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In Theaters Now
- 2025
- PG-13
- Columbia Pictures
- 1 h 58 m
- 2025
- PG-13
- Columbia Pictures
- 1 h 58 m
Summary After a family tragedy, kung fu prodigy Li Fong (Ben Wang) is uprooted from his home in Beijing and forced to move to New York City with his mother. Li struggles to let go of his past as he tries to fit in with his new classmates, and although he doesn't want to fight, trouble seems to find him everywhere. When a new friend needs his hel...
Directed By: Jonathan Entwistle
Written By: Rob Lieber, Robert Mark Kamen
In Theaters Now
- 2025
- PG-13
- Columbia Pictures
- 1 h 58 m
- 2025
- PG-13
- Columbia Pictures
- 1 h 58 m
Karate Kid: Legends
51
5.8
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Summary After a family tragedy, kung fu prodigy Li Fong (Ben Wang) is uprooted from his home in Beijing and forced to move to New York City with his mother. Li struggles to let go of his past as he tries to fit in with his new classmates, and although he doesn't want to fight, trouble seems to find him everywhere. When a new friend needs his hel...
Directed By: Jonathan Entwistle
Written By: Rob Lieber, Robert Mark Kamen
Where to Watch
Not available in your country?
ExpressVPN
Get 3 Extra months free
$6.67/mth
Top Cast
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 36 Critic Reviews
51
33% Positive
12 Reviews
12 Reviews
53% Mixed
19 Reviews
19 Reviews
14% Negative
5 Reviews
5 Reviews
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 36 Critic Reviews
51
33% Positive
12 Reviews
12 Reviews
53% Mixed
19 Reviews
19 Reviews
14% Negative
5 Reviews
5 Reviews
It’s warm, it’s breezy – it’s a burst of summery family fun that is sure to inspire long looks back at the old movies and Cobra Kai episodes while sparking renewed interest in martial arts apprenticeship. Anyone would get a kick out of it.
By Andrew Lawrence
FULL REVIEW
Karate Kids: Legends is a classic story reimagined for the TikTok generation. Ben Wang is a fantastic lead, while Jackie Chan and Ralph Macchio have fantastic chemistry – if only they had more screentime. One of the better installments in this mixed franchise.
By Jack Shepherd
FULL REVIEW
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 41 User Ratings
5.8
49% Positive
20 Ratings
20 Ratings
32% Mixed
13 Ratings
13 Ratings
20% Negative
8 Ratings
8 Ratings
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 41 User Ratings
5.8
49% Positive
20 Ratings
20 Ratings
32% Mixed
13 Ratings
13 Ratings
20% Negative
8 Ratings
8 Ratings
In Karate Kid: Legends we see Ralph's character returning to New York after being sought out and found in the place he first encountered Mr. Miyagi tending to his bonsai trees, and the beautiful relationship that formed between a boy with no friends in a place that was unforgivingly tormenting toward him and how that boy has become the man Mr. Miyagi always knew he could be.More to this is how, despite life being difficult, Jackie's character gives the same energy in responses that Mr. Miyagi himself would have given, and trusts that Ralph will show up because of the respect and admiration he still has for a man who taught him everything about being a good man himself.Five stars across the board - one of the best movies I've seen this year.
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[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]
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The secret weapon, though, is dimpled star Ben Wang, the 25-year-old lead in the Disney+ series American Born Chinese.
Weirdly it's because it is so damned hokey that parts of the movie are agreeable. One can't help but laugh. That, plus the lead performer, Ben Wang as Li Fong, is extremely likable. He gives a terrific performance, even if you've seen every beat before.
Even at a mercifully short 94 minutes, this movie is exhausting. That would be fine if it weren’t also overly sincere, familiar, and dull.
This new instalment knows which story beats to hit, but it has little grasp of the emotional undercurrents that made the original resonate — how it touched on adolescent insecurities, first love, and the scourge of school bullies.
Legends is the latest in a long line of terrible “Karate Kid” movies. A passing of the torch, such as it is, to the next inferior rip-off.
The Karate Kid (1984): 9/10
The Karate Kid Part II: 8/10
The Karate Kid Part III: 7/10
The Next Karate Kid: 6/10
The Karate Kid (2010): 6/10
Cobra Kai: 9/10
Karate Kid: Legends:
Pros: Li is an extremely talented martial artist. The story has lots of heart. The cinematography and lighting are gorgeous. It’s always a lot of fun to see LaRusso again. The one scene we get with Johnny is the funniest of the entire movie and made the entire theater crack up. Daniel arguing with Johnny like Woody and Buzz Lightyear is when this franchise is at its best. But we only get 2 minutes of that.
Cons: The same story structure AGAIN! A kid moves to a new place, gets bullied by the ex boyfriend of his new girlfriend and needs to defeat him in a Karate Tournament. It doesn’t move the over arching story forward like Cobra Kai does and rehashes an old idea thats been done multiple times already. However, it doesn’t move the do the same idea with a very new and fresh approach.
8/10
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Karate Kid: Legends (2025) is so fast-paced (runtime 94 minutes) that it takes little time to pause for all-important character and plot development. Sure, there’s plenty of well-choreographed martial arts scenes and fighting sequences, but it’s simply not enough to save this film from its rehashed storylines or from falling into its own plot holes. Legends, the sixth installment in the Karate Kid film universe, struggles from the start as it borrows its initial premise from both the first film in the series and the 2010 reboot: The mom moves far away from home and brings a son with her to a new place. The boy meets a girl. The girl has a jealous boyfriend who knows karate. The boy gets beat up by the neighborhood tough guy, Conor Day (Aramis Knight), and then seeks out a karate master to train him to later face off against Conor a second time in a karate tournament. Sound familiar? It was the plot for both the 1984 original and 2010 Karate Kid films, and it’s back again for a third time with Legends.This film’s protagonist, karate protege Li Fong (Ben Wang), gets two senseis for the price of one, as Mr. Han (Jackie Chan) from the 2010 reboot joins the original Karate Kid, Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio), to train Li to face Conor. We know virtually nothing about Conor from the start, and, by the film’s end, we’re left just as clueless. The Legends writers didn’t bother to explore even the shallowest depths of Conor’s character, such as his backstory, his motivations, his family life, his personal struggles — anything that might shed light on his jealousy and anger, and give moviegoers a glimpse into his world. That lack of character development makes him a poor antagonist, one whom moviegoers simply can’t hate as much as the writers wish they would. The whole purpose behind bringing Han and LaRusso together was to broaden Li’s martial arts knowledge and skills beyond the Kung Fu that Li had learned from Han in Beijing. Yet, come training time, we see Han take the primary lead, even though it’s LaRusso’s style, Miyagi-Do Karate, we’re led to believe is what Li most needs to add to his arsenal to compete with Conor at the tournament. LaRusso’s main contribution is showing Li how he could counter to the leg following an aerial Kung Fu move that had failed in an earlier skirmish with Conor. And, just like that, we all knew exactly how the tournament would end. Despite plot holes, lack of character development, obvious foreshadowing and recycled plot lines, Karate Kid: Legends will still win over some audiences, especially those unfamiliar with the 1984 original and the 2010 reboot. For most older folks, Legends will be a tired retelling of the original classic, minus a lot of the well-developed characters like that of the original film’s antagonist, Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka), who managed to parlay his true bad boy image into similar heel roles in other films — and whose depth of character was so ripe for the picking that it was explored in great detail decades later in the Karate Kid spinoff series Cobra Kai.
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The first half had so much promise. It features a kid who is already proficient in martial arts, unlike previous entries, and introduces a fresh storyline involving the training of a boxer. There's even an awesome Jackie Chan inspired action scene. It was great!But then it threw all of that away and reverted to the same story we've already seen multiple times in this franchise, only this time, it was rushed and worse. Ralph Macchio is underutilized and seems to be included solely for crossover appeal. He contributes little to the **** least Ben Wang is fantastic, and I’d love to see more of him!
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'Karate Kid: Legends' is a poor attempt to unite the worlds that comprise this cinematic universe and revive the essence of the '80s classic. Basically, it's a long-winded episode of a teen series with bland characters who change their minds almost immediately. Despite its short runtime, it wastes too much time on irrelevant subplots and trying to revive nostalgia. Macchio's appearance as Daniel-san is awful. Some good kung fu/karate moves catch the eye, but the uneven cinematography makes them hard to appreciate.
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"Karate Kid: Legends" felt forced, unnatural and wooden... This nostalgia bait movie comes jam-packed with: A rushed script, a cast with little to no synergy, a predictable protagonist, weak antagonists and irritating editing. While the movie does have an admittedly intriguing first half that SEEMS to set the main cast into their proper positions in the narrative, the second half unfortunately fumbles its own premise and devolves into a rushed mess with weird flashy editing… It almost felt like the first half of the movie was written as a regular film and the second half was written with the TikTok crowd in mind...
Aside from the 50/50 split of quality, there isn't a single piece of natural dialog in 100% of this movie. Everyone acts like an NPC in an equally, soullessly made, AAA videogame. While the movie does have some fun fight choreography (Which was also bogged down by the bad editing), it was nowhere near enough to elevate the movie to a meaningful position. With all that said, "Karate Kid: Legends" is a lame and forgettable addition to the "Karate Kid" franchise that maybe shouldn’t have been made at all…
3/10, pretty bad, but still more enjoyable than "The Next Karate Kid"
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Production Company
- Columbia Pictures
- Sunswept Entertainment
- Jerry Weintraub Productions
- TSG Entertainment
Release Date May 30, 2025
Duration 1 h 58 m
Rating PG-13
Tagline When masters unite a new legacy begins.
Website
https://www.karatekid.movie