by Cain Noble-Davies
Worth: $11.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Ben Wang, Jackie Chan, Joshua Jackon, Sadie Stanley, Ralph Macchio
Intro:
… more of a footnote than a vital text.
Fresh off the series finale of Cobra Kai, the ‘80s martial arts melodrama franchise with surprisingly strong legs, Karate Kid has returned to cinemas. Compared to the near-miraculous refresh and rehabilitation of Cobra Kai many antagonists, the mission statement for this new film is noticeably lower-stakes: unify the main bulk of the series with the 2010 reboot (which will be referred to from here on as Kung-Fu Kid because that’s what it should have been to begin with).
The marketing proffers that this will be done by bringing Daniel-san (Ralph Macchio) and Mr. Han (Jackie Chan) on-screen together, and yet the feat is accomplished within the very first scene, without either party’s involvement, tying Mr. Han and Mr. Miyagi together with some retroactive world-building.
Unfortunately, there’s another hour and a half to go from there, and with its M.O. accomplished already, the film just… repeats the same moves.
Despite having the shortest run time of any Karate Kid film to date, writer Rob Lieber (Peter Rabbit, Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween) tries to cram in an equal amount of side characters, plots, and motivations as its predecessors. As a result, pretty much every plot development here feels rushed, from the introduction of the new Kid in Ben Wang’s Li, to the requisite tournament that he will fight in, right down to the reason why Daniel and Mr. Han are even here in the first place. Bob-and-weave is a great tactic for boxing, but not for narrative structure.
There’s also the problem with Mr. Han being in this at all. Jackie Chan is fun and aloof and still able to pull off the slapstick-fu of his heyday, but in recapturing the grittier and solemn mentor figure Mr. Han (who set Kung-Fu Kid apart from what came before), the character barely registers. To say nothing of when he and Daniel unite to teach Li, which aims for the Johnny/Daniel dynamic of Cobra Kai, but just comes across as two different versions of the same idea yelling at each other for a bit. The very reason for this film to be made at all ends up becoming its most damning argument against itself.
All of this isn’t to say that this is as bad as Karate Kid Part III. Ben Wang handles the lead well, the script has fun with the pre-established culture clashes, and putting Li in a mentor role next to Joshua Jackson’s retired boxer, results in emotional punch to the backstories that it sketches. But rather than carefully trimming where needed so that the whole tree can grow [no bonsai puns here!], everything is just left to the elements, resulting in a gnarled and stunted take on a formula that has been tried and tested for just over four decades.
Karate Kid: Legends is more of a footnote than a vital text. The fight scenes are nice, and there are attempts to freshen up the series, but in all the ways that make this franchise more than just ‘kick bad guy in face’, this latest entry falls short. It’s the kind of late-period obligatory IP addition that gets outmatched by its own mid-credits scene. No need to sweep the leg, because it barely has one to stand on in the first place.
