If [Broken] Blossoms were rewritten in more contemporary terms ... the Yellow Man would arrive as noble and pious as before, but this time as a kung fu master with magical powers. He would rescue Lucy from her depraved, abusive father, care for her, and finally train her in the spiritual ways and practices of the East. Battlin' Burrows, now a frustrated blue-collar worker obsessed with war and guns, would then attempt to reclaim his estranged daughter, and the film would culminate in a final showdown between the two father figures and their respective forms of combat and defense. Lucy would get into the act as well, employing her new talents to disarm her father as gently as possible. The Yellow Man and the girl, through superior human insight and bodily discipline, would triumph over their unruly counterpart. After his definitive defeat, Battlin' would lay aside his weapons, be reunited with his daughter, and the three would join forces to fight evil and corruption in Blossoms II. So ends Griffith's classic rewritten for a late-twentieth-century audience - once a cautionary tale and now transfigured into a narrative of spiritual hope and progress.

Bruce David Forbes and Jeffrey Mahan ed. Religion and Popular Culture in America. Berkley: The University of California Press, 2000.