Have
Hollywood writers lost all of their creativity?
In this age of the Redo, Re-Make, and the Re-Hash it seems that
Hollywood has done it yet again. The
original 1986 movie Big Trouble in Little
China that starred Kurt Russell and Kim Cattrall will be Hollywood’s next
victim. To make matters worse the movie
isn’t even thirty years old yet and here we are being subjected to another
movie that someone has decided to reinvent instead of trying to invent a movie
on their own. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson
is in talks to star in the move taking the role that Kurt Russell played in the
original movie. If you’ve forgotten or
haven’t seen Big Trouble in Little China it’s a movie about a trucker named
Jack Burton who goes to Chinatown to visit his friend Wang and gets pulled into
rescuing Wang’s fiancé from the ancient and evil Lo Pan who wants to make her
and her reporter friend his brides.
The
movie was failure in the box office but quickly became a cult classic as it
becomes a tale of when mysterious East meets the modern West. The character Jack Burton represents the
atypical American trucker jock who talks big and loud and backs everything up
as the best he can with his fists. Then
he realizes that the men he must fight use martial arts and they are led by
monsters and the sorcerer Lo Pan. I only
know of a handful of people who did not fall in love with the machine gun
mayhem met the martial arts Kung-Fu fest that resulted in action and comedy
that everyone who is a fan loves. Not to
mention the memorable bad guys the Three Storms that stood out and stole the
movie. There’s the powerful and muscular
Thunder who was able to expand his body at will, the elusive Rain with his
swords that flash faster than bullets, and finally there is the unforgettable
Lightning whose image of the lightning wielding shogun that inspired the Mortal Kombat character Raiden.
So
admittedly, yes I wouldn’t mind seeing a re-imagined vision of the movie with
those unforgettable characters brought back to life. Let’s face it Dwayne Johnson is also a name
that the people recognize and will go to the movies to see. I’ll admit I saw Hercules and San Andreas
mostly because of the “People’s Champion”.
Unfortunately just because you throw the Rock at the movie doesn’t make
it a good idea to make it. In this
instance I don’t like the idea of re-making this movie so soon. They re-made The Thing by claiming to make it a prequel and they couldn’t even
do that right. I mean all you had to do
was right a movie based on the facts of the John Carpenter’s The Thing and what happened? The screwed the pooch. Don’t get me wrong I still like the prequel
but I’m disappointed by the fact that they could have done so much better. It’s a clear example of why it is not always
a great idea to re-make movies.
