Karate Kid: Legends

KARATE KID: LEGENDS 🥋 

The Karate Kid series has a new entry in the franchise with Ralph Macchio (The Karate Kid—1984, Cobra Kai—2018) and Jackie Chan (The Karate Kid—2010) reprising their roles as sensei and shifu of their respective martial arts for the sake of newcomer Ben Wang (American Born Chinese—2023, Chang Can Dunk—2023).

After the death of his brother, Li Fong (Ben Wang), a disciple of Mr. Han’s (Jackie Chan’s character from the 2010 Karate Kid) Kung Fu school in Beijing, is forced to leave his days of martial arts training behind him and move with his mom and start fresh in the city that never sleeps, New York. That fresh start gets upended when he finds himself wrapped up in a beef between his new friend Mia and her ex-boyfriend Conor Day. His attempt to defend her fails, leaving him to be bullied by Conor, who just so happens to be the city’s martial arts hotshot.

Eventually Mr. Han grows suspicious of Li’s lack of communication, leading him to New York, where he encourages Li to take down his bully at the citywide Five Boroughs Martial Arts Tournament.

Diehard fans may be let down by the nonsensical way this story is put together, but for me, the campy 2000s writing and the cliché “fight the bully” plot is a tale as old as time for a reason: it works.

I’ve only seen the 1984 and 2010 installments of THE KARATE KID, so my personal investment in this franchise is mostly surface level, but I found myself enjoying this just as much as the previous iterations because it does what entertaining sports movies do best: give you an underdog worth rooting for and inspire you to maximize your potential.

Any sports movie that has me leaving the theatre wanting to go work out and run a mile, or in this case practice karate around the house, is an immediate success for me.

I also loved the way they chose to tie in The Karate Kid II and use it as a way of blending both Mr. Miyagi and Mr. Han’s teachings under one banner. That banner and successor to it is Li Fong, played by Ben Wang, who I have watched in a number of projects over the last few years, and it’s nice to see him finally find a role fitting of everything he brings to the table as an actor.

This new crew of Ben Wang, Sadie Stanley, and Wyatt Oleff, overseen by Joshua Jackson (The Mighty Ducks—1992), is a group that complements each other enough to carry this series into a new era of martial artistry.

On the flip side, as enjoyable as I found this to be, there was a chance for this to be greater than it was.

The first twenty-ish minutes were fine-tuned to bring two disciplines of martial arts together, fitting of the Beijing/New York dynamic. We had gritty New York boxing and an awesome homage to classic Hong Kong cinema and kung fu action movies, which felt right with Jackie Chan attached to this. That fine-tuned storytelling lost track of itself once it tried to shoehorn in characters through these roundabout ways that, in all honesty, derailed this from being a strong spin-off instead of the nostalgia fest it turned into.

I’m normally immune to being sold on nostalgia, but with sports movies there’s an uplifting quality to it that I can’t not be inspired by. Also, it helps that Jackie Chan is the man.

KARATE KID: LEGENDS is a fun walk down memory lane, revisiting the glory days of Karate Kid past while laying down the foundation for a new future by introducing Ben Wang as the rightful successor to the series. 

Enjoy!

7/10 🍿 🎥

Runtime: 1hr30mins

Where: In Theatres May 30th, 2025

Karate Kid: Legends Review (2025) The Richmond Reviewer - June 1st, 2025.

#KarateKidLegends #KarateKid #Karate #CobraiKai #MovieReview #Movie #JackieChan #BenWang RalphMacchio #SonyPictures