Ever since the mid-‘80s, The Karate Kid films have been bringing martial arts brawls to mainstream cinema – predominantly (you guessed it!) karate in the original outings, and kung fu in 2010’s The Karate Kid reboot. Now, those streams are set to be crossed in Karate Kid: Legends, a film that draws from the ’84 film and the 2010 instalment, telling the story of Ben Wang’s Li Fong, who trained in kung fu under Jackie Chan’s Mr. Han, and now faces karate mentorship from Ralph Macchio’s Daniel LaRusso. And while Chan is quite literally in the movie, the spirit of his cinematic legacy will be felt elsewhere in the film too.
As director Jonathan Entwistle tells Empire, Chan’s legendary martial arts movies are a major influence on the action in Legends. “Ben was fully training every day with the Chinese stunt team. He knew that I wanted the martial arts in the movie to feel like an early Jackie Chan film, and that’s something we tried really hard to do,” the filmmaker tells Empire. “We used a lot of classic Hong Kong wire-work.”
That meant including the true hallmark of Jackie Chan action: making the most of the environment, building in comedic beats using anything in arm’s reach. “There’s a humour to the way the choreography unfolds,” Entwistle explains. “Something that Jackie — and the team — taught us was, ‘What’s the narrative for the fight? Does he pick up a thing off the floor and use that?’ We’re so used to seeing fights done in a certain way, VFX-heavy fight augmentation, the Marvel style of fighting. It was important for me to bring back an in-camera martial-arts approach.” You never know – if there’s any car wax in the vicinity, someone might literally get waxed on, waxed off. Stay tuned.