Karate Kid: Legends, the review of the film

Everything is Kung -Fu. But not everything is cinema. Karate Kid: Legendsfor example, is not. It is content. We explain it immediately. Indeed, it was Stephanie Zacharek who illustrated it in an article of the Timein which it analyzes as to date the overproduction of products, especially streaming, has generated a bifurcation between what we consider cinema and what we only consider “content”, in this case also intended as “filler”. A multiplication of the productions and titles that do not always equate, at the same time, to as many qualitiesbut simply the idea of ​​works that could exist like this, and that’s it, even without an audience. Which is not only the end of the room, but of the cinematographic experience itself, with Zacharek who affirms, always in his piece, he cannot exist films without the public.

The “content”, however, can have a double value: on the one hand it can correspond to the need for products to be included in its catalog, on the other it has already existed for long before the hegemony of the platforms began, referring to the ravenous practice of the studios to reduce its own world, universe, franchise to the bone. This time it was touched At the saga opened in 1984 that, with Legendsarrives at his sixth film. A work set three years after the events of the sixth season of Cobra KaiNetflix series from the acclaimed success with its first seasons, as well as legitimacy of the narrative fee that goes to insert the 2010 film with Jackie Chan and Jaden Smith in the vein of the story of Karate Kid, Therefore, a sort of reboot as at the beginning is no longer considered.

When only the old characters expect in the new films

The sequels – or prequel, spin -off, reboot – often give the hint of “content”, which is what you breathe in the streets of the New York that welcomes The protagonists of the new film directed by Jonathan Entwistle And in which he also reports the characters of the aforementioned Chan together with Ralph Macchio who, in turn, resumes the role of his now double Daniel Larusso. But the difference with precisely with Cobra Kaiin which the actor has taken part in these years, there is entirely. Started in 2018 and went to sink where many films of the eighties stopped on the surface, the series investigated the reasons and character of the original villain of the actor William Zabka, The legendary Johnny Lawrenceworking on psychology, but never weighing in a product that seemed to keep an authentic love for the saga created by the screenwriter Robert Mark Kamen alive.

That the show has made pindaric flights and has not been able to keep anchored to some plausibility is only another sign that you don’t have to pull the rope too much, which is what it is clear looking at Karate Kid: Legends. Returning to fifteen years after the fifth chapter, the film seems to grasp from first the need to remove the story from the past in order to be able to walk in the present with his own legs. With a story that also manages to overturn its terms, with the young Chinese protagonist Li Fong, played by Ben Wang IIwho becomes a teacher for the Boxer Victor of the actor as a pupil Joshua Jacksoncontinuing in the wake of the mixture of the arts of combat that had previously melted karate with the kung-fu and which Legends It adds the boxing. But it is precisely when the film is asked not to move away from one’s tradition that everything goes apart.

Karate Kid: Legendsonly yet another sequel

The lightness of Karate Kid: Legends He soon becomes the excuse to random his historical characters – although Jackie Chan is more iconic in himself than for the saga – without there being an effective need. With the forced plot to make sure that there are, complete with Mr. Han (Chan) who goes to Russo to ask him a hand, while not presenting a real reason why man should accept. “You will do it,” says Signor Han convinced. And so it will happen, not reserving the public – and probably to Daniel Larusso himself – No valid reason for his choice. And here he is the “content”: a saga, depleted of the lifeblood, in which main characters are inserted that soon become secondary when the only ones who really count, since they are those who know and want, return to cover their old roles.

A film therefore made because you still do not want to detach the plug; a remaining attached to phenomena that have ensured fame at the time hoping that this is repeated. Sometimes, in fact, it works: in addition to the success of Cobra Kai, The Karate Kid In 2010 he also brought home discrete reviews and a collection of 359 million all over the world against a 40 million dollar budget. But there was at least the intention to re-start a universe, to rand up to the ground and then build something, in its own way, different. Karate Kid: Legendson the other hand, it is nothing more than the most predictable New York as possible, with the story of the most superficial redemption as possible, with the resolutions in the narration by far less, among all, possible. A production that tried to enter the wake of Cobra Kai – while not really inserting Cobra Kai – However, not having the courage to do something equally radical as it was at the beginning for the show, indeed, restoring the most classic of the dynamics and substantially dividing the characters Between the usual good and the usual evil. A highly bewildered product, and not like the exercises of Maestro Miyagi who seem to lead to nothing when, on the other hand, they are essential. Only the umpteenth film to pull a long saga. Only yet another “content”. Only yet another sequel.