‘Karate Kid: Legends’ 4K UHD Digital (review)

Sony Pictures

The 2010 remake of The Karate Kid was a high point in Jackie Chan’s English language filmography. Translating the broad strokes of the 1984 original from Los Angeles to Beijing, China (and the titular martial art from Okinawan karate to Chinese kung fu) the film was the first showcase of how powerful a dramatic presence Chan had become in his advanced age that mass Western audiences had seen and it was a critical and commercial smash.

Attempts to capitalize on the remake’s success were frustrated by Jackie’s relentless schedule, disagreements about the direction of the sequel, and the implosion of co-star Jaden Smith as a commercially viable property and the project was all but abandoned.

In the interim, nostalgia for the 1984 original film ran high and hit a crescendo with the 2018 debut of Cobra Kai on YouTube Red and later, Netflix.

In the absence of a follow up to the remake, a whole new generation got hooked on the characters and world of the 1984 film.

Enter Karate Kid: Legends which attempts to split the difference by continuing the story of both Chan’s Mr. Han and Ralph Macchio’s Daniel LaRusso and set the stage for future films to follow that can draw freely from both takes.

Karate Kid: Legends opens in 1985 with Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita) telling Daniel the origin of his family’s style and the connection between Okinawan karate and Chinese kung fu that serves as the connective tissue between the two branches of the franchise.

Obviously digital trickery was used to recreate the performance of Pat Morita and normally I find that effect particularly distasteful, but it’s extremely well done with none of the “uncanny valley” you get in films like Rogue One, it’s actually one of the best bits in the film from a technical perspective.

After the prologue the film moves to China where Han (Jackie Chan) is now running a kung fu school. Han’s star pupil and great nephew Li (Ben Wang) is training in secret against the wishes of his mother (Ming-Na Wen) who arrives at the school to inform her uncle that she and Li are moving to New York and she forbids his further instruction in kung fu.

So we have the familiar set up of a fish out of water teen, and sure enough Li gets into trouble adjusting to life in New York, runs afoul of a school bully, Conor (Aramis Knight) and is eventually drawn into New York’s martial arts scene opposed to an evil MMA gym run by O’Shea (Tim Rozon) a local petty gangster who is bracing down Li’s girlfriend Mia’s (Sadie Stanley) family.

All of this takes Li out of contact with Han long enough for the Master to come to New York himself, and when he sees that Li needs martial arts training for self expression, reaches out to Sensei Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) in Los Angeles giving us the trailer shot that everyone wanted.

Karate Kid: Legends has its heart in the right place: given the messy studio mandate of synthesizing all the previous interpretations of the franchise it builds a coherent world where all these characters can interact with one another with a minimum of fuss. It’s made by people who understood why the earlier Karate Kid films worked and what people want from Jackie Chan and Ralph Macchio here. The fights have weight to them and while wire work was clearly used for some of the more outlandish moves, it’s tasteful and the fight scenes are a highlight.

I think, in general, this is the most you can expect from a Karate Kid film in 2025. I have only two complaints:

First, the film has a very particular kind of digital flatness that I associate with Sony Pictures productions. It feels shot and framed for economy, not for storytelling and while the oversaturated colors the studio seems to love are kept in check here it feels cheap, like something shot for streaming services instead of the big screen. I think a big part of that is because there was clearly so little location work actually done in New York so there’s no real sense of place or detail the way there is with LA in the 1984 film or especially with Beijing in the 2010 picture.

That’s not nit-picking: all Karate Kid films are fish out of water stories and without a certain grounding of place the central conflicts can lose their weight and texture and feel phoney.

This leads right into my second complaint: all the stuff that feels daunting for a writer in connecting disparate films that were never intended to fit together is handled so adeptly, but all of the basic melodrama to get Li into the tournament is totally overwritten. Karate Kid Legends has a middle third that feels like it was hacked apart by the Flying Guillotine in the editing room, with whole subplots introduced and abandoned and way too much going on to get Li from point A to B.

In spite of this I think Ben Wang acquits himself nicely as the new lead, he’s charming and relatable even if what’s happening to him feels like it’s impossible. Chan and Macchio are both impeccable, they elevate every scene they’re in and generally make a film that probably began as a shameless marketing pitch feel like something worthwhile.

Extras include featurettes, deleted scenes, and a gag reel.

Recommended, with reservations.