Big Trouble in Little China - Plot

Plot

Truck driver Jack Burton (Kurt Russell) and his friend Wang Chi (Dennis Dun) go to San Francisco International Airport to pick up Wang's fiancee Miao Yin (Suzee Pai). A Chinese street gang, the Lords of Death, kidnaps Miao Yin and takes her into Chinatown with the intention of selling her as a sex slave.

Jack and Wang track them to the back alleys of Chinatown and get caught in a battle between two feuding ancient societies known as the "Chang Sing" and the "Wing Kong." The latter interrupts a funeral procession the Chang Sing are having for their recently assassinated leader and, during the ensuing street battle, powerful magicians in league with the Wing Kong, called "The Three Storms" (Thunder, Rain, and Lightning), use their supernatural powers to slaughter the Chang Sing. Trying to escape, Jack runs over the Wing Kong's leader, the sorcerer Lo Pan (James Hong), but Lo Pan is unharmed.

Wang takes Jack to his restaurant, The Dragon of the Black Pool, where they meet up with lawyer Gracie (Kim Cattrall) Law along with Wang's friend Eddie Lee (Donald Li) and magician Egg Shen (Victor Wong), a local authority on Lo Pan who moonlights as a tour bus driver in Chinatown. They come up with a plan to infiltrate a brothel where they think Miao Yin is being held. Jack (in disguise) investigates, but the Storms make off with Miao Yin.

Miao Yin is taken to the Wing Kong Exchange, a front for Lo Pan's domain. Jack infiltrates the place, where he and Wang get caught in an elevator that fills with water. They escape, but are quickly subdued by Rain.

Strapped into wheelchairs, they are taken to see Lo Pan (now in the form of a crippled old man). Wang tells Jack about the 2,000-year-old legend of Lo Pan; that he was cursed to roam the Earth in a ghost-like form until he can marry a special kind of girl with emerald green eyes. Lo Pan has found that girl in Miao Yin and intends to marry and then sacrifice her. When Jack's and Wang's friends try to infiltrate the Wing Kong Exchange they are captured and taken to holding cells filled with women.

Jack and Wang are placed in a cell but manage to escape after getting the drop on Thunder. Wang and Eddie create a diversion so Jack can rescue the imprisoned women. As they escape, Lo Pan captures Gracie. On noting that she has green eyes as well he decides to marry both women, sacrificing Gracie and living out his life with Miao Yin.

Wang and Jack go to see Egg Shen. With the help of the Chang Sing, they go into an underground cavern and reach Lo Pan's headquarters. Egg gives the group a potion that Jack says makes him feel "kind of invincible." At the wedding ceremony, a huge fight ensues (which Jack misses due to being temporarily knocked out with rubble). Wang is able to kill Rain in an elegant sword fight.

Jack and Gracie try and catch Lo Pan. Wang joins them, and takes on Thunder, while Jack takes on Lo Pan, throwing a knife that embeds in his skull. Thunder, enraged and dishonored at his failure to protect his Master, starts to inflate to an enormous size, exploding and killing himself.

Jack, Wang, Gracie, and Miao Yin are cornered by Lightning in a corridor, which he makes collapse. Egg rescues them with a rope, which Lightning tries to climb in order to follow. Egg throws down a statue that crushes him.

They find Jack's truck and make their escape back to the Dragon of the Black Pool restaurant. Lo Pan having been defeated, Egg decides to go on vacation, saying China is in the heart. Jack hits the open road, with an unknown-to-him stowaway—one of the remaining monsters.