Karate Kid: Legends Review - A Charming Legacy Sequel That Pulls Punches

In "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse," a franchise-expanding running gag is established from the get-go, when we discover every iteration of the hero — be it Peter Parker or another civilian alter ego — shares the same beats of their origin story, regardless of time or place. Watching the unusually pitched "Karate Kid: Legends," a franchise reboot that belatedly decides to become a legacy sequel in its last half hour, I couldn't help but think the same is true of the Miyagi-verse, and not just because our new hero is at one point likened to a "Chinese Peter Parker."

Regardless of time, place, or style of hand-to-hand combat, each protagonist has just moved to a new city, is facing off against bullies linked to a new love interest, and is forced against their will to participate in a martial arts tournament. Suggesting each iteration of the franchise exists in the same timeline as the last, and not in a multiverse of infinite possibilities, would be like finding out every "A Star is Born" movie has taken place in the same universe — logistically, it could work, but how are the most specific similarities between these stories reoccurring without anybody passing comment on them?

This would be no problem if "Karate Kid: Legends" were a stand-alone adventure. In fact, for the best part of the first hour, the movie succeeds as a just-fresh-enough twist on a familiar formula as young Li Fong (Ben Wang) adjusts to life in New York after moving from Beijing, where he was an apprentice to Jackie Chan's Mr. Han. Already equipped with fighting skills, he instead becomes a mentor to the pizzeria-owning father (Joshua Jackson) of his crush Mia (Sadie Stanley), who wants to return to the ring to raise enough money to keep his restaurant open and get the loan sharks off his back. For some inexplicable reason, this flip of the dynamics and the warmth of the three central performers in this intergenerational tale wasn't considered enough to sustain a narrative, and at the 45-minute mark, Mr. Han comes to New York, despite all previous signs pointing to him quite literally phoning in as an inspirational mentor in times of doubt every half hour or so.

Initially, it feels like a forgivable misstep; a remnant of an earlier screenplay that was a direct sequel to the 2010 remake, reconfigured to slot into a new character dynamic. And then, almost as soon as he's arrived in the Big Apple, Mr. Han declares he's heading to Los Angeles to visit Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio), who he's never previously met but has decided will be a great mentor to Li, teaching him Mr. Miyagi's (Pat Morita) distinctive brand of karate and fusing that style with his own kung fu. If this narrative justification sounds flimsy at best, even on the eve of a new tournament our young hero is forced into fighting, then it feels even more baffling in its execution. We discover that, at some point between the events of "The Karate Kid" and "The Karate Kid: Part II," Mr. Han went to LA to visit his old friend Miyagi, where he couldn't stop talking about how taken he was with his young prodigy. 40 years later, he pays a second visit to Miyagi's former home and forces Daniel to fly across the country to mentor the boy who is to him what Daniel was to his teacher.

It's an overcomplicated addition, and you can feel Rob Lieber's screenplay tying itself in knots trying to make it appear natural rather than the result of a studio executive demanding a reboot be transformed into a legacy sequel at the very last minute. Macchio's inclusion adds nothing, even if an opening flashback to "Part II" badly attempts to convince us his presence in this story represents a full circle moment; he's such a narrative afterthought, appearing with little over 30 minutes left on the clock, that his addition won't even trigger nostalgia.

I'm not a "Cobra Kai" viewer, but I suspect fans of that cult Netflix sequel series will feel even more shortchanged; rather than feeling like a stand-alone adventure due to the lack of narrative ties to that series, it feels like an odd elephant in the room when we first pick up with Daniel in L.A. On the one hand, this ignoring of events in the television timeline is something Marvel should pay attention to, as I never felt I had to catch up on five seasons of TV to know what was going on — but this is a legacy sequel directly following its climax, one of the few times that continuity is an asset rather than a hindrance. If the film can't commit to being a reboot strictly for a new generation, which it succeeded at for the best part of an hour, then seeing it have an equal disinterest toward paying homage to the franchise's history makes for an odd, deeply unsatisfying beast on both counts.

The original "Karate Kid" and its 2010 remake had runtimes in excess of two hours, and the brevity of "Karate Kid: Legends" works in its favor, helping maintain a driving momentum despite the overly familiar narrative beats. Director Jonathan Entwhistle — the first-time filmmaker best known for creating another Netflix series, "The End Of The F*****g World" — rejects the more lowkey character study template of his predecessors to prioritize the family-friendly action, with some of the best staged fight scenes of the entire franchise across a variety of different disciplines. At their best, these moments feel like a director giving his young audience a gateway drug to a whole new world of martial arts cinema, while also allowing for a stylization that wasn't present in any of the previous films. Take the Five Boroughs tournament, presented entirely as a city-hopping montage where the fights themselves have vintage video game style graphics letting the audience know just how many points a certain punch or kick can score in real time. It's a far more effective way of letting younger viewers grasp the rules through the action itself, rather than slowing down for exposition.

The propulsion during this third act does come at the expense of fleshing out the character drama, leaving the universe-unifying fan service feeling entirely unjustifiable within the narrative. I'd argue that the returning characters are such an irrelevance that their presence feels like a Sony executive had the misguided idea to force this movie into being a karate "Spider-Man: No Way Home" at the very last minute. It's a shame, because when "Karate Kid: Legends" is allowed to be its own, stand-alone adventure, it's by far the most charming since the 1984 original.

"Karate Kid: Legends" releases in theaters on May 30.