“Karate Kid: Legends” (2025)

Karate Kid: Legends

Grade: C+

The sixth installment of the Karate Kid franchise, a legacy sequel/reboot subtitled “Legends,” is a little better than the third, fourth and fifth movies but not on the same level as the original entries.

Directing:

British first-time film director Jonathan Entwistle (creator of the Netflix black comedy The End of the F***ing World; no relation to The Who bassist) makes sure Karate Kid: Legends is the easiest watch of 2025, speed-running through the formulaic storyline with an onslaught of montages; so many in fact that I was questioning the very definition of “montage,” and wondering if maybe the entire film was just one big one, from beginning to end.

Acting:

Our new hero, Li Fong (played by Ben Wang), is a likable lead character with impressive fighting skills: the most mature Karate Kid we’ve ever had. Meanwhile, Shifu Han (Jackie Chan, reprising his role from the failed Karate Kid reboot in 2010, though it doesn’t matter if you’ve seen that shit or not) and Sensei Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio, the original Karate Kid, decades older and with less screen presence, who doesn’t appear until two-thirds of the way in) successfully phone in some good old nostalgia.

Writing:

Focusing on Li Fong rather than the legacy characters is a smart choice, but recycling the same plot used in literally every Karate Kid film makes Legends very predictable, the only differences this time around being an MCU Spider-Man sense of humor, a video game-y battle format and a super-fast pace that zooms halfway between TV episode and Twitch stream.

Music:

Producer Dominic Lewis provides Karate Kid: Legends with generic uptempo beats — 30 songs on the OST; one for every montage — that range from clichéd Chinese motifs to cringeworthy self-inserts with Lewis himself on vocals (chorus for pop-rap track “Please”: “one-step one-step, we gon’ build it to the two-step two-step, can we try for the three-step three-step, can we make it to the four-step four-step”).

Ending (SPOILERS):

Li Fong wins the Five Boroughs Tournament finals, which features strange scoring and takes place on top of a skyscraper for some reason, a foregone conclusion that loses impact due to the short runtime and the likely possibility that we’ll never see these new characters again. The non-essential coda (Daniel LaRusso cracks dumb dad jokes with former-enemy-turned-business-partner Johnny Lawrence) implies that Columbia Pictures can keep rehashing Karate Kid content until the brain rots through and the money dries up.

“In life, you only have one question: is it worth fighting for?” — Shifu Han

Why Karate Kid: Legends gets a C+

Low-stakes, filled-with-fan-service, easy-to-watch legacy sequel, like Burton’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024) and Universal’s Twisters (also 2024).

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