Karate Kid: Legends is about the fights, not the storytelling

Karate Kid: Legends is the sixth Karate Kid movie — and it shows.

The film isn't afraid to fall into the formula you might expect for a late-franchise sequel. It delivers on some spectacular action sequences, and even brings back the original karate kid Ralph Macchio and martial arts legend Jackie Chan for some short, memorable scenes. 

But at the same time, the movie doesn't seem to concern itself too much with the plot that connects all these moments together.

Today on Commotion, Vulture's Alison Willmore, Inverse's Hoai-Tran Bui and Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival's Aram Siu Wai Collier join host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to discuss Karate Kid: Legends, and what they are most excited to see in theatres this summer.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: Hoai-Tran, talk to me about Karate Kid: Legends. What is this new movie about?

Hoai-Tran: Karate Kid: Legends follows Ben Wang's Li Fong, who moves from Beijing to New York City with his mom. He has given up kung fu because of a past traumatic incident involving his brother, who passed after a tournament. And it goes in a direction that you wouldn't expect, because the karate doesn't take place until maybe the last 20 minutes of this movie. Actually, it's mostly about boxing, kind of.

When he moves to New York, he of course meets a cute girl next door … and her Dad is a former boxer played by Joshua Jackson. And to avoid some loan sharks, Joshua Jackson's character asks Li Fong to help him learn kung fu.… That then switches to another different movie about 45 minutes in, and you're like, "Oh this is the movie that was actually advertised." So there's a little bit of false advertising going in this trailer specifically because Jackie Chan is great, but spends most of his screen time behind a phone.… It's a bit of a strange, awkward marriage of two movies that don't really connect together, and honestly are not really that good.

Elamin: Alison, Ben Wang is the star of this movie, making him the first Asian American karate kid. How do you feel about his performance in this role?

Alison: I hadn't seen him in his other work before.… I think he's very charming. I think he obviously knows how to do martial arts, which is a huge ask here. And I really liked that, in a kind of gesture towards Jackie Chan's long legendary cinematic history, he inserts some physical comedy into the martial arts sequences…. I appreciated the nod towards that.

I do feel like I would agree. I think that this movie is kind of bifurcated in an odd way. It's funny that the movies, they're like, "The formula is, it has to be an Asian character teaching a non-Asian character martial arts." So he has to be the teacher, even though he's a teenager for a while. It is a little odd. But it does get to the good stuff we want: training montages, fighting in a random martial arts tournament that happens on rooftops and streets around New York City for no reason at all. It just feels a little hurried. I wanted a bit more time spent with his character. That said, I think that he's a really promising actor, and I would like to see more of him.

Elamin: Aram, as you think about this movie … does it in any way hold up against the original movies?

Aram: I mean, just like Alison said, it really sticks to the formula. Which, in the martial arts tradition, I think that fulfills the assignment right? It's kind of like having a really good can of soup. There's no surprises … and it's not always wrong or bad to know where you're going. So I found it actually comforting.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Jane van Koeverden.