Movie Review: Karate Kid Legends

 

Hey everyone, my name is Anthony and welcome back to my Movie Review.

Back in the 1980s, movies about martial arts became a huge deal for action movies to show us real physical fights and dangerous stunts since the 70s martial arts became a trend. So much so when the 80s rolled in, many Western filmmakers wanted to making their own martial arts movies. One of them that we all know and love is “The Karate Kid”, the 1984 martial arts drama film that became a big deal when it came out, it has nice story with good heart, a nice choice of music, fascinating fight scenes and even good actors with memorable characters. Sure it plays like a main character meets a sensei to learn the skills for the tournaments like any Asian martial art films, but this movie is surprisingly well translated to the West. I saw it and its a pretty good film, and I can definitely see why Karate Kid was a big deal, and much like Rocky (which is coincidence both the first Rocky and Karate Kid were made by the same director), with the movie success, there’s always gotta be a cash grab to spawning sequels, but they’re rather… Mediocre. The second one is okay, but the third one is pretty much a copy-paste from the first. There’s also “The Next Karate Kid” and the 2010 remake with Jackie Chan and Jaden Smith, but they’re pretty much forgotten (especially the remake one is misleading that its all about Kung Fu than Karate). But then we have “Cobrai Kai”, even though I never seen this series, but I heard it was a big deal since the good’ol days, which is all about Johnny Lawrence’s redemption to reuniting Daniel LaRusso to bring back the dojo in a positive note. It seems that many fans of Karate Kid/Cobra Kai believed that this show is the return to glory that we’re hoping to be something good when we have today’s review with my curiosity risen up.

“Karate Kid: Legends” is a 2025 martial arts drama film that was directed by Jonathan Entwistle, produced by Karen Rosenfelt (instead of Jerry Weintraub since he unfortunately passed away in 2015 after making five Karate Kid movies), and written by Rob Lieber.

The idea of this movie isn’t taking place after Cobra Kai was done, but rather shortly after the 2010 remake came out, it was announced that they wanna make a sequel of the remake with reuniting Jaden Smith and Jackie Chan. Unfortunately, by the time they hired the new writers, the draft is turning into a development hell when they had to hiring some new screenplay and the director was hired, but went into a ping pong of leaving to coming back, leaving the sequel plan became hopeless, even Chan felt dissatisfied about the development. But then in 2022, they’re planning to make a new Karate Kid to bring back to the old franchise, but this time, they came up the idea to having the remake shared the same universe with the original, which it may sounds questionable concept, but this left a curiosity for having both the original and the remake merging together to have a movie about Karate vs Kung Fu. As well as pushing movie’s release on late May due to avoiding conflict with Cobra Kai’s season finale that ended in February this year.

So, with all that said, will this movie worth of return to have a rivalry of two fighting styles, or is this concept came off as questionable?

Well, lets find out.

The Story

For a movie merging between the original and the remake, you think the story could be the same as they went? Well, yes, but its more like the opposite role in the movie and has some fun moments, most of.

The movie weirdly begins with the flashback with then young Daniel LaRusso and our old friend Mr. Miyagi when they’re in Miyagi’s town Okinawa, Japan, where our late sensei shares his story when he had a young memory about himself and one part of family relative, Mr. Han. But when Mr. Miyagi’s ancestor was tragically washed ashore, this left both Miyagi and Han in separation, Miyagi stays in Japan for his Karate style, while Han is in China to learning about the ancient art of Kung Fu, though secretly branded as Karate upon ancestor’s return to Okinawa. Fast forward to present time, Mr. Han is now the Shifu (Chinese master) of the Dojo of Kung Fu in Beijing, China. We introduce a new student and Han’s great-nephew Li Fong, who’s been busy training in Kung Fu, but the time is up when his mother, Dr. Fong had a discussion with Han that she and Li have to pack up their bags to New York City due to her job in the hospital, but at the same time, she told Li to be in normal life to hiding his fighting skills, giving up his Kung Fu, this mainly due many days ago, he lost his beloved brother from being stabbed to death by the thugs with the defeated rival. But in his first day to live in normal life in the Big Apple, it wasn’t a good start to be social, especially in his first day of school. That is until he meets a girl in a pizza restaurant named Mia Lipani, who happens to be the daughter of the owner and former boxer Victor, they first start having a romantic relationship to learning about China, until Li is confronted by a menacing Mia’s ex and Karate champ Conner Day, who outright bullies him with a fight. But after befriend with tutor school student Alan and getting beaten again, Li breaks his normal life to fight against the thugs with loan shark boss O’Shea, this left Li opens his door to help Vic to get back to boxing to save the debt, but didn’t turned out what he expect, meaning its up to Li Fong to get himself back training with Kung Fu, but also learning about Karate based Han’s history and plan to meet our old friend Daniel LaRusso, which is in order to facing against Conner Day for the urban themed fighting tournament called “Five Boroughs Tournament”.

The story feels almost like similar as either the original or the remake story, a kid moved to a new town, falling in love with a girl and confronted by an evil ex, its about the same as what you expect if you’re familiar with Karate Kid, but this is an opposite direction to have a potential trained Chinese kid who’s moved to New York in attempt to live in new life before dealing with bullies to get back up, which il give an appreciation to have a same plot, but with new element to training both Kung Fu and learning about Miyagi’s Karate style to be both braver and stronger for self-defense and earning respect for the legacy. While this movie has its drama that its all about Li’s struggle to live in Manhattan to hide his fighting skills (kinda like superheroes’ secret powers/abilities), but it has a humor moments with dialogue, which I will say, I have some chuckle at some and its also light heart. While I like the concept, the message and its humor, but the movie isn’t saved when it comes to obvious clichés, like some fake “no mercy” defeat, avenge family relative’s death and even motivation of “get back up”, but im getting use with the latter, but most of them are pretty obvious inclusions that its easy to point them out, especially some its been used all the time from several other movies.

Despite my nitpick from obvious clichés and kinda rehashed story, but its actually a pretty nice to have something new for the story, it has some fun dialogue and its light heart as well.

The Presentation

The movie’s budget costs $45M, which now the highest budget than previous films in this franchise. And for its presentation, it looks pretty good.

For starter, the filming locations looks pretty nice and beautiful, ranging from the focus on taking place in New York City to brief moments in either Los Angeles and Beijing, China, its a nice set and some reminding us where its been, but then again, Fong family are set to Big Apple as their home for mother’s business at the hospital. Especially since we’re focus on New York, its gonna be an urban themed martial arts film. Although, while they probably filmed New York with aerial view, while the rest is filmed in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. That’s right, they filmed in the city where I visited all the time, the home of Montreal Canadians, the home for Montreal Allouettes, the home of Canadian GP and home of… Okay, you know what I mean. But still, since Manhattan is expensive place to film, there’s always filming in Canada to imitating New York. While some other location like the subway, the a boxing match and the rooftop is pretty nicely done for the sets and beautiful view.

Since this is martial arts film, there’s always gotta showing us some action fight scenes, and I will say, they’re pretty cool to watch from fight back the thugs, training montage, the boxing match to even fighting montage, its been done with couple of montage, but they’re pretty fun that we like to see Li building up his skills from training Kung Fu to yes, even learning about Miyagi’s Karate style from Daniel LaRusso, which like I said before, I really like the idea of learning two fighting styles as a movie merging between the OG Karate Kid and the remake one. Although there are some references on which movies if you’re familiar with Karate Kid franchise.

However, while the filming, the view and actions are pretty good, if there’s a problem I have is the fighting montage, while the fighting montage are great too which is all about 1 point for hitting torso, 2 points to the head with either 8 points or KO to win in the tournament, but when we’re in a montage, it goes into a video game style post-production that we can see points per contact with sound effects and effects, which I find it too be too cheesy and silly inclusion, which im probably guessing the reason why we have a video game like effects, its because we see a couple of posters of Tekken 8, which probably explained why it was filmed when Tekken 8 was a big deal last year.

While the post-production video game like effects in fighting montage is questionable, but the movie’s presentation looks great and the fighting and the choreograph are fun to watch.

The Characters

While we have a main characters back like Daniel LaRusso and Mr. Han, you think the new characters promising as some previous installments? Well, I probably think so.

First, we gotta go with two main characters from OG and the remake, Daniel LaRusso (played by Ralph Macchio) and Mr. Han (played by my favorite martial artist, Jackie Chan), these two are depicted as the mentors in their different fighting styles for helping our main hero Li Fong, while they have a remaining personalities but been changed. For Daniel, if you’ve seen Cobra Kai, he’s now a sensei for holding the legacy from his late mentor Mr. Miyagi since his teen hood, being nice, honored and helpful to anyone in LA, but here, his appearance is rather lacking, which like any hyped movies, Daniel’s appearance wouldn’t be until the halfway through the second act when Mr. Han is looking for helping hand. Despite of minimal of appearance compared what we saw on trailer, Ralph is still did a good job to playing his signature character, along with being honored with awards for his Karate training.

As for Mr. Han, even though I never watched the remake one, but I find him to be a fascinating old Shifu of Kung Fu, which is like the opposite version of Mr. Miyagi after they’ve been separated. Whereas the late Miyagi is calm with small humor, even if he takes the karate training seriously with chores, Mr. Han on the hand is a bit the same, but he’s also friendly to follow his student/great-nephew’s dream and light heart, just like Jackie Chan himself.

The first new character we have is our main hero, Li Fong (played by Ben Wang), he’s the new kid in New York after been briefly trained in Kung Fu, and Daniel back then, he wasn’t as easy from the start to get along before he meets Mia to be in relationship, along with seeing inspiration to training Victor to bring back to his old boxing glory, so we think. And of course, he also got confronted by his new nemesis for the upcoming tournament in revenge to fight back after been bullied, but the difference is that he had a traumatic past when he lost his brother that if anybody pushed him too far, he’ll quickly fight back, or even paralyzed from his traumatic past memory. I find him pretty nice to be the opposite version of Daniel, he was already trained before going to New York, but struggling to hiding his double life as he’s warned by his mother to live normal. But like I said, the cliché is too easy to pointing out that it felt like we’ve heard of avenging relative’s death, which kinda ruined him from obvious cliché, but still, I like his character development to be like Daniel, with an opposite twist, along with learning two fighting styles, and Ben did a good work of his role from struggling to live in Big Apple at first before regaining his confident to participating the tournament, having relationship and new friend.

And we have Connor Day (played by Aramis Knight), the main villain the bully of the movie, where, similar to Johnny Lawrence, Day is Mia’s ex-boyfriend for being a bully to humiliating anybody with his trained Karate and probably being aggressive competitor that he won the Karate championship. While he’s definitely looks intimidating and hard trainer to be better and stronger than anyone around in New York, but we never see him coming out to bullying more or even desperate to get back to Mia, he’s just… There. Training to be stronger and even abusing some training members for the support to his sensei/loan shark O’Shea (played by Tim Rozon), while O’Shea is like a secondary villain who demands rent to Victor rather understanding the debt of the pizza restaurant, which im assuming he uses his money for Connor to be the big deal for the next tournament or even gambling for letting his players pulling a dirty move to win. Which I find O’Shea to be villainous as a dirty loan shark than his student Connor, but then again, its meant to be the New York version of Cobra Kai, but with urban and criminal. Though il give a credit for both Aramis and Tim, they both did a good work of their roles, especially we see Aramis training his skills.

As for the rest, they’re just there for the plot purpose or so. There’s Mia Lipani (played by Sadie Stanley) who’s Li’s first interaction upon living in Manhattan to eventual love interest, Victor Lipani (played by Joshua Jackson) is a pizza restaurant owner and former boxer that he’s fun character when he sees Li, despite he’s also hands tied from the aforementioned O’Shea to pay rent to him, causing his hesitation for his business’s debt, Dr. Fong (played by Ming-Na Wen, aka Mulan) is the protective mother who wants Li to hide his fighting skills to be in normal life, and Alan (played by Wyatt Oleff), he’s just Li’s friend from library in his curious about Li’s life.

While some characters are just there, but they have some nice development, especially il give an appreciation to Li Fong and the welcome return to both Daniel and Mr. Han, even though the latter is I’ve never seen the remake one. Aw well.

And now for my final opinion of this film.

Overall, Karate Kid: Legends is a pretty good film, even though it plays like the OG Karate Kid, but with a nice twist.

The filming looks pretty good, the story is nice with some upgrade, the fighting are fun to watch with pretty good choreography, some characters are good too, its chuckle worthy and its a welcome return to the old route with the original and the remake.

Sure, there are some problems it has in this movie such like one villain is kinda lacking, some cheesy effects and clichés are kinda all over, some I got used and others felt like its been overdone.

While its not perfect, but its enjoyable film to watch if you’re a fan of Karate Kid/Cobra Kai or not, I’d say its a recommended film to watch if you’re curious or in a mood of martial arts film. Again, not perfect, but its entertaining and fun.

For my rating, im gonna give this one an 8.5/10.

So this ends of my movie review, if you guys have your opinion or any suggestions, let me know at comment bellow and support me on KO-FI.com/blackevil.

Thanks for reading, and im Anthony, signing out.