Karate Kid: Legends (2025) review

Dir. Jonathan Entwistle

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★

Karate Kid: Legends is Karate Kid for the TikTok generation. This a movie in fast-forward, constantly hurling itself to the next plot-point or scene with no room for moments to breathe. Sometimes, before we can even register a scene’s time, place, or purpose, we’re slapped in the face with aerial shots of New York City and split-screen editing that whisks us off to the next setting. By the end of the film, I felt like I saw more of the Big Apple from a drone’s eye b-roll than I did any kung fu or karate.

Karate Kid: Legends is the perfect fodder for a streaming service, so it’s a shock that it got a theatrical release at all. The 2010 Jaden Smith/Jackie Chan-led sequel seems like it came out a lifetime ago. Set in Detroit, that film recalls a time when legacyquels had some ambition. Smith as the lead coupled with the setting shifted to a radically different locale were two daring creative decisions so far away from anything this installment wants to do that it makes you yearn for the previous middling movie. The law of diminishing returns continues to have no greater proof of concept than Hollywood.

A sorta-continuation of Cobra Kai, Legends revolves around Li Fong (Ben Wang), whose life is rooted when his mother (Ming-Na Wen) accepts a hospital job in New York, leading them to leave Beijing, all in the span of roughly five-minutes. Li’s older brother’s death prompts mom to believe Li needs a fresh start in the States, and quietly hopes the move will get him away from his passion for martial arts. He leaves behind his loyal shifu, Mr. Han (Jackie Chan), but finds himself on the right track in NYC, when he stumbles into a pizza shop run by a pretty girl named Mia (Sadie Stanley) and her father, Victor (Joshua Jackson). Victor is a retired boxer, who now slings pies and tries (unsuccessfully) to keep his daughter from seeing the neighborhood mistake named Conor (Aramis Knight), who trains at a martial arts gym.

Victor’s restaurant needs to be saved because of course it does, so Li agrees to train a man more-than-triple his age to get back in the ring to win the belt and the prize money.

Let it be known, all of this goes down within the first 45 minutes of the film, and by that point, you’re wondering if you’d been had as a consumer, since the presence of Jackie Chan and series mainstay Ralph Macchio suggested they’d have significant roles. Well, it turns out, they do, for the movie very quickly pivots from the storyline of Li training Victor to Li training to beat Conor in the “5 Boroughs Tournament,” a bracket-style karate competition held on a rooftop in New York City. Macchio reprises his role as Daniel LaRusso, and Mr. Han recruits him to help Li being that they were both trained by Mr. Miyagi (the late, great Pat Morita, who we should be grateful didn’t reprise his role with the help of AI — they’re saying that for the next sequel).

The emotional crux of the Karate Kid movies has always been the coming-of-age lessons the understudy learns from a wise old shifu. Daniel LaRusso has a lot of knowledge and wisdom he can pass on to Li. The problem, however, is that Karate Kid: Legends doesn’t slow down long enough to let such moments breathe. This is a movie in a bigger hurry than a man rushing to his dentist appointment with an ETA five minutes after the time of his scheduled appointment. It’s in such a needless rush, to the point where I found myself mentally checking out of the movie and trying to guess when the scene would cut and the subsequent one begin. If it hadn’t been for the film’s eclectic soundtrack — featuring everything from Rod Stewart to LCD Soundsystem and Backstreet Boys — I might not have snapped back into the story. Of course, despite all the rampant music licensing and the film’s $45 million budget, utilizing Joe “Bean” Esposito’s “You’re the Best” was just too much to ask.

Throughout all the needless haste and hurried pacing, Ben Wang does emerge victorious. He’s gently charismatic, and if Rob Lieber’s screenplay does one thing right, it’s making him an amiable character as opposed to a pitiable one. The moment he arrives in New York City, he’s not walking down the busy streets expecting people to attend his pity party. Instead, he confidently walks to a neighborhood pizza joint and asks if they have stuffed crust. A big mistake in the Big Apple, yes, but you have to love the moxie. Wang oozes it. If the film found itself not ostensibly obligated to bear a runtime under 90 minutes, we could’ve gotten more of these moments and fewer montages and erratic bursts of energy. In catering to a generation that’s lost all concept of patience (who will probably ignore it anyway) and by finding ways to make Chan and Macchio extended cameos despite their longer-than-expected stays in the story, Karate Kid: Legends effectively pleases no one, if it even lingers in their mind long enough to realize such.

Starring: Ben Wang, Jackie Chan, Ralph Macchio, Sadie Stanley, Joshua Jackson, Ming-Na Wen, Aramis Knight, Tim Rozen, Wyatt Oleff, and Shaunette Renée Wilson. Directed by: Jonathan Entwistle.