First, go and watch this trailer for the new Karate Kid movie staring Jacki Chan and Wil Smith’s talented son Jaden.
If this weren’t being billed as The Karate Kid, I don’t think it would be that bad.
My problem is that, once again, we’ve taken everything except the most very basic story idea (kid learns martial arts from an older dude who really knows what he’s talking about so kid can not get beat all to hell in school) and some names and thrown it out the window. That leaves us with a very generic plot which can be gussied up in any way possible. There are a dozen (or more) movies with similar enough plots that this film (if you change out Miyagi’s name) could be a remake of.
They’ve obviously gone with The Karate Kid to capitalize on the name recognition and probably the strong emotional connection many of us from Generation X have with the story.
But the story–the details that made it really important and easy to relate to for those of us who saw it in the 80s–are pretty much all gone.
First, our protagonist is 11 years old. That leaves me wondering who the target market for this film is. In the original, Daniel was in high school–eager to get his first car and get a date. Here, from the trailer, it looks like we’re dealing with a situation firmly rooted in just plain old bullying. Why do you want to learn that stuff? So I don’t get beat up. Why don’t you want to get beat up? Because it sucks. It doesn’t get any more basic than that, but being that basic removes more than a little of the drama from it all.
I’m betting it’s going to be more a mother-son dynamic than the original. Heck, it has to be. The kid’s freakin’ 11, not much romantic involvement that you get into there.
We know Jackie Chan knows his stuff, but I’m curious if the bulk of this film is going to be some sort of “love letter” to the wonders of China. Chan’s been talking up the Chinese party line a bit more of late, so it wouldn’t surprise me. I’m going to be very interested to see what kind of backstory gets used for his updated sensei.
And we’ll attempt to completely ignore that this is set in China and karate is Japanese in origin. Of course, we’ll happily continue to ignore that what your young hero is being taught is kung fu (which is Chinese), just like in the original.
Will I see it? Maybe. But it’s not high on my list. The original may just hold too high a place in my personal list of movies that made a difference for me. Mostly, though, I don’t think the writing will be able to make the film as strong as it could be.
Maybe future trailers will prove me wrong and change my mind. (I really hope they do, actually.)
How do you feel about this film, based on that trailer?
Leave a Reply