After a family tragedy, kung fu prodigy Li Fong is uprooted from his home in Beijing and forced to move to New York City with his mother. When a new friend needs his help, Li enters a karate compet...
To think it was only two and a half, nearly three months ago where the Karate Kid saga ended its latest chapter with the conclusion of Cobra Kai, one of the best legacy sequel continuations in recent media that started out as a neat curiosity, grew into a genuinely gripping story, and continued growing into a ridiculous eye-rolling soap-opera level relationship drama while hitting every emotionally fulfilling box it could muster.
“Karate Kid: Legends” hits barely half of those same metrics and yet I still somehow had some fun with it.
I feel like Jonathan Entwistle was left in a compromising position here; perhaps some mismatched confidence on his part as his directing has little handle on finesse and doesn't really find its footing for the vast majority of the runtime. So while he might not belabor the film’s disconnected set-up or ebullient spirit in favor of just rolling with the punches, it’s difficult to overlook….
Looking at the production as a whole, from how it’s presented to how it is packaged and sold, feels a bit like a double-edged sword. On one hand, the atmosphere here has a very youthful, comforting aura surrounding its autumnal, sun-kissed color palette and this evidently ‘80’s-coded production design lends itself to that warm, nostalgic, sentimental ambiance the series has tapped into with past entries. Yet despite this promise of aesthetic familiarity, the downside is notable: the film feels starkly restricted in its locations and set-design with many spaces going underutilized and are left as shallow echoes rather than distinct environments; said limitations not only restrict the visual scope and scale of the narrative but also further extends to the inauthenticity of its own attempt at styled expressive amplification, and its not the most authentic of varnishes either.
Not that the cinematography was lacking in trying to counterbalance that; it is the most semi-stable aspect of the whole production, balancing the chaos as much as it does contribute heavily to it too. Sure, there’s no carefully curated angles or lighting or poise—that’s what happens when you’re being constantly disrupted by the feverish editing every 10 minutes with so many choppy cuts and abrupt transitions—but the camera often best finds some kind of rhythm within the fray, ironically, when it’s time for the action.
Seriously, every ‘good’ thing in this movie comes stapled with a caveat: visual effects are either barely noticeable or cascade the entire screen with its glossy sheen, Dominic Lewis’ insistent 80’s inspired score is admirable in its tributaries before quickly growing distracting and being drowned out by the constant needle-drops in the soundtrack, the sound design is either unremarkable or directly suited to the scene, offering nothing beyond what's necessary, costumes aren’t that unique or stand out aside from our main characters wardrobe and perhaps this films biggest achievement though is its willingness to borrow from and build off of Cobra Kai's tone of exaggerated conflicts and delightful excess, wearing its inspirations proudly on its sleeve and using them as a foundation upon which to build something both familiar and ambitious, but at times uneven.
Although this movie actually makes it very difficult to fully appreciate any those factors because of the whirlwind pacing; it moves at like 2X the speed these types of movies normally go! It skims so much, condenses so little and nearly treats every individual scene like its rarely allowed to sit on their own, the constant propulsion of energy, while appreciated at first, quickly comes back to bite the hour-and-a-half runtime not just because it won’t take its foot off the gas and slow down, but since it also renders many of the emotional moments hollow. I can only count on the back of my hand two scenes that actually utilizes its pathos consistently.
Even the action sequences falter due to this flaw; they're all filmed with technical skill, yet each move carries an overblown sense of self-importance only to be butchered by the spastic cuts to the choreography’s blur of spinning limbs, meaning all that flashiness has no weight or tension behind them. The final fight is the less impacted by these issues so there’s that.
For what it’s worth, the actors delivered commendable performances within the constraints of the script. Sadie Stanley’s improved since I last saw her as Kim Possible, Ming-na Wen does so much with such a limited role, and Aramis Knight’s elevated his prototypical antagonist role the best he can. Jackie Chan’s intractable appeal and Ralph Macchio’s sincere affection radiates a quiet dignity out of their respective roles and it makes for easy freeflowing chemistry between each other but the newcomer and main star Ben Wang feels like a square peg in a round hole. His acting isn’t completely wooden but he’s nowhere near nuanced compared to the rest of the cast and despite being the only one given a character with something resembling a complete arc, said character within itself is a walking, talking contradiction.
The rest of the characters aren’t that much better; they’re either cliched archetypes, or given less than remarkable dialogue.
If what I’ve seen and digested is anything to take into consideration, the Karate Kid series has always thrived and banked itself off of being a formulaic, mostly Saturday morning-cartoonish slice of cheesy fervor with splices of realism …..and this story nails that from the very second it boots up. It is the most unapologetically basic, stripped down, 80’s-centric, crowd-pleasing underdog sports movie you could imagine so the predictability of where it starts and ends was never in doubt. But the downside to that is because it centers around being so bang-average, most of what happens might as well be a complete afterthought. It boasts some interesting ideas (most of which were handled better in Cobra Kai) and is relentless in its determination to squeeze every previous iteration of this story into one huge glimmering chunk of lore but this is a franchise that coasts itself on the emotional storytelling beats as much as the actual karate and hardly any of that feels earned here. Setting the story three years AFTER the series hinted at a deliberate effort to create space, reset the tone and allow something new to develop, yet despite understanding the importance of not breaking something that didn’t need to be broken…..the mere overflow of material just bursts like overpacked suitcases from a family of four going on a two-week all-inclusive vacation.
I don’t mind them keeping the foolproof formula while expanding beyond its specific boundaries; they don’t contradict anything TOO BIG from the original films or series (unless you count the specific year the second film takes place in) and reminds us why the underlying story and themes of said series still connect all these years later. The process still mostly works here but what exactly is the excuse for keeping its most dramatic moments at arm’s lengths at all times? We get the bare minimum of introspection, character development and cohesion through this story’s events, pole-vaulting from one set of circumstances to the next with such impatience that the bare-boned paper-tossing of character arcs, nostalgia baiting throwbacks and relationships feel like they exist for the sake of it; everything feels like a missed opportunity that never truly finishes in a narrative purely centered around the moments rather than the journey. The fact the film still manages to be as fun as it is is a testament to the classic underdog sports storytelling at its core.
Not to mention, this is a fairly myopic representation of the tensions of “fitting in” with Western society as an immigrant and a person of color, especially when Li does such a bad job at pretending NOT to fit in with his surroundings.
Karate Kid Part III and The Next Karate Kid still have this one beat as the worst entries in this respective franchise but it really is telling how impatient this story feels to recycle through the most basic of stories. Don’t get me wrong: Karate Kid: Legends is far from a horrendous outing; its a passable mild distraction that’s fully aware of its identity and wholeheartedly embraces its own cheesiness but when the film never ascends above its limitations, and the narrative itself doesn't grant it the opportunity to do so, it can’t be anything but mildly disappointing.
It unfolds like a barely-stitched together tapestry, its colors faded yet familiar, but left me yearning for the vibrancy and depth of the series’s past….and I know it can still deliver.
