Sometimes it feels like “Karate Kid: Legends” is fighting with one hand tied behind its back.
It knows the kind of movie it wants to be, which is a film in the vein of the previous “Karate Kid” stories — including the TV series “Cobra Kai” — where a bullied teenager sorts out his personal issues with the help of a kindly mentor and no shortage of martial arts training montages. It’s a formula that may not be the kind of spectacle-drenched premise that studios now demand from their franchise plays, but it’s one that works regardless of its setting.
But it looks like Sony didn’t want a straight “Karate Kid” reboot this time (2010’s movie only made $359 million worldwide off a $40 million budget so I guess that’s unacceptable) and preferred the comfort of some familiar faces. That makes “Karate Kid: Legends” a movie that understands its identity but still feels forced to cater to older fans in a way that neglects how well the film works for its target audience of younger viewers.
Li Fong (Ben Wang) is moving with his mother (Ming-Na Wen) from Beijing to New York. She feels like they need a fresh start after the death of Li’s older brother and as a way for Li to give up his passion for martial arts. Li says good-bye to his shifu, Mr. Han (Jackie Chan), and attempts to make a go of it in NYC. He quickly befriends fellow teenager Mia (Sadie Stanley) and her father Victor (Joshua Jackson), a former boxer who owns a pizza parlor, but owes money to the nefarious O’Shea (Tim Rozon). O’Shea also runs “Destruction,” a mixed-martial arts gym that trains the city’s best martial artist, Conor (Aramis Knight), a bully who also happens to be Mia’s ex-boyfriend. To help Victor save his restaurant, Li agrees to train the middle-aged man so he can get back in the ring and use the prize money to pay off O’Shea.
Already, you can kind of see how ridiculous this is, but somehow workable within the framework of a “Karate Kid” movie. Everyone is connected, and a teenager is going to train a guy over twice his age in Kung Fu to become a better boxer. And yet as silly as it is, the first half of “Karate Kid: Legends” is its strongest part. Turning the formula on its head where the young person will train an older person is a nice twist that still adheres to the standard beats of learning martial arts as material necessity and personal growth. This plotline also allows for the movie to lean on the nice chemistry between Wang, Stanley, and Jackson (although for a film that landed Ming-Na Wen, there’s little for her to do here beyond limply reprimanding Li for fighting).
But as we’re watching, there’s a nagging thought at the back of our heads. “Jackie Chan showed up briefly in the beginning. Also, Ralph Macchio is on the poster, and other than the prologue highlighting a scene from an earlier ‘Karate Kid’ movie, we haven’t seen him.” The movie then lurches into its second half where it shifts gears and has Li Fong train to win the “5 Burroughs Tournament,” which is billed a massive martial arts tournament across New York City but only ends up having sixteen people in it. However, fourteen of those people don’t matter since it’s all a leadup to the fight between Li Fong and Conor, who keeps calling Li Fong “Beijing,” in a way that’s clearly racist but no one calls him on it. Li Fong brings in Mr. Han to train for the tournament, and Mr. Han recruits Daniel LaRusso because both studied under Mr. Miyagi (the late Pat Morita).
Unfortunately, while the team-up may be fun for fans of previous “Karate Kid” movies and “Cobra Kai,” it also misses the emotional core of these coming-of-age stories.
We all remember “Wax on, wax off,” from the original “The Karate Kid,” but the scene that likely got Morita his Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor is when he shares his tragic past with Daniel. It’s a pivotal scene where a protégé learns his mentor is not perfect or free from emotional burdens. “Karate Kid: Legends” hints that it might go in a similar direction with the growing bond between Li and Victor, but instead it bails completely so it can do training montages where Daniel imparts his wisdom to Li in the week leading up to the tournament. It’s a forced presence where there’s no compelling narrative reason for Daniel to be in the story or interesting arc for his character. However, it’s what the legacyquel formula demands, and so here he is to add a polish to a movie that already seems fairly comfortable with what it was trying to do.
Once you have Mr. Han and Daniel both training Li, the film becomes so silly that we have to leave most of our emotional investment behind as director Jonathan Entwistle layers a new visual language into the movie involving needless animation and silly opponent names within the tournament. The film articulates that bringing Mr. Han and Daniel into the same movie as “two branches, one tree,” but “Karate Kid: Legends” feels like two movies set against each other. One is standard issue “Karate Kid” fare that would have done fine as its own story, and the other is leaning hard on nostalgia despite not giving Mr. Han or Daniel anything to do other than train Li. It still manages to arrive at a fairly charming albeit unsteady picture that should win over a new generation of younger viewers. But for older members of the audience, the second half of “Karate Kid: Legends” feels like an insecure fighter changing his approach halfway through a match.
