Karate Kid: Legends (2025)
Directed by: Jonathan Entwistle
Premise: A teenager (Ben Wang) trained in kung-fu moves from Beijing to New York City where he befriends a young woman and her father. He enters a martial arts competition to help them save the family business.
What Works: The Karate Kid franchise spans five motion pictures (not including this one) and the Cobra Kai television series. The franchise rests on a consistent underdog formula in which marginalized outsiders face bullies and earn self-respect through competitive martial arts. Karate Kid: Legends does the formula pretty well. The filmmakers understand the appeals of this franchise but they also find ways to break up the template. Other Karate Kid stories are about newbies mastering martial arts but Li, the teenage protagonist of this film, begins the story as a kung fu prodigy and he trains a middle-aged man to fight in a local competition. When that plan goes sideways, Li volunteers to fight and his foundation of knowledge makes the quick training period credible. The fighting style is different from what we’ve seen in other Karate Kid movies. It’s much more acrobatic and the camerawork matches the speed and fluidity of the fight moves. Karate Kid: Legends is lean and efficient storytelling. At a time when franchise movies are often bloated and self-important, Karate Kid: Legends is remarkably restrained.
What Doesn’t: Karate Kid: Legends may be too pared down for its own good. The story doesn’t have much room to breathe and the characters are thin. That’s especially evident in the conflict between Li and Connor (Aramis Knight), the school bully and the master student of the local dojo. Their conflict is treated superficially. Conner is not interesting and he doesn’t represent anything. Throughout the Karate Kid movies and especially in the Cobra Kai show, the stories dramatized the idea that young people embody the values of their teachers. That’s largely lost here and it sabotages the drama. Li isn’t fighting for anything dramatically meaningful. The climactic match feels obligatory rather than the climax of an organic, escalating conflict. Karate Kid: Legends includes the characters Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) from the original films and Mr. Han (Jackie Chan) from the 2010 remake. The story doesn’t need them. Li doesn’t learn anything from their different fighting styles nor do the teachers ever reconcile their differing philosophies. The attempt to sew up the franchise comes across forced and unnecessary.
Bottom Line: Karate Kid: Legends is an acceptable sequel. It emulates the qualities that have made the Karate Kid series so appealing but does so in a perfunctory way. It often feels televisual. This isn’t a good legacy sequel but the movie does just enough right to get by.
Episode: #1051 (June 8, 2025)