We are entering a dire age in blockbuster filmmaking. With films like Deadpool and Wolverine and Spider-Man: No Way Home trying to convince people that they are nostalgic for movies they barely remember (i.e. Elektra, Fantastic Four, The Amazing Spider-Man), we now have legacy sequels adding in elements of unrelated remakes into the canon of the series. Enter Karate Kid: Legends, a film so packed with connections to every Karate Kid project, you thank the heavens they didn’t do a CGI Pat Morita (I’m looking at you, Alien: Romulus). 

Karate Kid: Legends follows a similar structure to the original film: teen moves to a new city, befriends a love interest, love interest’s ex-boyfriend is the antagonist who he must compete against in a karate competition for his honor. Our teen this time is Li (Ben Wang), a student of Kung Fu from Bejing who reluctantly moves to New York with his mother (played by Ming-Na Wen). Legends does deviate from the original in some key places that allow it to stand on its own. For the first hour of the film, instead of being taught by a Mr. Miyagi stand-in, Li is the Miyagi for Victor (Joshua Jackson), a pizza shop owner, retired boxer and father of his love interest, Mia (Sadie Stanley). In an attempt to pay back a predatory loan shark, Victor enlists Li to train him in Kung Fu for a boxing match. This training is in direct conflict with a promise of leaving fighting in his past that Li made to his mother. Add in the B-plot about his brother dying after a Kung Fu tournament and you have yourself a pretty decent Karate Kid reboot! Unfortunately, the second hour crams in another film’s worth of plot that really topples over the whole project.

With these legacy sequels that have been coming out this last decade, filmmakers are struggling with the balance between continuing the story of the original or bringing new characters in an already beloved series. Films like Top Gun: Maverick and Creed found success from giving proper respect to the source material, but soaring past it with stories that genuinely surpass the quality of the first films. Karate Kid: Legends feels like it could be following in the steps of Creed for the first hour. Li training Victor in his pizza shop is such a lovely spark of originality. Of course they throw in nods to Miyagi’s ‘wax on, wax off’ training, but punching a can of olive oil across the bartop works perfectly in this setting. It’s once this plotline gets dropped to pick up the Karate Kid structure that the film starts feeling closer to Ghostbusters: Afterlife. Both films suffer from assuming bringing in an original cast member an hour in will give the audience a jolt of energy, but it just flatlines the momentum. 

That isn’t to say Ralph Macchio is bad in the film. Though reprising his role as Daniel Laruso exists just to connect the 1984 film to this one, he’s clearly down to get dirty. He’s impressively doing karate choreography in his 60’s that exceeds anything he did in his 20’s. You don’t see any of the original Star Wars cast doing the crazy cirque du soliel flips from the prequels. We can cut him some slack. All of the fighting is remarkable. Ben Wang delivers blows and takes punches with hilarious timing and facial expressions, hearkening back his co-star Jackie Chan in his prime. Wang also exudes all of the charm and charisma of a young Ralph Macchio, which makes Li so easy to fall in love with. Jackie Chan, who is reprising his role from the 2010 remake, is one of several elements that overstuff the project. His inclusion in this will not be giving audiences the intended desire of revisiting the Jaden Smith film. The stand out feature of the film is the chemistry between Ben Wang and Joshua Jackson. Their training scenes intercut with heartfelt conversations add so much pathos to a story that unfortunately gets replaced with familiar beats.

The last half hour is the film that the trailers are promoting: Li gets trained by Daniel Larusso in karate to fight his bully in a karate competition. The switch-up happens so late in the film that it feels like a last minute addition to an already fleshed out story. The two stories in the film aren’t even in conversation with each other. The characters from the first hour show up at the end like cameos from another film. It’s all so disjointed that it’s hard to enjoy it just from the nostalgia aspect. The ending tournament has all the pizazz of a Mountain Dew Superbowl commercial, complete with CGI rooftop venue and video game-y on-screen point scoring. 

2 out of 5 stars.   

Karate Kid: Legends baits fans of the series with nostalgia and presents them with a fun, original play on the 1984 classic. Unfortunately, the filmmakers choose to switch the elements that work for a weak formula that does little to excite.