While it has much in common structurally with the previous films in the Karate Kid franchise, Karate Kid Legends is cut from the same cloth as Cobra Kai in terms of tone. The sense of humor and self-awareness is intact, and it takes the drama at its core just seriously enough to make its characters’ plights worth investing in. But the fighting gets a major jump in quality thanks to Jackie Chan’s obvious influence, and even as new kung fu kid Li Fong (Ben Wang) goes through most of the same motions as the characters played by Ralph Macchio, Hilary Swank, Jaden Smith, and Xolo Mariduena before him, Legends carves out its own territory alongside the other films in the franchise—at least in its front end.
Instead of Li Fong being a complete novice who learns the ways of kung fu in order to stop getting his ass kicked every time he steps outside his front door, he’s actually an adept student of the art studying under Mr. Han (Chan) in Beijing. That training, though, is cut short when Li Fong’s mother (Ming-Na Wen) moves them to New York City. And while other Karate Kid stories rely on fish-out-of-water tropes to establish character, Legends sees Li Fong as having a better leg up in New York than Daniel LaRusso ever had in ’80s-era California. Home-style pizza might be a foreign concept, but being a charming little smartass who can either talk or fight his way out of trouble, especially in Chinese neighborhoods, means Li Fong fits right in.
The film’s best stretch of storytelling flips the entire Karate Kid conceit on its head, with Li Fong befriending a pizza shop owner, Victor (Joshua Jackson), who turns out to be a down-on-his-luck boxer, and his daughter, Mia (Sadie Stanley). When the mob comes calling to collect on an old debt, and the only way to get the money is to get Victor back in the ring, Li Fong winds up being the guy to help him get a new approach to boxing through the healing power of montages. Their friendship, Li Fong’s tragic personal history with martial arts, and the casual, naturalistic way he connects with Sadie play to the film’s strengths as the kind of young adult-friendly family drama that’s been largely relegated to the small screen in recent decades.
The film’s lack of xenophobic friction is welcome, but a proper Karate Kid movie has to eventually kick in, and this one shifts into gear when Sadie’s MMA-fighting evil ex, Conor (Aramis Knight), tries to weasel back into her life, beating Li Fong into the dirt in the process. And a martial arts tournament is the only way to settle their differences. From here, the film is on fast-forward, only stopping to play the hits along the way—again through more montages.
There’s merit to a Karate Kid film keeping things simple, given how movies geared toward younger audiences tend toward the overstuffed and overcomplicated. The groundwork laid early on helps. Our new cast of characters are well established, endearing them to the audience way before they have both Mr. Han and Macchio’s Daniel to bounce off of as Li’s trainers. And Conor is very quickly established as a gloriously hostile final boss for Li Fong to take down.
But Legends still leaves a lot on the table in terms of building up to its best moments. That’s particularly true about the actual Five Boroughs Tournament where Li Fong collides with Conor, with all the fights taking place in alleys, underpasses, and rooftops scattered around NYC. That’s preferable, sure, to it taking place a cinematically sterile auditorium, and it helps that the visual representation of the location cards and scoreboards feel like they could’ve been ripped right out of Street Fighter 6, but even this cool, kinetic stretch of film goes by at a lightning pace.
In the end, the main casualty of that pell-mell approach is that characters, so carefully drawn at the start, are ultimately given short shrift. And given the franchise’s history of taking its sweet time with these moments—2010’s The Karate Kid is almost two-and-a-half hours long—Legends running at a far too lean 94 minutes feels less like not wanting to overcomplicate a simple premise than a concession to the target audience’s short attention span.
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