The director of The End Of The F***ing World, Jonathan Entwistle, brings the newest Karate Kid movie to the big screen with Karate Kid: Legends. This time around, the location changes again, from its California roots to Okinawa, Japan, and the 2010 Jaden Smith-led film in China. A new martial artist emerges.
When kung fu prodigy Li Fong (Ben Wang) moves to New York City with his mother to attend a prestigious school, he quickly finds comfort in a budding friendship with a classmate and her father. But his peace is disrupted when he draws the attention of a dominant local karate champion.
Determined to stand up for himself, Li sets out to compete in the ultimate karate tournament. With guidance from his kung fu mentor, Mr. Han (Jackie Chan), and the legendary Karate Kid, Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio), Li blends their distinct fighting styles to prepare for an unforgettable martial arts showdown.
The main aspect this movie excels at is how it changes the Karate Kid formula for the better. Right off the bat, the protagonist Li begins the story fundamentally knowing how to fight. All previous Karate Kid iterations always began with a main character who had no prior professional fighting experience, including the spin-off series, Cobra Kai.
This is a cool change that serves the A-plot and B-plot well. With Li having a strong martial arts background prior to the movie’s conflict, this allows Li to be in a refining stage. We get to see him go from a good fighter to a better fighter. This element is what drew me to Cobra Kai, where the main characters always have something to learn despite being one of the best fighters around.
Going into Karate Kid: Legends, I would never have thought to find the B-plot so endearing for what the main story is about. The chemistry between Wang and Joshua Jackson’s Victor Lipani is enamouring. Victor is a retired professional boxer who gave up his career when his daughter, Mia, was born, leading him to open a pizza shop.
What is cool about Li and Victor’s relationship is their teacher-student dynamic, and not in the way you think. Instead, Li trains Victor before Victor heads back in the boxing ring one last time, trying to raise money to save the pizza shop from closing down. This unique situation is written so well, and Wang and Jackson sell this buddy relationship so well.
“Despite its flaws, Karate Kid: Legends is a good, modernized take and a must-watch for fans of the franchise.”
Arguably, Wang and Jackson’s charms rub off on the other Karate Kid: Legends characters too. For the most part, every cast member played off each other well. The dialogue was not super cringey, which I was reluctant about going into this viewing. Wang and Sadie Stanley’s on-screen romantic sparks are believably adorable rather than vomit-inducing and cheesy.
The antagonist, Conor Day, makes some borderline racist remarks, but does so to serve the bully role. While the bully role is a staple of The Karate Kid saga, it is 2025, and bullying can take other forms than these low-blow comments. Aramis Knight’s brooding stare was probably the best part of his character, other than how much physicality Aramis brings with Conor. Aramis’ practical fight experience from Into The Badlands heavily shows up throughout the film.
Karate Kid: Legends contains a solid storyline for this singular film, as a part of the overarching franchise. While the overall plot points resonate well with The Karate Kid structure, the movie has many cracks and follies.
Certain motivations and introductions to characters are questionable. The biggest crime for this story is how Daniel becomes involved in the story. In a sense, it feels like the writers struggled to connect Daniel who lives in California, to Mr. Han and Li, who begin their journeys in China, with the story moving to New York. The order of characters meeting like this one did not make logical sense. There was no logical reason to bring Daniel into Karate Kid: Legends’ story, other than to play on the nostalgia factor, as sad as that is to say because I like Daniel.
As much as I praise the cast for gelling well together, Ming-Na Wen’s character Dr. Fong, and mother to Li, is a very shallow character. Karate Kid: Legends invests so much time exploring almost everyone’s motivations towards being who they are and doing what they do. Everyone except Dr. Fong.
I understand she is supposed to be the doting single mother who does not want Li to fight anymore. But at least make her switch from concerned parent to supportive parent in a meaningful way. It sounds like she simply accepts Li will fight no matter what she tells him to do, and that is the end of the conversation. By the end of the movie, it appears like she still does not understand why Li needs to fight and practice kung fu.
This leads into one of the biggest missteps Karate Kid: Legends commits, not explaining the most blatant message of the movie. For most of the movie, it explains every exposition detail thoroughly. While I agree that movies do not need to beat audiences over the head with explaining the key message of a movie, they may as well should have to make Dr. Fong support her son more.
The key message of this film surrounds the concepts of dealing with grief and using kung fu to do that. And while Karate Kid: Legends tiptoes around Li coming to terms with grief, it never fully shows it or commits to that being the core essence of this movie. Emphasizing this theme would have made more character motivations and plot points stronger compared to omitting the concept or leaving it ambiguous.
The best quote they could have called back to was made by Mr. Han at the beginning of the movie: “No matter what, kung fu always leads me back on the right path. This is what Karate Kid: Legends should have beaten us over the head with, especially being an integral link between the Karate Kid worlds. It would have been cool to hear Daniel say something similar, too, but with Miyagi-Do karate. Daniel raves about Miyagi-Do teachings so much in Cobra Kai, but opts out of it in this movie for the most part.
As much as I adored this Karate Kid: Legends, the fight cinematography was terrible. Not to misconstrue this with the fight choreography, the choreography screamed Chan influences through every fibre of the film in all the best ways possible. I get that Chan and Macchio are the oldest fighters in this film, but the super quick cuts to most likely hide the speed of their punches and grabs were horribly edited. More so, I wish I saw the blows land!
However, I could not see or understand any of Mr. Han and Daniel’s moves in the bigger set-piece fights. At a certain point, it might just be better for the actors to use stunt doubles so the audience can see some contact punches and grabs.
Some of the fights in the final tournament, “The 5 Boroughs”, also have the same issue with quick cuts. It is cool knowing that Wang, Jackson, and Knight did their own stunts; their moves are captured perfectly in some of the slow-motion shots too. But for a movie that has to live up to the 1984 All-Valley Tournament, The 5 Boroughs tournament is not as exciting to watch. This is primarily because we barely get to see much of the fights leading up to the final fight between Li and Conor.
For the most part, Karate Kid: Legends is a good, modernized take compared to its predecessor films and TV show. Despite my slight bias to loving this world and franchise, there are plenty of faults and changes that could have been made to take it to the next level. With its tight 94-minute runtime, this runtime worked for the story it needed to tell. For the Karate Kid series fans, this is still a must-watch movie regardless of some of the significant flaws. The acting and humour truly make this a knockout sequel/addition to the Karate Kid family of films.
