“It’s All in the Reflexes”: John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China as a Hawksian Comedy

Abstract

This article argues that the cult success of Big Trouble in Little China is a product of the successful synthesis of Carpenter’s fantastic sensibility and the filmmaking philosophies of Howard Hawks. Operating not only as a parody of Hawks’s western films and Hong Kong martial arts cinema, BTiLC uses the pre-existing structure present in Hawk’s comedies to produce a film that is able to convincingly portray Jack Burton (Kurt Russell) as both the hero of the film and the incompetent comic relief; thus positioning its Asian American characters as its functional heroes, without this inversion ever seeming condescending or mean-spirited. This framing of the film consequently highlights the differences between BTiLC’s use of genre and Reagan era masculine heroism and the more reactionary elements of their contemporaries.