Karate Kid Legends
Jonathan Entwistle
Directed by:
2025


What an odd film. Despite Karate Kid Legends insistence on staying as true to the "formula" of the karate kid movies as much as possible, it also fails to even realize that the main story is what made those movies so popular. Instead, the film seems to focus not on the kid, but the master(s). The trailers made it quite obvious that this film would be a lot of nostalgia-bait, but I didn't expect it to be this severe. Not only do the actors from the previous films take up significant screentime, but they overshadow the actual main character in the entire third act. And the worst part of this is the fact that these two have no real character development of their own. Just repeating random phrases that the audience is expected to remember from previous installments in this franchise. The visuals don't help, with almost no visual style leaving the film feeling generic. The action is actually surprisingly good sometimes, but not as often as I had hoped. But it's pretty hilarious how bad Li gets his ass kicked.
