2. Big Trouble In Little China
The most awesome movie to ever awesome. 'Nuff said. On the DVD commentary, John Carpenter and Kurt Russell credit Big Trouble In Little China's failure on 20th Century Fox, who had no idea how to market such a strange film. It was written off as a disaster waiting to happen and unceremoniously dumped in theaters. It's hard to imagine a movie studio having trouble marketing a high-concept special effects comedy two years after Ghostbusters and Gremlins - except, maybe, for one thing: Kurt Russell's Jack Burton. A man who is obviously not the hero of his own story. Words cannot describe the brilliance that is Kurt Russell's Jack Burton. Unlike all the other action stars of the 1980s, Russell had crackerjack comic timing and little regard for his self-image, while never failing to maintain a near infinite reserve of bad-ass. Jack Burton is an obvious send-up of John Wayne, and the American hero who rides into town - a town full of foreigners, no less - and saves the day. Like Buckaroo Banzai, Big Trouble wants you to meet it on its own terms. Did most audiences want to see an action hero who misses most of the climatic action scene because he knocked himself unconscious? Probably not. Hell, Jack only does one useful thing during the entire movie. And the movie's final shot implies that the check is in the mail for good for Jack Burton. As most of us that are in on the joke know, Kurt Russell is actually Dennis Dun's sidekick (and comic relief). The movie just happens to be told from his point of view. Even if Fox had given this movie a big marketing push, it's doubtful that the lowest common denominators among us wanted to watch Kurt Russell bungle his way through all manner of deathtraps and cosmic horrors. But anyone raised on a steady diet of 80's sci-fi ate this one up. Like Army Of Darkness, this one's going to be a father/son bonding ritual for years to come.