It’s easy to be cynical about sequels when Hollywood’s cinematic landscape is littered with bad examples. But then a sequel comes along that’s so good, it’ll knock you out.
Karate Kid: Legends is a sensational sequel, building on the classic underdog framework of the original 1984 Karate Kid movie, while working in fresh fun, familiar faces, and a dazzling new talent.
Directed by Jonathan Entwistle, Karate Kid: Legends unites the original trilogy’s Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) with the 2010 Karate Kid‘s martial arts master Mr. Han (Jackie Chan). Together, they train a new “karate kid” to best a ruthless bully. But the best bits of this high-kicking sequel are actually when this new kid, Li Fong (played by the dynamic Ben Wang), is carving out his own story in New York City.
Karate Kid: Legends brings a rumble to the Bronx (and Queens, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Staten Island).
Credit: Jonathan Wenk / Sony Pictures
At the start of Karate Kid: Legends, Li lives in Beijing with his single mom (Ming-Na Wen), who really wishes he’d stop sneaking off to train kung-fu with Mr. Han. After a family tragedy, all she wants for her son is a fresh start and “no fighting!” So, she moves them to New York City, where the streets are bustling, and the pizza joint owners will mock you for asking for “stuffed crust.”
Despite this embarrassing faux pas, fish-out-of-water Li makes his first friends at Victory Pizza. The shop owner’s daughter, Mia Lipani (Sadie Stanley), is welcoming and adventurous, offering to show Li around the neighborhood on the back of her motorized scooter. His crush on her is instantaneous and understandable, as their montage of zipping around lower Manhattan plays with the excitement and freedom of young love.
Li doesn’t hit it off as fast with Mia’s dad, shop owner/retired boxer Victor Lipani (Joshua Jackson with a New York accent as thick as a grandma slice). But the two find a common interest in sport fighting and a common enemy in the karate school nearby.
While the owner of the dojo is a vicious loan shark out to cripple Victor and/or his business, the school’s prize student, Connor Day (Aramis Knight), is a bully who harasses both Mia and Li. Naturally, there’s only one way to save the shop and his friends, and that’s for Ben to go against his mother’s wishes and fight to win the Five Boroughs Tournament. This karate competition leaps to the outer boroughs for the early rounds, with a climactic skyscraper-top fight as the final showdown that awards honor and riches to the winner.
Ralph Macchio and Jackie Chan return to Karate Kid franchise with enthusiasm.
Credit: Jonathan Wenk / Sony Pictures
The script by Rob Lieber ties together Daniel LaRusso and Mr. Han’s stories with a history that unites their houses of martial arts training. Sure, one mastered karate and the other kung fu, but they are “two branches, one tree.”
So, even though these masters have never met, when Han’s dear kung fu student Li needs help to train in karate for the Five Boroughs Tournament, San Fernando Valley-based Daniel LaRusso cannot refuse. Both of these actors carry themselves with an enchanting ease befitting a master. They’ve also perfected a breezy comedic style that plays out in winking lines and precisely delivered punches, which plays well in the training sequences.
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Props to Entwistle and his stunt team. The training scenes once involved painting fences, practicing balance on a post, and catching flies with chopsticks. Here, they involve Li being simultaneously (but lovingly) pummeled by both masters as they quibble over which martial arts form is superior. The energy is bouncy and hilarious, like Jackie Chan’s ’90s action movies.
Wang carries on Chan’s legacy by performing action skillfully while being funny. He can best many a rampaging rando, but his face makes clear he’s not thrilled about the need to! His face expressing exasperation, shock, and even annoyance makes these scenes play as comic fun, rather than frighteningly tense.
Ben Wang is a marvel.
Credit: Jonathan Wenk. / Sony Pictures
Making the leap from the lead in Disney+’s American Born Chinese to Karate Kid: Legends, Wang has to deal not only with balancing teen drama with fight choreography, but also standing up to iconic martial arts movie stars, all while making a karate kid his own. He does all of this with an astonishing ease.
While Li is emotionally guarded, Wang is never wooden or stiff. He offers a nuanced performance of pain and trauma, which grounds the film and allows the moments of exaltation to be all the more contagious. When he gears up to fight a bully, his determination makes our hearts leap up into our throats. When he is getting playfully smacked by Daniel and Mr. Han, he has the comedic timing of Jackie Chan himself. And when he sheepishly flirts or fights with Mia, Wang makes that so believable he leaves his audience blushing in empathy.
Li Fong walks in Daniel LaRusso’s footsteps while not being caught in his shadow, and that’s because Wang has a mesmerizing screen presence and keen comedic sensibility that makes him addictively watchable.
Lucky for us, he appears later this year in the Stephen King adaptation The Long Walk and has been cast in the prequel The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping.
Karate Kid: Legends is much more than its cameos.
Credit: Jonathan Wenk / Sony Pictures
While Chan and Macchio are terrific together at scratching that nostalgia itch, it’s Wang and his New York ensemble that really makes Legends shine. He and Stanley have great chemistry, even as they play it old-school in romance, creeping toward the first kiss for most of the movie. Knight is a seething bully, the kind you love to hate. Playing a bookish tutor who becomes a devoted (and delightfully awkward) friend to Li, It’s Wyatt Oleff proves a hilarious wingman with over-earnest compliments and an off-key serenade of the Backstreet Boys. But best of this supporting bunch is Joshua Jackson.
Sure, part of it is the dizzying juxtaposition of The Mighty Ducks star popping up in a Karate Kid movie. However, Jackson digs in to the story of the boxer turned pizza parlor proprietor with charming earnestness. His tough guy demeanor is initially gruff, but soon gives way to a heart-of-gold sense of good neighborliness that’s been a part of this franchise since Mr. Miyagi first fixed Daniel’s bike. While the budding romance between Li and Mia is sweet, there’s a profound joy in watching Victor develop a brotherly bond with a boy who really needs it.
Altogether, this incredible cast builds a movie that is alive with laughter, excitement, and love. The fight scenes are thrilling, thanks to Wang’s terrific physical performance and sound effects that make hard blows really crack. But like the best of this franchise, it’s always the heart in its story that hits the hardest.
A confession: I went into this movie expecting a half-hearted, recooked remake of the original film. While Karate Kid: Legends has similar DNA, it stands on its own as a family-friendly film absolutely worth seeing in theaters.
Heartwarming, exciting, and surprising, Karate Kid: Legends had me laughing, gasping, tearing up, and cheering. Don’t mistake it for just another sequel. See it in theaters, and take the kids.
Karate Kid: Legends opens in theaters May 30.
