The Karate Kid Movie Blurb by Shale June 11, 2010 Movie Sensei Shale says, Focus. Be in the moment - Now! Do not be distracted by Ralph Macchio or Pat Morita. If you can stay focused on this movie, or have never seen the 1984 original, you will likely enjoy it. That is the problem with re-making an old classic, everyone will be busy comparing the two movies. Until a few weeks ago, I was probably the only person on the planet who had not seen The Karate Kid 1984. Don't know what I was doing that year but didn't see it until recently. Of the two I prefer the old one for many reasons, but the version I saw today was also quite an enjoyable movie, despite the fact that school has let out and the matinee of this PG rated movie was crammed with kids. The movie has all the plot elements of the first but the setting is different and the main character considerably younger. Instead of traveling cross-country, 12-year-old Dre Parker (11-year-old Jaden Smith) is traveling to China where his mother Sherry (Taraji Henson) found a job after losing hers in Detroit. Dre is not happy with the move into a strange culture, but does find other displaced American kids in his apartment building and meets a cute Chinese girl Meiying (Wenwen Han) in the playground who piques his pre-adolescent attention. Meiying & Dre on a Puppy Date He also meets Chen (Zhenwei Wang) a school bully who uses Karate to pretty much clean up the pavement with Dre. Dre Dealing with the Karate Bullies After getting beat up by six of the bullies he is rescued by the apartment building maintenance man Mr. Han (Jackie Chan) who reluctantly agrees to teach him Karate after making a deal with the maladjusted Karate School Sensei to get his kids to lay off Dre until he is ready to meet them in the competition a month later. The rest of the movie is Dre learning discipline from Mr. Han. (Instead of "wax on - wax off" it is "jacket on - jacket off - hang up jacket.") After that discipline Han and Dre go into real Karate drills, visiting many sites in China until he is ready for the competition. Mr. Han Teaches Dre Karate on the Great Wall Don't want to ruin it for anyone who has not seen either film, but Mr. Han has a tragic backstory and Dre helps his master get thru that. The competition happens and well, you know the rest - or you don't so I won't tell more. Dre with injured leg gets ready for "The Kick" I liked this movie as free standing. Jaden Smith is a cute boy and there are cute pre-pubescent moments like the boy bravado and checking out his skinny physique in a mirror. Anyone who raised boys have seen this. Also his puppy-love scenes with Wenwen Han were cute but not as enjoyable as the teen love scenes between Ralph Macchio and Elisabeth Shue (both actually in their early twenties in that movie). But it is a PG movie and the kids seemed to enjoy it today. I even got a bit choked up with a couple of scenes showing the good guy defeating the bad guys thru proper training, focus and perseverance. A feel-good movie just like the one a quarter century past.
You are right I might have liked it way more , if I hadnt seen the original, but it was one of my favorites of my older brother, so I have seen the original many times. and I still think it is much better. Maybe I am biased, but hey. It still was an decent movie, the new one I mean.
I just got done watching the original again tonight. I really enjoyed that one much more. There was so much detail to copying all of that films little elements into the new one, from the move that the mother is making seem so good, to the kid hiding his black eye from his mother. I think the only problem was having someone so young in the lead. It is as good a movie as the first one, but becomes a different focus when your main characters go from upper adolescence to pre adolescence. IDK what the Japanese says but I like this poster
Yeah I have to agree with the age difference in the kids, I think the new one would have been much better if they had the same age group for the new movie. the old one is so good. I could watch it again right now, and still love it!
I am sorry if this seems obvious but the major issue i had with the new movie is that being a remake they completely stripped any karate, and the Japanese theme out of it and replaced it with Chinese and Kung fu. His mother actually asks him @ one point in the movie if they are learning karate, which is Japanese, but he explicitly says no they are learning Kung fu, which of course is Chinese. I just noticed that in your post you were calling it Karate bullies and learns karate, when in fact they took out all of the karate and japan if you will and replaced it with china and Kung fu.
You say tomato and I say jitomate. Does that make the fruit different? I was just going along with the titular term "Karate." Most ppl don't know the fine language differences of Chinese or Japanese martial arts. Coulda been Jiu Jitsu as far as I know. Maybe the movie should have been called The Kung Fu Kid. Woulda cleared up a lot. BTW Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting In my blurb I mentioned knowing the antics of skinny pre-adolescent boys, checking out their muscles in the mirror and their preoccupation with martial arts. When I was about 34 in New Orleans, I ended up being a foster father to Gerald an 11-year-old boy for about half a year. Shale & Gerald - New Orleans - 1979 I think it was a growing experience for both of us. He learned a lot outside of his Desire Project environment and I learned to get up and cook breakfast, send the kid off to school, fix supper, help with homework, go shopping downtown for clothes. Gerald, at home in New Orleans in 1979 (Different Strokes playing on the TV) And I learned to sit thru some of the most horrendous Kung Fu movies out of Hong Kong, which the boy insisted he had to see and which he was too young to attend on his own. (A couple times I was challenged at the box office if I really was his guardian - but this was New Orleans, who really cared?) These were the real Chinese language movies, usually dubbed in English so the mouths didn't move the same as the dialogue. I may have actually seen the famous Bruce Lee on screen or maybe even Fearless Hyena, directed and acted by Jackie Chan in 1979. I wasn't really into the art form, but sat thru them as Gerald was mesmerized by them.
I'm getting ready to go see the movie in a little while. Thanks to my silly head I do not have much memory of the original movie. Seeing this one will be new to me so I am looking forward to it. I didn't realize there was a difference in location. Interesting. Also, interesting story and pictures. Love your stories.
A review I read made the interesting observation that changes in the movie from 1984 reflect changes in different world power relationships. In 1984 one could still see California as the promised land, so that is where the protagonist and his mother moved to get their lives back on track. Now the economic situation in California is nearly as depressing as in Detroit, so the protagonist and his mother move all the way to China, which seems likely to dominate the twenty first century. That explanation made sense to me. China is portrayed in the movie as a beautiful, advanced country where everything works, and everything is done well.
I may see it this week,, but I was hearing some talk about it at karate class.. it gives kids expectations that can not be really accomplished in real life.. no human being has skills like this, while i understand the movie industries ideas of making films to enjoy. The original KK didnt not use any special effects.. Or crouching tiger hidden dragon CGI.... Least thats what ive been told is going on in this movie.. i will have to see it for myself ..
I took karate lessons as a teenager, and you make a good observation. Every martial arts movie I have seen has exaggerated what one can do with marital arts skills. This can be dangerous if one overestimates one's skills, and places oneself in dangerous situations. I actually believed that if I took karate lessons long enough I could defeat an inner city street gang if no one had a gun. Fortunately, I was never foolish enough to think that I could do that at the time. I like mixed martial arts contests, because they provide a testing ground for different martial arts styles and techniques. Much of what I was taught would look good in a staged demonstration, but it would be much less effective in an actual fighting situation.
steven seagal's aikido was real in many of his film but to protect actors from injury you can see the speed of the film change and notice it.. Many times he didnt use extreme special effects to deliver it..
