KARATE KID: LEGENDS - Mark Reviews Movies

Karate Kid: Legends, Columbia Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 30, 2025

Karate Kid: Legends is two very different concepts for a reboot/spin-off/sequel, unceremoniously crammed together into an awkward mishmash of a movie. The first half or so of Rob Lieber's screenplay offers a simple but decidedly clever twist on the usual formula of this series. The second half tries to replicate that formula in such a hurry that it almost feels as if the filmmakers or some studio executive removed an entire act of the story.

The selling point of this as a sequel is that, as the subtitle implies, it brings back characters from both the original trilogy and the 2010 remake, which now just turns out to be part of the series proper. The characters in question are the mentor from the most recent installment and the protagonist of the first three entries, who now takes on the mantle of being a mentor to a kid in a similar situation as he found himself all those decades ago.

The idea of Ralph Macchio's Daniel LaRusso picking up where his own teacher left him should probably be more affecting than it is here. Because director Jonathan Entwistle's movie is attempting to do so many things in such a short amount of time, that notion is almost a throwaway gimmick within the story.

The first act of the script, removed almost entirely from anyone or anything from the previous installments, follows a teenager from Beijing named Li Fong (Ben Wang), who moves to New York City with his mother (played by Ming-Na Wen) to start a new life. The only connection to the past is that Li's uncle is Mr. Han (Jackie Chan), the mentor of a bullied kid from the '10 movie, and a brief prologue featuring a scene from the second movie in the series, explaining how Han and his lineage of kung fu are connected to Daniel's late sensei and his school of karate.

After that, though, Li gets to take focus, finding himself somewhat of an outcast in a big city in a new country, making fast friends with classmate Mia (Sadie Stanley), and trying his best not to fight, since he and his mother are still grieving the death of Li's older brother. Right away, the story has a degree of simplicity and sincerity that made the 1984 original so successful—and why it's still quite the effective film to this date.

The twist of Lieber's script, though, arrives when Li discovers that Mia's father Victor (Joshua Jackson), a former boxer who left the sport and opened a pizzeria after his daughter was born, is in trouble with some bad people. He's in debt to a loan shark, and after Li takes on a trio of thugs ambushing Victor in a back alley, he asks the teen to help him learn some martial arts to help him in an upcoming boxing tournament. The prize money would be enough to pay off his debt.

It is such a simple variation on the basic template of these movies. Basically, the kid becomes the karate—well, kung fu, technically—teacher, and it's both amusing and filled with some promise, as Li and Victor connect during training and while discussing the things in their respective lives that have come to define them. The setup is essentially a mirror image of the story of the original film, as well as the remake that's now just another sequel, but just when that conceit and that relationship (not to mention the romance brewing between Li and Mia) click into place, the movie abandons it all.

The second half is essentially a reset of the entire plot, as Han comes to New York, insists that his nephew enter a forthcoming martial arts tournament to help his new friend, and immediately travels to California to ask for Daniel's help in training Li. The narrative shift is jarring, and with so much of the story's time and effort invested in its first act, the movie never recovers.

That's a shame—not only because the early variation on the formula is so effective, but also because it means there's not much for Li, Han, and Daniel to do but to train for and eventually participate in the tournament. The resulting plot skimps on what we might actually want from this—to see where Daniel is now, to appreciate how the two teachers bond over their shared heritage, to watch Li learn from and teach some things to his mentors in the way of the best parts of these movies—and just hastily moves through the motions.

It becomes a faded copy of a copy at that point, albeit without the heart of the '84 film or even the respect for the simplicity of this concept that defined the '10 version. Karate Kid: Legends has two fine premises for how to continue this series, but in forcing them to battle each other for dominance, the movie trips up over itself on a foundational level.

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