Remakes are often rather tenuously connected to their franchises. By definition, the continuity is dropped, and the original series rarely continues on its own once a remake has been produced. I was initially hesitant to even include remakes in my consideration of franchises, as it’s difficult to justify thinking of them as the same thing. For my purposes, I am willing to concede that a remake belongs to the original franchise if the original franchise remains the primary inspiration point for the remake. That is, Tim Burton’s somewhat loathsome Charlie and the Chocolate Factory doesn’t count, since it is a new adaptation of the original source novel, while Tim Burton’s exceptionally loathsome Planet of the Apes does count, since it uses the preexisting film rather than the novel it was based on for its inspiration. Of course the remake rules get confusing pretty quickly, so I’m going to decide these things on a film-by-film basis.By my criteria, the 2010 Karate Kid remake is in its way a true part of the Karate Kid franchise, even though it has no connection Mr. Miyagi’s storyline. Rather, the new Karate Kid deliberately trades on memories of 1984’s original Karate Kid. In many ways it is as much spiritual successor to the series itself as it is a remake. So if we think of this as a sequel, then the next Karate Kid after The Next Karate Kid is simply The Karate Kid.
This is the first time I’ve approached a movie in theaters, so my regular recap tactic will be neither as practical nor as appropriate. Unfair spoilers lie in that approach. But thankfully The Karate Kid (2010, not 1984) has an incredibly familiar story. The broad strokes here are entirely those of The Karate Kid (1984, not 2010). That means a young kid moves to a new home, encounters bullies and a pointless romance, and is then taken under wing of a mysterious old man to study martial arts and beat the bullies in a tournament setting. Hell, even the precise beats of the tournament sequence directly echo those of The Karate Kid (Orwell year, not Arthur C. Clark year). Usually remake makers (remakers?) twist up the climax to create suspense for people in the know, but this one avoids that. Great, I guess in a way that’s a spoiler.
But where the new Karate Kid feels familiar in the large beats, it differs in the vast majority of the ornamental details. Some of these details do not appear too ornamental. For one thing, this movie has employed every form of sequel switch-up I can think of offhand – change of race, age, characters and setting. (The gender switch having just been used in the last one, a mere 16 years, it’s thankfully off the table.)
But which switch-up should I tackle first? It is called The Karate Kid, so I suppose I should consider the karate kid. This time it is Dre Parker, a twelve-year-old black kid filling in for Ralph Macchio’s late teens Jersey “boy.” This is the first headlining role for Will Smith’s son, Jayden Smith, looking even younger than he is. Surely there’s plenty of nepotism at work, with both parents producing, but let’s not hold that instantly against the lad. Rather let’s hold against the lad his total inability to convey a character arc. Now I’m being a bit hard here. There character of Dre is written with an arc, which is essential since that’s the central feature of every Karate Kid movie. But Jayden Smith cannot force himself to be more unlikeable at one moment than he is at another. He’s the child of a major movie star, carrying over a lot of his father’s odd quirks (the smirk, tilted head and weird puckering goldfish mouth thing). As such, he has a preternatural desire to be liked at all times. This has certainly worked for Will Smith’s career, and his consistent likeability (sans Hancock) is a key factor in his success. But it’s just not the best trait for a Karate Kid arc. It’s entirely likely that Jayden Smith will see significant stardom in the future, but this film is just quite a bit too much for the time being. He’s a child-shaped blank slate more than anything else.
Jackie Chan fares quite a bit better at the Miyagi surrogate, Mr. Han. Of course Jackie does not bring the same expectations to the table as Pat Morita did. With Morita, no one expected anything of him, the same as with Mr. Miyagi himself, making Daniel’s discovery our discovery. Ah, but Jackie Chan, his incredibly storied career brings along a lot of heightened expectations, specifically martial arts mastery. Thus it is little surprise when Han first breaks out his entertaining prop fu to defend Dre from the bullies; rather we’ve anxiously been waiting this moment.
Mr. Han represents a change of gears for Jackie’s career. He (Chan) is getting notably older, and no longer has the physical capability of wowing audiences quite like he could throughout the past three plus decades. Jackie now takes on the role of the mentor, an interesting switcheroo for Drunken Master fans used to seeing Jackie as the student. That adds a good generational feel to the proceedings.
There is a specific scene, fairly late in the movie, where Jackie is truly able to surprise us with something not expected of him: acting. Like Miyagi, Han carries some heavy emotional baggage, revealed late in the game. Jackie weeps and sobs, portraying deep sorrow in remembrance of the past. What’s amazing here is that it’s almost entirely on Jackie’s shoulders; the specifics of his troubled past are pretty rote and cliché (SPOILER: family killed in a car crash – again with the deadly car crashes – I’m sick of this trope). Jackie’s acting actually elevates this familiar element. Bravo, Jackie. If this were a finer movie, and not a Karate Kid remake, I’d even say Jackie is trading on his iconic imagery as an older man the way Clint Eastwood did in Unforgiven. Perhaps he could still do that some day – I’d love to see it.
And now to consider the setting switch. Dre has moved with his mother Sherry (Taraji P. Henderson, doing her very own weird, out of place caricature) from Detroit to Beijing. The Chinese elements of the movie are front-and-center throughout, and if nothing else the movie serves as a great travel enticement. I’d particularly love to visit a mountaintop monastery featured half way through, it’s gorgeous. The most immediate story effect, though, is to increase the loneliness of Dre’s situation considerably, making things far more extreme than Daniel’s simply “new kid” situation in the first Karate Kid.
But while the China setting does wonders for the student, it is not nearly so generous towards the mentor. In the original, Mr. Miyagi was an interesting figure, a pure Japanese presence alone in Southern California – the discovery of his hidden strengths is heightened by this fact. But for Dre to find a Chinese man in China who knows the ancient art of the Chinese? Come on. While Miyagi had to struggle against racism and a foreign culture, the only real drama for Mr. Han (the aforementioned fatal car crash) comes much more out of left field. Mr. Miyagi’s familial mourning derived from the tragedies of World War II, his grief appropriate. In comparison, the scene when Dre discovers that Han systematically destroys his own car each year on the anniversary of his family’s death – this scene would work quite differently if someone placed a serial killer soundtrack underneath it. Jackie quickly saves the moment, but his mourning process seems pretty damn creepy.
Since Han is not an outsider like Miyagi was, he cannot bond in quite the same way with Dre. (Actually, I’m not entirely certain why this character chooses to train Dre, except that it’s the premise.) Their relationship cannot be as deep as the first’s, though it’s clear the filmmakers and director Harald Zwart mean well and are respectful. But still, the original Karate Kid worked primarily as a drama, a card this one cannot rely upon quite as much. That means the 2010 Karate Kid has to up its other major ante: the martial arts! Indeed, the martial arts action in this film is far more elaborate and crowd pleasing, reflecting Jackie Chan’s input. I can’t answer if it’s any less realistic, but the fight scenes are elaborate, well choreographed, and full of wild stunt work. I like how they’ve updated Daniel’s Crane Technique from the first into a wild somersault flip kick – the audience I saw this with in theaters seriously loved this part.
Ah, all this hard-hitting, vicious martial arts action…all of it with preteens! It’s no Battle Royale, but this is action we normally expect from adult in real chop socky flicks, not kids in a PG movie. This is far, far beyond the pale of what most family films will approach, and it’s all the better for it. I think a certain amount of well-reasoned harshness is appropriate for children’s entertainment (they’re not so squeamish as some people like to think). Hell, I honestly think kids would benefit from Pan’s Labyrinth, but I know I’m alone on that one. And if you ever wanted to see Jackie Chan beat up on six prepubescents at once, they’ve got that here for ya!
This brings me to the question of bullies. They function here a lot like the Cobra Kai from before, and they’re just as unreasoning. But here I think the setting switch does wonders for the movie, even if it’s only a subtext that’s not really there. But here’s the rub. Here we have preteen Cheng (Zhenwei Wang) picking on foreigner Dre for next to no reason. Cheng is a member of Master Li’s (Rongguang Yu) Fighting Dragons martial arts school, a massive operation that puts Kreese’s rinky-dink strip mall store to shame. At first glance their villainy seems unmotivated and cruel, until you realize – it’s criticizing China! Don’t let word of this get back to the producers, since China itself largely financed this movie. But the constant presence of the Beijing Olympics venues instantly reminds me of the controversy surrounding China’s psychotically over-trained child competitors. It’s much easier to understand Cheng’s bullying as a product of this mentality, making the “No mercy” dogma scarier than it ever was in Cobra Kai hands. Hell, the one useful thing about Dre’s romantic subplot (really awkward, by the way, considering the reduction of age here) is how his girlfriend Meiying (Wenwen Han) is herself being tutored on the violin quite strictly. I think somewhere amongst the film’s creators this was intentional, and I’d even argue that it is Dre’s comparative passion for his training that leads him to his eventual victory over the state-trained pupils. And I’ve gone and thought too much about this.
There is an elephant in the room here I’ve neglected for a while, one everyone else has commented on: there is no karate in this Karate Kid! We’re all familiar with this argument – karate is Japanese, kung fu is Chinese, and this China-set film employs kung fu. Well, too. One would suspect the movie is guilty of deindividuation, except a single passing line of dialogue explains they know the difference between the two arts. So why call this movie The Karate Kid, not The Kung Fu Kid (a good title, actually, and one it may get released under internationally – or at least in China)? Well, here it is. Call it The Kung Fu Kid, and yet retain the precise plot of 1984’s Karate Kid, and you’d get criticized for creating a knockoff. Instead call the thing a remake, use the same title, and instead fend off arguments of cultural insensitivity. Pick your poison, producers.
Which brings us back again to its status as a remake. There are a few references to the original throughout, providing fun for remake-mongers. Most obviously, Han does a variation on the old fly/chopstick thing, though here it’s transformed from a metaphor for spirituality into a silly gag. The “wax off” is now “jack(et)s off” – uh huh huh huh. Also, Han waxes a car in the background, tipping the reference hat. And in The Karate Kid, it all comes down to the training montage, which is frankly better here, a result of the increased attention paid to martial arts (though it lacks images as likely to become iconic…maybe the Great Wall bit). Sadly, I could pinpoint no modern equivalent of a cheesy mid-eighties power ballad anywhere.
Oh well. Since this Karate Kid has that name, it is therefore a part of that series…I guess. And it’s at least better than the last two sequels – no big accomplishment there. Hell, I’d say it might be better than Part II, though that’s splitting hairs. It surely doesn’t live up to the first, simply because it’s too dependent on it to create a new identity – the best remakes of all time (i.e. The Thing) really separate themselves. Even the added elements, Chinese setting and increased kung fu action cannot set it apart. But I’ve seen it with an audience, and I can attest that the formula elements of Karate Kid fame remain remarkably effective, provoking actual applause at the film’s highpoints. And for younger kids, it just may serve the same purpose the original Karate Kid did my generation (unlikely).
What does the future hold for the Karate Kid franchise? I guess here it’s a question of box office first and foremost, and I don’t know how that’s going yet. If they do choose to make sequels (not terribly common for remakes, really, ‘cause that just gets confusing), they’d best keep in mind the many, many ways the original series bollixed up that idea. I don’t quite know what would make for a good Karate Kid sequel, really; I think it’s an impossibility. Though I will say, considering how slavishly the big plot moments here repeat the first, it’s odd to leave the theater after the traditional freeze frame, realizing that poor Cheng is due up for a savage beat down in the parking lot. We’ve seen Part II, we all know that’s coming…
And does the original Karate Kid exist in this movie’s universe? Dre’s gonna be mighty freaked out some day when he watches it!
Related posts:
• No. 1 The Karate Kid (1984)
• No. 2 The Karate Kid, Part II (1986)
• No. 3 The Karate Kid, Part III (1989)
• No. 4 The Next Karate Kid (1994)
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