Ticketworthy! - Karate Kid: Legends

Whenever a new installment in a long-running franchise comes along, there are expectations from both fans and critics as to what the movie is going to be and how it is going to honor the movies that came before it. Sometimes a film will pay homage to the ones that came before it, trying to sell itself as a worthy successor. Other times, the filmmakers may decide that it’s best to throw out the old ideas and make something fresh and new. Karate Kid: Legends tries to do both and manages to be neither.

Easily the worst thing this movie does is remember that it is a Karate Kid movie. For nearly half of the bafflingly short runtime, the film turns the traditional formula on its head and presents a fun, fresh take on the series. Yes, there’s still a teenager dealing with some personal issues and trauma that needs to use martial arts as an outlet to work through their issues, as we have come to expect. The twist, though, is that Li (Ben Wang) is already pretty prolific in Kung Fu. When he meets Mia (Sadie Stanley) and her father, retired boxer Victor (Joshua Jackson), he agrees to train Victor for one last big fight.

This simple change, turning the “Karate Kid” into the teacher instead of the student, is such a cool idea and opens up so many avenues of storytelling. It’s a real shame that Jackie Chan’s Mr. Han randomly shows up halfway through and derails the whole story. He convinces Li to enter a tournament of his own for no real reason other than “it’ll be good for him”, taking all of the fresh story ideas and relationships out of the movie with very little explanation. It’s jarring. From there, it’s just another Karate Kid movie. Li has to train with Mr. Han and Ralph Macchio’s Daniel LaRusso, who is in this movie for some reason, then enter the tournament so he can fight the mean kid from a rival dojo using a signature kick move. It’s like a checklist of tropes that the movie speeds through but executes with no flair or soul at all.

Despite the weak script, I will admit that Li is a wonderful lead and, if we’re going to get any more of these, I hope he’s around for them. Ben Wang gives a great performance and is clearly a gifted martial artist. I also thought that Sadie Stanley and Joshua Jackson were great additions to the cast and the chemistry between them and Wang is enough to carry a movie easily. If only director Jonathan Entwistle had trusted them to do so.

Instead, he loads up the back half of the film with choppy fight scenes with decent, but not amazing choreography, and two franchise legends that don’t belong in this movie. I’m sure that getting Macchio and Chan made a lot of sense in a pitch meeting, but in practice they just drag the whole endeavor down. Neither actor is bad, they simply shouldn’t be there.

If I’m being honest, the feeling I had leaving this movie was disappointment. It’s such a letdown to be shown what seems to be a really good, perhaps great, film only to have it completely undone in favor of another bland entry in a franchise that desperately needs new stories. Unfortunately, Karate Kid: Legends winds up being far from legendary, and it has nobody to blame but itself.