chinese hells, and before long its master is threatening to send them 'to the hell where people are skinned alive'.