‘Karate Kid: Legends’ Review: Two Different Ideas Fight For Glory

Cobra Kai is one of my biggest pleasures, guiltiness aside. A big part of my early childhood was plagued by obsessive rewatchings of the Karate Kid franchise, and when YouTube Red created Cobra Kai, a new love was born. Whilst that show admittedly had its ups and downs, it went on to force a massive resurgence in the franchise’s hold on society. So inevitably, a new Karate Kid film, the first in fifteen years, entered production. 

Karate Kid: Legends follows Li Fong (Ben Wang) as he is forced to move from Beijing to New York when his mother (Ming-Na Wen) gets a new job. In NYC, he meets Mia (Sadie Stanley) and her father Victor (Joshua Jackson), who run a struggling pizza shop. He mentors Vic and later seeks his own mentorship from Han Shifu (Jackie Chan) and Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) in order to beat the villainous Conor Day (Aramis Knight) at the 5 Boroughs tournament.

The film serves as an in-continuity retelling of the original 1984 film as well as a canonisation of the 2010 reboot film starring Jaden Smith and Jackie Chan. That film was notoriously absent of any karate, instead opting to use kung-fu as the martial arts vehicle in the film. In this movie, archive footage from Karate Kid II is cleverly retooled to unite the two worlds of Miyagi fu and Miyagi karate, something that is later combined in the movie to help Fong beat his opponents. 

Legends as a whole, however, is more than a mixed bag. On one hand, you have the plot of Fong trying to help the Lipani family as well as kindling a romance with daughter Mia. On the other hand, you have the Legends aspect, with the legacy characters and fitting the film into a typical Karate Kid concept. They directly fight for screentime here, settling for the first hand in the first half and the second in the latter. For what it’s worth, I would have chosen the latter to win, because the movie is far, far more coherent in that part.

When I first sat down to watch this film, and as the film set the stage, I almost left due to how revoltingly bad the dialogue and editing were. Characters sound inhuman, feeling more cliche than an episode of Riverdale, and way more corny than an episode of Cobra Kai. The editing comes across like it was done in CapCut by a YouTube shorts user, and that’s putting it nicely.

I am glad I stuck with the film until its end, though, because by the end of it, I kind of loved it. The action here is choreographed very well, and the unique blend of karate, kung fu and — weirdly enough — boxing gives the film an interesting, lively feel. That, in combination with a hilarious dynamic between Chan and Macchio, the film makes for a good time in the end. 

With Karate Kid: Legends, the good can’t outweigh the bad, but engaging fights and a good legacy cast save the film from being a complete and total misfire.

Karate Kid: Legends is directed by Jonathan Entwistle and stars Ben Wang as Li Fong, Jackie Chan as Han Shifu, Ralph Macchio as Daniel LaRusso, Ming-Na Wen as Li’s mother, and more. The film is now playing in theatres worldwide courtesy of Sony Pictures.

Thanks for reading this Karate Kid: Legends review. For more reviews like this, stay tuned here at Feature First.