‘Karate Kid: Legends’ Doesn’t Just Fail ‘Cobra Kai’; It Also Fails the Jaden Smith Movie

While its 91% fresh Rotten Tomatoes audience score indicates a hit among fans of the long-running Karate Kid franchise, the recently-released Karate Kid: Legends has still seen a storm of controversy blowing its way due to its treatment of fan-favorite streaming series, Cobra Kai. The new film, which features no involvement from any of Cobra Kai‘s creative team, largely ignores the Netflix series, only containing a couple of small nods to the show, with the biggest nod to the series coming in the form of Karate Kid: Legends‘ pre-credits scene. However, even more mistreated than that of Cobra Kai is 2010’s The Karate Kid starring Jaden Smith, a film that, while now officially considered canon, goes almost completely ignored in Karate Kid: Legends.

Also starring the incomparable Jackie Chan, who reprises his role of Mr. Han in Legends, the 2010 Karate Kid remake followed Jaden Smith’s Dre Parker, a kid who is uprooted from his home in Detroit to Beijing, China by his mother, Sherry (Taraji P. Henson). Following a similar formula as the original 1984 Karate Kid film, Dre doesn’t fit into his new home until he meets Chan’s Mr. Han, a tortured kung-fu master who takes Dre under his wing and trains him in the ways of the coveted martial art. The film was a slightly bloated yet heartwarming and well-crafted remake that respects the original while paving its own path, to the point where the film has been brought into the official Karate Kid canon with Legends, as mentioned previously. Despite this, Legends does very little to validate the film’s existence, to the dismay of fans of the 2010 film.

‘Karate Kid: Legends’ Features a New Mr. Han and Completely Ignores Dre Parker

While Jackie Chan may return as Mr. Han in Karate Kid: Legends, it’s not exactly the same Mr. Han fans are familiar with. Rather than the flawed, delicate master presented to audiences in the 2010 Karate Kid film, Mr. Han, this time around, is a far more light-hearted, bubbly teacher with seemingly none of the defining traits of the original character. While Chan is always a delight no matter the context of his character, he doesn’t feel as though he’s playing a character so much as he’s just playing a version of himself, which feels like a betrayal to the complex, beautifully written character fans have already come to know and love.

And what’s even more of a betrayal is the complete dismissal of the protagonist, Dre Parker. While it was never likely that Jaden Smith would appear in Karate Kid: Legends, the film almost goes out of its way to not reference the character’s existence in the slightest, despite Legends featuring select scenes set in Beijing, as well as a line calling back to the famous jacket training technique which Mr. Han used on Dre in the 2010 film. It’s an odd choice considering Jackie Chan’s involvement, and a disappointment to say the least.

The Events of the 2010 ‘Karate Kid’ Aren’t Referenced in ‘Legends’

Image via Sony Pictures Releasing

The Karate Kid canon has always been a tad confusing when considering the inclusion of 1994’s Hilary Swank-starring The Next Karate Kid, not to mention Cobra Kai. But while Karate Kid: Legends makes an overt effort to connect the 2010 film to the overarching Karate Kid timeline, it almost feels like a moot point considering the film’s ignorance of the events of the Jaden Smith movie. While it’s understandable that Sony would want Karate Kid: Legends to be a standalone entry, the choice to completely ignore the events of the 2010 film is a puzzling one, to say the least.

This choice is most evident when it comes to how the film portrays Mr. Han. Considering how much of a positive influence Dre Parker was on Mr. Han, bringing him out of his depressive slump and helping him reckon with his guilt and learn to love life and kung-fu once more, the version of Mr. Han we meet in Karate Kid: Legends seems so far detached from the person he was portrayed as previously. Mr. Han never acknowledges his past or the events which led to him becoming Shifu, as we see at the beginning of Legends, which is perhaps the most damning aspect of his character in Karate Kid: Legends, as well as the film’s mistreatment of the 2010 remake as a whole.