Karate Kid: Legends echoes the plot of both the 1984 original and the 2010 Karate Kid films with its familiar underdog story of a kid whose single mother moves him to a new city where he’s bullied by a martial arts expert before entering a tournament to prove himself by facing that very same bully. Even as you can roll your eyes at several of the expected events occurring, this sixth film does take one very notable zig when fans of the 41-year-old series expect a zag before reverting to the template in the second half, which gives it some novelty – even as it will no doubt frustrate many returning fans in how long it takes to see the team-up the trailers promise.
There are moments where Legends is able to recapture some of the original’s endearing nature, including in the way it eventually brings in not one, but two familiar mentors. At the same time, it never quite locks in like it could, thanks to what feels like a misguided attempt to maintain an unrelentingly high energy from start to finish that ends up making it feel emotionally hollow because it almost never takes time to slow down and breathe.
Pulling a bit of a storytelling Crane Kick switch-up that helps Legend feel distinct, the 2025 Kid in question, Li Fong (Ben Wang), arrives in New York not as a traditional martial arts novice, but as a rather skilled kung fu fighter who was trained in China by Mr. Han (Jackie Chan). And those skills then lead him into a situation unlike any we’ve seen in this series for one of its teenage protagonists when he… begins to train a middle-aged boxer attempting a comeback?
Notably, despite being almost invisible in the marketing, Joshua Jackson has a large role in this film as Victor, the father to Li’s love interest, Mia (Sadie Stanley). Victor asking Li to help him train, after he sees Li’s fighting prowess in action, ends up filling a significant amount of the screen time for the first half of Legends. In many ways, this is the best part of the film, first off because it is different and makes for a fun twist not just on Karate Kid movies but underdog movies in general. It’s not often you’ll find the high school kid character serving as a mentor to the older guy, after all. Jackson, per usual, is very warm and likeable as Victor and forms an easygoing rapport with Wang.
However, the second half of Karate Kid: Legends returns to the series’ old ways, as Mr. Han comes to New York to prepare Li for his tournament. It then doubles down by bringing in the original Karate Kid himself, Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) to help – since this is in fact a karate tournament, not kung fu. The big connection introduced here between Han and Daniel’s beloved mentor, the late Mr. Miyagi, is simple but acceptable, set up by a flashback to The Karate Kid Part II. The addition of some new dialogue to that scene – provided by a Pat Morita soundalike – is a bit cheesy, but not a deal breaker, though man is it annoying that the on-screen text says Part II took place in 1986, when any big Karate Kid fan can tell you that movie is set in the summer of 1985!
What holds Legends back in this second half is an overall stylistic approach that becomes increasingly distracting as it goes on. It feels like the mandate here was that the pace should feel propulsive at almost every point, and that is represented by an overuse of uptempo music during nearly every training sequence and fight scene and via self-conscious flourishes like repeatedly doing that overused gimmick where music playing in a scene comedically slows down, as though the power went out, to represent things going badly for Li.
A better result of this attempt to feel “vibrant” are a couple of fun animated moments, including one used to depict some of that Han/Miyagi backstory. But the way Entwistle rarely slows the pace down sometimes goes off the rails, as the unrelenting music and montage-style editing approach to nearly everything that occurs once Li starts training means you can rarely connect to what should be – and clearly easily could be with some tweaks – more emotionally impactful moments. Scenes are rarely allowed to sit on their own, even ones with a lot of importance for the characters, and the result is it feels like we’re speed running through the story.
Throughout Karate Kid: Legends, there’s a phrase that gets repeated over and over again: “Two branches. One tree.” It’s the film’s way to explain how and why Daniel and Mr. Han, and thereby these two sides of this franchise, are connected. It’s also, unfortunately, the perfect way to describe this movie’s biggest failings. It’s two movies in one, both of which seem as if they are connected–but they never quite come together.
