Jonathan Entwistle’s Karate Kid: Legends arrived in theatres with the weight of three immensely successful projects on its back — the ’84 original and its sequels, the 2010 reboot with Jaden Smith and Jackie Chan, and the Cobra Kai web series on Netflix. The result is a film that tries hard to be everything at once, and in the process, it becomes a lot of things, except truly memorable.
The story revolves around Li Fong (played by a charming Ben Wang, last seen in American Born Chinese), a kung fu prodigy from Beijing haunted by the trauma of watching his older brother murdered in cold blood. His mother (Ming-Na Wen), a no-nonsense doctor, relocates them to New York for work on the strict condition that he abandons fighting for good. Naturally, this promise doesn’t last long enough.
In Manhattan, Fong meets Victor (Joshua Jackson), a down-on-his-luck ex-boxer who owns a pizzeria, and his daughter Mia (Sadie Stanley, brimming with teen-movie spunk), with whom Fong begins a shy, sugar-rush romance. Unfortunately, Mia’s ex-boyfriend Connor (Aramis Knight) doesn’t take kindly to this development.
Soon, Fong is teaching Victor kung fu (inside the New York subway that somehow remains miraculously empty), prepping him for a boxing match that might clear Victor’s debt with a cartoonish loan shark played by Tim Rozon. But when that plan implodes, thanks to a dirty hit in the ring (this franchise never met a fair opponent), Fong steps in to save the day the only way he knows — by entering a USD 50,000 martial arts tournament.
But, the plot’s logic often collapses under the weight of fan service. Jackie Chan’s Mr Han, from the 2010 reboot, is retrofitted into the Miyagi-verse via an opening sequence that recycles footage from The Karate Kid Part II. Since kung fu isn’t enough, Han even ropes in Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) for a bit of tag-team training. “Two branches of the same tree,” he justifies.
There’s no doubt Karate Kid: Legends is well-intentioned. It wants to pass the torch, to bridge generations, to honour the legacy of Mr. Miyagi and what he stood for. But in trying to be everything to everyone — sequel, reboot, homage, crowd-pleaser — it forgets the one thing that made the original resonate with millions of fans: authenticity.
To Entwistle’s credit, the film has moments of levity that work. A pizza-ordering mishap that earns Fong the nickname “Stuffed Crust” is a small comic gem, and the scenes between Fong and his assigned tutor Alan (Wyatt Oleff) are some of the film’s most naturally funny and endearing ones.
Thematically, Legends positions itself as a tale of grief, self-forgiveness, and the immigrant experience. But those deeper currents are sketched so thinly that they never quite take root. At 94 minutes the film barely has time to land its emotional beats before dashing off to the next set piece. The climactic tournament, set on yet another improbably picturesque rooftop, unfolds exactly as expected, right down to the final slow-motion blow and the obligatory post-match group hug.
