Why big problems with the marketing of Little China disappointed Kurt Russell

John Carpenter's 1986 action comedy Big Trouble in Little China is a strange film. The plot revolves around an old wizard named Lo Pan (James Hong) who plans to kidnap, marry, and then sacrifice a green-eyed woman to break a curse that is on him. The woman is Miao Yin (Suzee Pai), the fiancée of Wang Chi (Dennis Dun), who luckily knows a little about evil wizards and ancient Chinese warriors. It's up to Wang to rescue Miao Yin from Lo Pan's clutches. Also kidnapped is green-eyed Gracie (Kim Cattrall), who is loved by dim-witted busybody Jack Burton (Kurt Russell), basically Wang's sidekick.

The gag of the film is that Jack doesn't really seem to understand that he's a henchman, and behaves like an action hero. In fact, the whole film seems to be a martial arts film told from the perspective of the American guest star. Russell was featured most prominently on the film's promotional materials – it is an American production, after all – and his character's name was often featured at the top of the advertisements. Newspaper slogans included phrases like “Jack Burton is in serious trouble, and you're about to have serious fun.”

The previews for Big Trouble in Little China also highlighted Jack as the main character. In fact, the previews leaned heavily on Jack Burton's name. That didn't really work. Big Trouble in Little China was a major flop ($11 million on a $25 million budget), and both Russell and Carpenter — speaking on the commentary track for the Big Trouble DVD — attribute the failure at least in part to the Burton-centric advertising campaign. Well, that and the fact that Big Trouble came out in the summer of 1986, a notoriously busy time for blockbusters.

Fast forward a month after Big Trouble in Little China (released July 2), and you'll find a number of familiar hits that were popular with the Gen-Xers who saw them at the time. The summer of 1986 saw the release of Top Gun, Number 5 Lives, Poltergeist II: The Other Side, Raw Deal, SpaceCamp, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, The Karate Kid II, Labyrinth, The Great Mouse Detective, About Last Night, Psycho III, Aliens, and Vamp. While not all of these were top-grossing blockbusters, there were clearly plenty of alternatives in theaters that outshined a quirky martial arts flick like Big Trouble in Little China. It didn't help that a film simply titled Big Trouble also hit theaters on May 30.

On the DVD commentary for Big Trouble in Little China, Russell complained about the film's lame promotional campaign. The previews agonizingly asked audiences, “Who is Jack Burton?” and Russell's first instinct was to shoot back, “Who cares? I don't know and I don't care.” It was clear that the film's promotional agency was trying to lend Jack Burton a certain level of mystery by touting him as if he were the next Indiana Jones. In reality, he was more like Remo Williams. The studio was trying to force a new name on the pop consciousness. And no, that didn't happen. Nobody wanted to know who this Jack Burton was, and Kurt Russell's presence in the role didn't exactly help to increase interest.

Who is Jack Burton? Before I mentioned it, could you even remember the name of Russell's character?

It took several years, a healthy rediscovery on home video, and many airings on cable TV for Big Trouble in Little China to be recognized as a genuine cult hit. In 2024, it was hailed as the entertaining parody of 1970s Hong Kong cinema that it was meant to be. The children who saw it on cable TV as youngsters have now grown up with a deep affection for Big Trouble in Little China, and it has since become its own niche product in the pop culture firmament; there are elaborate board games dedicated to it.

But no, thanks to the 1986 advertising campaign. Russell not only hated the “Who's Jack Burton?” approach, but also the painting on the poster. The poster was painted by the legendary Drew Struzan and the portrait of Russell is, in Struzan's style, unbearably flattering, but Russell didn't think Jack Burton looked like him. He admitted that he looked a little too much like Jeff Bridges.

But like the film itself, Struzan's poster was well received by a cult audience, and there may be some people reading this who have a Big Trouble in Little China poster hanging on their wall right now.

It's hard to attribute the success or failure of a film to a single element; sometimes success or failure seems unpredictable and random. At least a fun, wacky romp like Carpenter's 1986 comedy was eventually accepted. But any plans for a Jack Burton sequel were all but abandoned in 1986 when the film flopped at the box office.