‘Karate Kid: Legends’ review: Franchise re-boot fails to land a punch

Dir: Jonathan Entwistle. US. 2025. 94mins  

Attempting to revive a franchise whose last big-screen instalment was 15 years ago, Karate Kid: Legends echoes the main plot points from the 1984 original, which only underlines how little kick this material maintains. Ben Wang proves to be a likeable hero preparing to compete in a New York City karate tournament, trained by Jackie Chan and Karate Kid regular Ralph Macchio, but the film’s cynical, formulaic execution smothers any spark its young star brings to the proceedings.  

Little grasp of the emotional undercurrents that made the original resonate

This is the sixth film in the franchise, which received newfound interest thanks to Cobra Kai, the popular web series featuring Macchio that premiered in 2018 and ended earlier this year. Chan previously appeared in the 2010 film, also called The Karate Kid, and the action icon should further attract nostalgic audiences wanting a little family-friendly martial-arts entertainment. Legends may struggle, however, amidst heavy competition from Lilo & Stitch and the forthcoming live-action How To Train Your Dragon remake.  

Kindly teenager Li (Wang) moves from Beijing to New York with his mother, Dr. Fong (Ming-Na Wen), vowing to set aside his kung fu training after a terrible family tragedy involving his late brother. Failing to fit in at school, Li immediately takes a shine to Mia (Sadie Stanley), who lives with her father Victor (Joshua Jackson). Mia’s possessive ex-boyfriend Conor (Aramis Knight), a karate master, doesn’t like Li spending time with her. Inevitably, Li and Conor will square off in the Five Boroughs martial-arts competition to settle their feud. 

In his feature debut, UK director Jonathan Entwistle (The End Of The F***ing World) successfully establishes the rapport between his younger characters, especially once Li and Mia begin slowly falling in love. Wang and Stanley have a sweet, dorky chemistry, and Jackson plays an affable father figure to the reserved Li. In Legends’ early stretches, Rob Lieber’s screenplay focuses on Li’s attempts to get Victor, a former boxer and now a pizza parlour owner, back in shape in order to win a prize fight that could earn him enough money to pay off some vicious loan sharks. But viewers can safely predict that it won’t be long before Li himself returns to the ring, even though he promised his mother he wouldn’t fight anymore. 

Legends doesn’t simply follow the narrative of the 1984 film; it also mirrors its somewhat hypocritical attitude toward karate. In both pictures, the initial emphasis is on using the martial art only for defence, a platitude that will take a backseat once our hero needs to beat up the bad guy in the big tournament. In the place of the late Pat Morita’s sage trainer Mr. Miyagi, the new film gives us two mediocre mentors: Macchio’s bland Daniel and Chan’s solemn Mr. Han, who trained Li in Beijing and travels to New York to check in on his pupil. Legends gets no boost from these familiar faces — instead, the story sags when it cedes screentime to its ageing stars, who lack Wang’s modest comedic charms.  

This franchise has gone a long way on its amped-up training montages and big-showdown finales, but Entwistle proves merely adequate in delivering these reliable pleasures. Too often, Legends resorts to video-game aesthetics during Li’s tournament matches, and even more disappointingly, the film’s villain is a total bore. This new instalment knows which story beats to hit, but it has little grasp of the emotional undercurrents that made the original resonate — how it touched on adolescent insecurities, first love, and the scourge of school bullies.  

Then again, perhaps it’s better that Legends so mechanically replicates the previous instalments — when it tries to pluck our heartstrings, the results are often disastrously cheesy, never more so than during a strained flashback that explains what happened to Li’s brother. And then there’s Daniel and Mr. Han, who largely speak in bromides. Their every utterance is insultingly facile greeting-card wisdom that hurts the head more than any roundhouse kick ever could.