2025’s Karate Kid: Legends can’t do anything for the one lingering issue of 2010’s The Karate Kid, but it can pull some cheeky humor from the latter’s place in The Karate Kid franchise. Karate Kid: Legends takes place some time after the upcoming finale of Netflix’s Cobra Kai, with Ralph Macchio’s Daniel LaRusso meeting Mr. Miyagi’s old friend, Mr. Han (Jackie Chan), to jointly train his young student Li (Ben Wang). In setting up Daniel and Mr. Han as allies, Karate Kid: Legends also retcons the 2010 Karate Kid movie into the main Karate Kid franchise.
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While that continuity leap is an exciting one with Jackie Chan being brought into the primary Karate Kid franchise on the heels of Cobra Kai‘s finale, it also creates a reminder of the headache with the title of 2010’s The Karate Kid. Nonetheless, the trade-off of that switch is the fourth-wall-breaking fun it can have with Jackie Chan’s Mr. Han being retconned as Daniel’s ally in Karate Kid: Legends.
The Karate Kid 2010 Was Originally a Remake With Kung Fu
The Jackie Chan/Jaden Smith-led Karate Kid followed the same overall story as its 1984 predecessor, with the remake set in China and with kung fu as the martial art the film was built upon. This obviously created a glaring lack of symmetry between the title and the martial arts content of what was otherwise a very worthy modernization of The Karate Kid story. To be fair, the movie was released in China with the title of “The Kung Fu Dream,” and the retention of the original title was likely for marketing purposes to emphasize its lineage from the 1984 Karate Kid.
Nonetheless, the fact that a movie called The Karate Kid didn’t line up its title to correspond to its kung fu-based story has always been the 2010’s films most irksome flaw. Moreover, the title of The Karate Kid remake being identical to the original also placed it within the annoying 21st-century trend of remakes, reboots, and in some cases even sequels carrying the same title as the first entry in a franchise (think 2021’s Mortal Kombat or 2022’s Scream.) Of course, however annoying the title issue might have been for The Karate Kid remake, it was never a deal breaker on the movie’s quality. With that said, the movie is joining the main Karate Kid franchise too late to remedy that.
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Karate Kid: Legends Can’t Retcon the Remake’s Title Issue
The new status of The Karate Kid remake as the fifth movie in the core Karate Kid franchise presents many exciting possibilities, not the least of which being the team-up of Daniel LaRusso and Mr. Han as a cross-generational bridge between Karate Kid movies and audiences. However, with hindsight being 20/20, it’s not hard to imagine that the makers of 2010’s The Karate Kid and Karate Kid: Legends alike wish that the former had been titled The Kung Fu Kid from the start.
Titling The Karate Kid remake as The Kung Fu Kid at the time would have properly aligned its title and martial arts content, and also positioned it as having a closer relationship to the rest of The Karate Kid series, while focusing on a different martial art. Moreover, Karate Kid: Legends could have also mutually benefitted from The Kung Fu Kid being the title of the 2010 movie with the decision to retcon the Jackie Chan martial arts drama into the main series.
Even if The Kung Fu Kid had still been positioned as a Karate Kid remake at the time, its retroactive entry into The Karate Kid universe could have happened without an eye-rolling title issue that is the one retcon that Karate Kid: Legends cannot facilitate. With that said, the fact that The Karate Kid 2010 was once a remake of the 1984 Karate Kid does create an opening for some amusing levity in Karate Kid: Legends.
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Both the 1984 and 2010 Karate Kid movies follow essentially the same plot of a young kid moving with his mother to a new location, encountering bullies from a local martial arts school, studying martial arts under a more peaceful mentor, and facing and defeating his tormentors at a major martial arts tournament. At the time, it made sense for 2010’s The Karate Kid to use the same overall story beats of its 1984 predecessor, since it was conceived and presented as a remake. However, after being retconned into being the fifth movie of The Karate Kid franchise, Daniel LaRusso and the 2010 movie’s protagonist Dre Parker (Jaden Smith) having experienced essentially the same series of events 26 years and thousands of miles apart from each other reads like a cosmically unlikely coincidence.
Nonetheless, Karate Kid: Legends can mine some humor from that when Daniel and Mr. Han meet and share stories in their respective relationships with Mr. Miyagi. By having Daniel impart the basic plot of 1984’s The Karate Kid as his meeting of Mr. Miyagi, Mr. Han can express an incredulous shock at hearing it, and offer commentary of the “Yeah, I had a student who went through exactly what you did!” variety. In all, Karate Kid: Legends promises a thrilling martial arts adventure and team-up of two of The Karate Kid franchises wisest martial artists. Though Mr. Han’s movie is stuck with its original title, Karate Kid: Legends can at least play with the remake’s retcon as a switch into a wildly implausible parallel of two martial artists training stories within the same franchise.
Cobra Kai Season 6, Part 3 arrives on Netflix on February 13, 2025, and Karate Kid: Legends will be released in theaters on May 20, 2025.
