Karate Kid: Legends (dir. Jonathan Entwistle)

by Jack Martin | May 28, 2025

Certificate: 12A

Running Time: 94 mins

UK Distributor: Sony Pictures

UK Release Date: 28 May 2025

WHO’S IN KARATE KID: LEGENDS?

Jackie Chan, Ralph Macchio, Ben Wang, Joshua Jackson, Sadie Stanley, Ming-Na Wen, Aramis Knight, Shaunette Renée Wilson, Wyatt Oleff, Jennifer-Lyn Christie

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Jonathan Entwistle (director), Rob Lieber (writer), Karen Rosenfelt (producer), Dominic Lewis (composer), Justin Brown (cinematographer), Dana E. Glauberman and Colby Parker Jr. (editors)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

A young martial artist (Wang) turns to two teachers (Chan and Macchio) for help…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON KARATE KID: LEGENDS?

The Karate Kid franchise is often regarded as a more family-friendly Rocky, not just because John G. Alvidson (the director of the Oscar-winning original) also directed the first three films, but also because in a lot of ways they share the same formula: fresh-faced underdog trains with unorthodox teacher and eventually bests their almost cartoonishly antagonistic rival in the ring. Two branches, one tree, if you will.

That kind of makes Karate Kid: Legends essentially the Creed of its franchise, for it too focuses on a much fresher face turning to the original champion for guidance on how to succeed at their own pace. But unlike Creed, director Jonathan Entwistle’s film is much more of a mixed bag, for while there’s some charm and energy left in this familiar but reliable template, it feels oddly chaotic in its execution, to where I’m slightly hesitant to even call it Jonathan Entwistle’s film.

Our young hero this time is Li Fong (Ben Wang), a skilled kung fu student training in Beijing, China under the watchful eye of Mr. Han (Jackie Chan, reprising his role from the 2010 reboot), who is suddenly whisked off to New York with his mother (Ming-Na Wen) who disapproves of her son’s martial arts. Once in the Big Apple, he quickly makes friends with local girl Mia (Sadie Stanley) and her father, former boxer turned pizzeria owner Victor (Joshua Jackson), but also a ruthless enemy in Mia’s psychotic ex Connor (Aramis Knight), a karate prodigy who is more than eager to put Li in his place. In true Karate Kid fashion, Li is soon compelled to enter a local tournament and defeat Connor at his own game, recruiting not only Mr. Han but also Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio), the original Karate Kid under the legendary Mr. Miyagi, to train him in the ways of both kung fu and karate in order to win the day.

The trailers and further promotional material seem to suggest that Chan and Macchio, both iconic faces of this franchise, are in the film quite a bit, though the reality is that they are much more supporting players, and even then, they aren’t around that much (Macchio only comes in around the second-to-third act transition). This is much more Ben Wang’s film, which isn’t an issue seeing how the young actor is actually really good here and easily carries the film in the absence of his bigger-draw co-stars. Wang has a great screen presence, with a ton of charisma and physical stamina at his disposal, particularly in action sequences where he impressively mimics the same blend of comedy and fight choreography that originally made his co-star Chan such a revered cinematic figure. He also has chemistry with just about every actor he appears opposite, which if nothing else suggests that this guy is well on his way to stardom since he clearly knows how to behave in front of a camera without hogging all the attention.

The rest of the film isn’t quite as sturdy as its lead, for it is oddly fast-paced to a point where it almost feels as though it’s been sped up to fit within a 90-odd minute runtime. Scenes will go by noticeably quick, with even the training montages (themselves set to random pop songs that somehow make it feel even more like a studio product) seeming as though they’re playing at double-speed, leaving little room for quieter character moments to breathe as they may have been allowed to in previous Karate Kid movies. It wouldn’t be surprising if it turned out the original cut of the film was a half-hour longer than the one we’ve been given, for a lot of it seems to have been trimmed down to its most basic attributes in the editing room, perhaps by studio executives who wanted there to be more showtimes to make money from, instead of making the overall narrative more compact when in fact it feels much more tampered with. The recent Lilo & Stitch had this issue with its editing and overall pacing as well, which leads me to wonder if this is a trend among films targeted for younger viewers whose attention spans are shot thanks to short-form video content. Either way, it’s an alarming blow against general moviegoing patience.

Even when it goes into full legacy sequel mode, Karate Kid: Legends can’t quite find its footing. Again, because it is operating at such a rushed pace, many of the scenes with Chan or Macchio (or both) come and go without much impact, other than the nostalgia you’ll clearly feel upon seeing them again on the big screen and working together like they’re superheroes interacting for the first time in the MCU. In Macchio’s case, though, his presence in the hit spin-off series Cobra Kai is more understandable, whereas here it does feel like his character is thrown in to simply tie it into the original run of films, for you could remove Daniel LaRusso and just have it be Chan’s character from the 2010 version without taking too much else away from the story or its overall outcome.

When it does work, it’s largely because Ben Wang is an enjoyable lead who can sell this familiar formula like it was being told for the first time, and it’s hard to deny some of the more crowd-pleasing moments that go hand-in-hand with a franchise like this. But everything else is unusually off, as though Sony took over from director Entwistle to give it a last-minute polish that ironically does more damage to the final product, which is unfortunate because there’s clearly a pretty good Karate Kid movie somewhere underneath the mess, though its current form leaves a lot more to be trimmed from this branch of the tree.

SO, TO SUM UP…

Karate Kid: Legends has some winning moments, many of them thanks to a truly charismatic lead turn by Ben Wang, but an unusually quickened pace and sometimes uneven focus on the franchise legacy leaves it a wobblier entry than it perhaps started out as in the editing room.