In the last few years Hollywood has really gotten into remakes. They are all over the place. Not a day goes by that you won’t read about some movie or franchise getting remade or rebooted. It isn’t really hard to see why this is attractive to studios. You don’t have to come up with new ideas and it has a ready made fan base just waiting to plunk down the dollars to see the new iteration on a beloved franchise. A lot of those fans hate the idea of remakes and message boards across the internet are perpetually alight with the flames of protest. Despite this, a lot of those disgruntled fans go just so they can bitch about it later and the ticket receipts rise enough for the studios to continue the practice.

I have never been one of those people who hates remakes and automatically assumes that something is going to suck just because it is a remake. I have even defended them, particularly against the ridiculous battle cry of ‘(insert name of remake) raped my childhood!’ Some remakes turn out decent and others turn out to be Clash of the Titans.

When a remake of something I love from when I was a kid starts production, I generally become cautiously optimistic. I like the original and if something cool can be done with the remake then I am up for it. I was a bit skeptical about the upcoming Fright Night remake, for instance, but the cast they are putting together is making is sound like it could work out. So I am fully prepared to give it a fair shot. So now that I have established all that, that I tend to like remakes and don’t hold my favorites from childhood as sacred cows, I am now going to shit all over the new Karate Kid remake.

Before I go on, for those of you who don’t know what I am talking about, the original Karate Kid (1984) followed the exploits of Daniel Larusso (Ralph Macchio), a teenager from New Jersey who moves with his mother to California where he promptly runs afoul of the local karate bully gang and is taught karate by the Okinawan handyman at his apartment, Mr Miyagi (Pat Morita). This leads to a showdown at a big martial arts tournament where Daniel must defeat bully leader Johnny (William Zabka). The remake seems to follow similar story beats but instead focuses on 12 year old Dre (Jaden Smith) as he moves with his mom to Beijing and runs afoul of his new classmates until he is taught Kung Fu by maintenance man Mr Han (Jackie Chan) and then must compete in a big martial arts tournament.

Obviously, I have not seen the movie so I can’t speak to its overall quality. It may be the best movie of the summer for all I know and in a field like the one have laid out for us this year it wouldn’t  be saying much. If I see the thing and like it, I will come back here and write about how I was wrong, but as it stands I think this is a horrible idea that looks to be executed horribly. There are a few reasons for this so here goes…

Kung Fu and Karate Are Not the Same Thing

So the director says that the reason that it is still called the Karate Kid instead of the Kung Fu Kid is that the bullies at school make fun of Dre by calling him the karate kid given he doesn’t know what he is doing and because, I assume, they feel that karate is inherently inferior to kung fu. Given the beef the Chinese have with the Japanese using it as an insult is probably valid (and it was an insult in the original too as Daniel had his ass handed to him because of his bullshit YMCA karate)  but honestly let’s cut the shit here. It is still called the Karate Kid because people know the name and the branding invokes nostalgia and they hope to use that nostalgia to rope in fans of my generation as well as new fans from the true target audience, children.

Given the similar story beats it seems like they could have gotten away with calling it the Kung Fu Kid anyway. Fans of the original movie are savvy enough to pick up the tie in and new fans won’t give a shit. I think I would be much more inclined to give this movie a chance if it were called the Kung Fu Kid and just made homages to the original film. As it is, I feel like the whole thing is just insulting marketing. That it will be called the Kung Fu Kid in Japan and China supports this notion as well.

For those unfamiliar with martial arts, Kung Fu is collection of Chinese martial arts styles known for their grace and fluidity. Kung fu is  what is referred to as a soft form  and tend toward the ‘bee sting method’ of fighting wherein you show your opponent that you can hit him/her many times and they are better off not fighting you. That is not to say that there is no power in kung fu but generally the aim is not to devastate but rather to make your opponent go away. Karate is a collection of styles which originated in Okinawa and then spread to Japan proper. While the Japanese styles, like Shotokan, are very linear, the original Okinawan styles have a heavy Chinese influence and incorporate circular motions and tend not to follow a straight line even in katas (pre-arranged fight sequences used to train muscle memory).

Even with the Chinese influence, Okinawan karate is a hard form the goal of which is to incapacitate quickly. The movements do not flow as gracefully as kung fu tends to and is more about explosive moves and hard blocks to put your opponent out of commission. So while karate and kung fu have similarities and share a common general origin, they are distinct styles and it does a disservice to the practitioners of each to willfully confuse the two or use one to trade off the other.

Cheap Starring Vehicle Ploy/Inorganic Development

Even given that remakes are generally money driven instead of creativity driven, this remake seems even less like an honest attempt at a good remake and more a way to shoe horn a young actor into a starring role.

As reported by Variety in November 2008, Will Smith was producing the remake and refashioning it as a starring vehicle for his son Jaden. It would borrow elements of the story and characters. That sounded fine at the time although, as I will get to in the next point, I was alarmed by Jaden Smith’s age (12). But then they brought in Jackie Chan to play the eccentric mentor role, presumably because after Pat Morita died they were fresh out of old eccentric Japanese martial arts actors that anyone had ever heard of. I suppose that is fair enough as I can’t say that I would have an easy time imagining Cary-Hioyuki Tagawa teaching anyone to wax on wax off or catch flies in chop sticks. After Chan’s announcement was the first I heard of the action taking place in China. As soon as that happened karate was off the menu and kung fu was the only thing going.

It feels like none of the decisions here were made for anything other than marketing. The star was cast because his dad wanted something for him to act in. The venue was chosen because of the star they could get for the teacher and everything else was shoehorned in from there. Whereas the original Karate Kid was written to highlight karate and what it was all about, this comes from pure commercialism. The cheap excuse for retaining the name when it should clearly be something else is very indicative of this. I don’t know what kind of performance Jaden Smith turns in here but I find it annoying that this exists for no other reason that to give him something to star in and a theme song to sing on.

The Kid is Too Young

Whereas Daniel was a teenager in high school, Dre is 12. I have a hard time with wanting to see little kids fight. I know bullying goes on at that age first hand but when you have kids this young in a movie you aren’t going to be able to have very high stakes just because no one wants to see a 12 year old get his ass kicked over and over.

According to the plot summaries I’ve read, the bully’s pretty much throw him to the ground a lot. That sucks, sure, but the Cobra Kai damn near killed Daniel in the original. I don’t know how much exploration into the darkness of the gang’s teacher there will be here but the dynamic between Johnny and his gang and their Sensei was pretty hardcore. Kreese was a psychopath training his students to be the same and they were capable of a damn sight more than throwing someone to the ground. Without having seen the movie, the impression I get is that there is not going to be the same brutality leveled on Dre and rightly so. I wouldn’t want to see him take the punishment that Daniel did.

The trailers do show Dre doing some impressive kung fu so there may be some quality fight scenes but I am far less compelled watching two kids going at it than teenagers and adults. Having taught karate to children and teenagers, I can attest that sparring between 12 year olds is not particularly exciting. If I see the kids doing really advanced things in the movie it is going to take me right out of it and if they don’t show the kids doing advanced things it will be boring. So I am pretty boned either way.

Speaking of boning, there is the whole half-baked 12 year old romance we are supposed to accept here too. They have retained the element of the original that the gang is going after Dre because he starts seeing a girl. Whether the gang leader called dibs on her or if it is just that he is American I am not sure but the notion we are being asked to accept two 12 year olds having a romance is ridiculous. I have a hard enough time with Justin Bieber singing about women and romance without having to see Jaden Smith mac his way around China. This is one of those elements that really suffers from shoehorning it in to fit Jaden and why it is incompatible with his age.

Haral Zwart

Dude’s last movie was fucking Pink Panther 2. Is there anything else to say?

So again, I don’t know how this movie is and it may turn out to be good but given the above issues I do not have high hopes. It would be nice if the remake had been treated with respect and had been made because someone had something to say instead of just to cash in on a name and give Will Smith’s kid something to star in. It would be nice if many of the elements weren’t completely ridiculous. And it would be nice if they had waited three more years for Jaden to be 15. None of those things happened and I am afraid that it will be another disappointing remake of beloved source material. Of course the original can not be ruined and is readily available for viewing but if this remake doesn’t rape the original it definitely sucker punches it and leaves it in an alley for dead.

While the movie may or may not be a piece of shit, it definitely came from a grip of bad ideas and even worse intentions. I may see it out of morbid curiosity but I doubt very strongly it will be of quality and I am positive I can’t really respect it. This is everything that is wrong with the idea of remakes and it makes me sad that it could have been something really cool if done with the right care and intentions. Oh well. Maybe at the very least it will make this generation of kids interested in kung fu and then some good will come of it anyway.