Film Review - Karate Kid Legends (2025)

Karate Kid Legends is the newest Karate Kid film and this time concerns Li Fong (Ben Wang) who moves from Beijing to New York with his mother (Ming-Na Wen) as she has taken a job at a New York hospital but one night he comes afowl of Conor (Aramis Knight) and though he has promised not to fight in NYC the cry of the warrior comes calling and he needs masters old and new to help him (Jackie Chan and Ralph Macchio.)

Karate Kid Legends is a movie that I enjoyed more than I thought I would and firstly that comes down to the cast, Wang is a good young lead and he handles himself very well in both the martial arts scenes and playing against veterans like Chan, Macchio and Joshua Jackson who plays the head of a local pizza shop and he is a lot of fun in this movie as well and I also liked Sadie Stanley as Mia who befriends Li and Wyatt Oleff as Alan who becomes Li’s tutor in school.

As for Jackie Chan and Ralph Macchio both are fun to watch as well and have good chemistry together as well and I swear to god Ralph Macchio has found the location of the Fountain of Youth and is refusing to tell anyone so he can drink from it for all eternity because that man does not look like he has aged a day over 40 (and he was in his early 20s when he first played Daniel-san in the original movie and he looked like a teenager.)

And secondly the film has some good martial arts fight scenes in it as well even if at times they go by a little too quickly be it in their editing or as part of various montages throughout the film though the final climactic fight was cool to watch.

Where this movie does fall down is its villains as Conor and the Demolition Gym not only feel like a poor copy of the Cobra Kai school from the first movie but their being a MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) school is a huge missed opportunity given the popularity of MMA nowadays and it would’ve made for a great contrast between the new MMA style and the old Miyagi-san Karate/Kung Fu style but instead it isn’t touched upon at all and it is a real shame.

And so that was Karate Kid Legends and sadly it is a mixed bag as it has some good fights and a good cast but it doesn’t develop its villains enough to make this a memorable new entry in the series, 2 and a half out of 5.