The original The Karate Kid is a synecdoche of the 80s; one that combines the underdog, underprivileged, middle-class Daniel Larusso (Ralph Macchio) – replete with brown hair, brown eyes and a New York accent that casts him as an outsider on the blonde-haired-blue-eyed-laden beaches of Beverly Hills and its affluent residents, including bad-boy Johnny Lawrence, which admittedly just sounds like a badass name. All of this is interspersed with a handful of love and training montages, complete with Joe Esposito’s silky-voiced-ballad declaring “you’re the best…a-round / nothins ever gonna keep ya down / yur the best aaaroooouuuund!”
Like most films from the eighties, this one has a moral message. And, like most eighties films, it tackles the theme of the outsider declaring the need for ubiquitous benevolence – but, after physically beating someone from a different culture, ethnicity, race, or social class. For further examples of these, please see Red Dawn, Footloose, Flashdance, Rocky, Rocky II, Rocky III, Rocky IV (Rocky V was released in 1990, so it rejects the need to further this trope; instead, Rocky beats the hell out of a smartass punk who has AIDS.) The Karate Kid’s message is two-fold. One, anyone can attain victory by staying focused and kicking some ass. Two, the elderly aren’t as useless as they seem. As a note, this last assertion is neither a joke nor an allusion to Dumb and Dumber. The original tagline for The Karate Kid is “Only the ‘Old One’ could teach him the secrets of the masters.”
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Despite all of the eighties facets crammed into one film that also includes an improbable finishing move in the Crane Technique (really, Johnny just had to wait one extra second, wait for Daniel to land and then punch him square in the chest), The Karate Kid has a charm built on decent acting by Macchio, Elisabeth Shue, and Pat Morita (who, incidentally, was nominated for an Oscar for his role as Mr. Miyagi) as well as a decent story that traverses a wide range of ages insofar as Daniel, Ali Mills (Shue) and Johnny (William Zabka) are supposed to be 16- to 17-year-old students in high school, but the actors and actress are 23, 21 and 20, respectively, which allows adults to visually associate more with the characters because they are built like adults, not pubescent teens with acne and squeaky voices. If one were to cross-breed Saved by the Bell and The Karate Kid, it would probably be difficult to coerce an adult into watching the original without a child present. At the same time, the eighties mantra of butt-kicking teenagers clearly draws pre-pubescent teenagers as well as older teens into the film’s venture.
And, this is where 2010’s The Karate Kid differs. While nostalgia and the lack of having children prevent me from seeing this movie in the theaters, the previews are rather telling. Thus far, the reviews of the film have been pretty decent, and I’m actually not against a remake given that the newest version has been released 26 years after the original. After facing the hurdles that I’m getting old and on my path to true curmudgeonary, I brushed them off and focused on the trailer. In fact, I saw it at three different theaters, and there’s something just a touch wonky about the introduction of Mr. Han (formerly Miyagi) and the disparity between the overall charm displayed by the original.
First off, the main character Dre is played by Jaden Smith, son of Will Smith, a worshipper of Lord Emperor Zod, funding partner of a cult that is destined to end in castration or with the rest of us decreeing “Huh. Did not see that coming.” I have nothing against Jayden Smith, but his inclusion in this film follows what I like to call “Harry Potter Logic” – or, the creation of young adult characters who serve as magnetic vehicles that draws in similar young adult viewers and carry them along in subsequent novels and films as the young adult protagonists mature into teenage protagonists and then to an adult protagonists. Really, it’s genius, but one of the primary reasons why the majority of contemporary films should be DVRed for those spontaneous moments of boredom and nothing more.
Secondly, and most closely related to the wonkiness of Mr. Han is that the actors in 2010’s The Karate Kid are all 12-year-olds playing 12-year-olds. Because older actors were cast in the original, it doesn’t seem curious that Mr. Miyagi scales a chain-link fence to defend Daniel and completely pummels the five Johnny-led attackers, leaving them writhing and moaning on the ground while he helps Daniel back to the apartment complex. Appropriately, it doesn’t seem strange because Pat Morita stood about 5’3″ and was towered over by the taller, more muscular, 20-something-year-old actors, so we see (literally and figuratively) Mr. Miyagi as an underdog and at a disadvantage.
However, this connection with the old-man-underdog cannot be present in the newest version. Initially, the trailer seems rather faithful to the original with the exception of Mr. Han using a flyswatter as opposed to chopsticks — which elides the “true masters never lose focus” mantra of the original version — but then veers to the absurd when Dre is jumped by a number of Chinese students, only to be rescued by Mr. Han, who proceeds to take care of the gang and rescue Dre. The difference here is that the 12-year-old actors playing 12-year-olds look like 12-year-olds being jumped by Jackie Chan. While the original gives us a short, rather squat Mr. Miyagi facing a group of muscular, older males, the remake gives us Mr. Han, who has a good 12-inch height advantage on each of his opponents. While this was funny in Seinfeld when Kramer succumbed to his classmates’ “tiny fists of fury,” it reads as a bit creepier in the updated Karate Kid.
I’m half expecting the inevitable sequel to contain Walter Sobchak wandering through Beijing expositing, “Twelve-year-olds, Dude” prior to finding a toe before four o’clock.
What’s also a bit curious about this newer version is that the young protagonist’s ability to learn Kung Fu at such an exponential rate mocks the Chinese culture and the practice of Kung Fu, a martial art form inspired by Chinese philosophies, traditions, and legends. For Dre to be able to acquire these skills and physically – and evidently spiritually – match with students who have grown up with this practice as a way of life, minimizes the philosophical essence of Kung Fu. I don’t think the same thing can be said for the original Karate Kid inasmuch as Daniel was the only student learning from an experienced karate master in Mr. Miyagi. The Cobras were led and instructed by John Kreese (Martin Kove), a former Colonel in the United States Army. While he comes off as quite an adequate soldier, he is just that, a soldier and one who didn’t spend his youth in a country that cherished the significance of the martial arts.
If, on the off chance, China screens the new version of The Karate Kid and an international skirmish wells up because of it, I would like the 1.4 billion conscripted soldiers to read this post.
