by Cliff Farmer
Okay, so I finally watched the new Karate Kid movie. It was bad. It was really bad. I want to tell people how bad it was, but now I’m having to watch it AGAIN to make sure I get it right. TWICE I’ve had to watch this thing, all so you don’t have to. I don’t mean to call myself a martyr…after you read this, you can decide for yourself. Spoiler alert, here comes the whole movie, point by inferior-in-every-way point.
Okay, right out of the gate, we see Jaden Smith as Dre, the inferior replacement for Daniel. He’s a little kid. The Karate Kid was a coming of age story. This kid’s nowhere near ready to come of any sort of age. It’s almost like when there’s a movie about adults (like Superman) and make them about teens (Smallville). This is like that, but one step further down. Think Karate Kid meets Muppet Babies. Expectations lowered? Good, here we go.
Dre and his mom are moving to China. Okay, two problems here. First, the original did have “fish out of water” elements, but both Daniel AND Mr. Miyagi were from elsewhere, so they were both somewhat out of place. In this iteration, Dre goes to the home of Mr. Han, the inferior replacement for Miyagi. Not only does this reduce the character’s depth, but that’s also the plot of Karate Kid 2, so it just feels like they’re rushing ahead before the story even starts.
Second problem about going to China (and this is a big one – maybe the biggest problem of the movie): Karate is from Japan, Kung Fu is from China. You can’t call it Karate Kid if there’s no Karate involved. Mr. Han teaches him Kung Fu. They even call it Kung Fu in the movie. THE MOVIE IS CALLED KARATE KID! IDIOTS!
So anyway, there they are in China, and a few plot points later they introduce the bully and his buddies, the love interest, and he gets to meet Mr. Han. I could go into how they took out the class structure differences from the original between the kid and the love interest, but lack of depth is something you’re just going to have to get used to in order to get through this.
Anyway, same ol’, same ol’ for a bit. Just when you think things might be smoothing out, we reach the inevitable point where Dre goes to find a dojo. And yes, it’s just the Chinese version of the “No Mercy” Cobra Kai dojo of the original. And yes, the bully is in the class.
But, here’s where we fall apart again. In the original, various fights with mom and other adolescent outbursts at the local bullies ultimately ended in a fucked up bike. Mr. Miyagi finds the bike and fixes it, earning Daniel’s trust. He has to, since he is to become Daniel’s father figure. In the new version, no bicycle. Oh, there’s bikes, and the bullies are messing with the bikes, but not Dre’s bike. Dre doesn’t even have a bike. It’s almost like the writers are rubbing it in your face that they’re leaving that part out. The result: glossed over character development and elimination of back story. I’m getting used to that part by now, but here’s where it gets weird.
Jackie Chan (Mr. Han) beats up a bunch of little boys. Remember I said this was Muppet Babies meets Karate Kid? Well, we’re now at the part where Han saves Dre from a bully beat-down. Jackie’s pretty old, too. So, that’s a little uncomfortable to watch. Plus, instead of the hand-heat-palm trick to fix up Daniel that Miyagi had, Mr. Han uses some CGI fire, so that just super sucks. I wish I had a phrase better than “super sucks,” and I thought for quite a while about it, but it just describes it perfectly.
Okay, so in both movies, now the mentor takes the kid to the evil dojo, and after a stare-down between sensei and sensei, the kid gets roped into a tournament and the mentor decides to teach the kid martial arts. Pretty on par again, but alas, this is short lived. Now comes the training, and it’s time for some more suck.
If you don’t know “Wax On, Wax Off,” you’re missing an important part of American history. Not only did Mr. Miyagi teach Daniel Karate, he taught him important trade skills. I mean, this was a blue-collar kid, he was way more interested in girls and kicking ass than he was his school work. Beating the shit out of high school bullies won’t get you that far, especially after you turn 18. The boy is going to need a trade. By the time he could kick ass, Daniel could paint, wash and wax cars, sand, and by the sequel, even do general carpentry! For this magical retelling – Dre learns to pick up his jacket. That’s it. Just the jacket thing. No skills he can take with him, no lesson on the rewards of hard work, just an over-handed lesson in manners, and an incredibly repetitive one at that.
Oh, did I mention Mr. Han had a car in his living room? Yeah, so he’s this weirdo who got drunk and killed his family in a car wreck, and now he keeps the car in his house and rebuilds it every year, only to destroy it on the anniversary of the accident. No shit, that’s his back story. Remember Mr. Miyagi was a war hero that lost his wife and child during childbirth? Well, screw that, we have a crazy drunk with a car in his house that likes to hang around and/or hit little boys. And the kid’s mom is obviously cool with that, right? She even hangs out with Mr. Han a bit, so it’s obviously okay to leave her kid for hours on end unsupervised with this guy, right? Plus, they show Han catching flies with his chopsticks and eating with the same sticks right after, like some gross old man. In the original, catching a fly with chopsticks was an exercise in patience. In the new one, it’s an exercise in controlling nausea. So, yeah, he’s pretty much a general weirdo.
Well, anyway, they finally get to the “let me show you what I’ve really been teaching you” part, so now we get to move on to the rite of passage. In the original, Daniel is training on the beach and sees Mr. Miyagi doing the Crane Technique. So, the master imparting a special secret signature move onto his student, like a father to a son – pretty easy symbolism right? Well, for Dre, he not only learns his secret move by seeing someone else do it (a lady at a mountain temple they visit), but instead of more training, he drinks Super Kung Fu Water. I’m not shitting you, special secret temple kung fu water. Screw emulating your father figure, let’s take the secret shortcut to success!
I guess even the crew needed a break after the kung fu water, so it goes back into a long version of the love interest story. Boy and girl are getting along, then there’s trouble, boy apologizes, they’re all good again, blah blah blah. The only difference is there’s no real past with the girl and the bully in the new version, but considering the age, I’m feeling a little creepy watching them as is, much less thinking of them even younger. So, after a montage or two with vastly inferior music, and a little more training (apparently the Kung Fu Water needed a little help), Dre takes his new found Kung Fu Power and heads off to kick some ass at the tournament.
Go ahead and get mad, but I’m saying it. Red Hot Chili Peppers makes shitty montage music. How do I know? That’s what’s in the new movie, and compared to the Joe Esposito classic “You’re The Best,” it is vastly inferior. Maybe not under normal listening circumstances, but for karate montages, there’s no doubt.
To add insult to injury, there’s this joke about Dre making a face when he punches. Karate revenge is not funny; Karate revenge is serious business. Just ask the kid who plays the Chinese Johnny Leg Sweep character – while his leg attack was superior, and although he also felt bad, he did not apologize like the original Johnny did. This makes his character inferior, as it is another moral lesson lost in the new translation: when you do something wrong, the least you can do is apologize!
To help close with the same hollow feeling that the movie left me with, I’ll get you through this last part as quickly as possible. As you can imply from above, Dre gets the leg sweep treatment and ends up in the locker room. After a little more magic fire from Mr. Han, he jumps back in the game and takes out the bully with the new signature move. No crane this time…it’s a cobra thing. I don’t think they caught the irony that the bad guys in the original were Cobra Kai. I don’t think they’re that smart. And the move…it sucks. It’s some sort of magic hypnotism thing, and it fucking works, and that’s just stupid and it sucks.
So, in summary, the original Karate Kid was a classic. It taught morality, discipline, the rewards of labor, and told the story of an important surrogate father figure for a young boy coming of age and dealing with a class struggle in a new town. The new Karate Kid was a trite piece of shit rip-off with worse acting, worse writing, worse soundtrack, worse setting, just about worse everything. I don’t want to even mention how creepy the symbolism of an old man teaching a young kid how to “ring a bell” is, either. Plus, no bicycle.
