A thread for people who've SEEN The Karate Kid (2010)

Cafe Society
1

I have, so I count. I just don’t need to hear one more time about how someone’s “beloved” '80’s teen flick was ruined by re-making it, when they haven’t even seen the new version. Or how they’re so sick of a 12-year old boy, based on a trailer :rolleyes:. There are other threads for that. This one is, please, for people who’ve actually SEEN THE MOVIE.

I liked it! It was funny, had a heart, had lots of great Kung Fu, LOTS of great scenery, pretty good acting, a pretty good extended training sequence, a very sweet budding romance, some very moving scenes, and most of all, best of all, it had Jaden Smith.

If people are sick of Jaden Smith they might as well go kill themselves or move to a desert island, because the boy is going to be a HUGE, HUGE, HUGE star. He’s adorable, a decent actor who will only get better, Charisma like you wouldn’t believe, he’s a very hard worker, and in the future, assuming he and his are careful and savvy in picking scripts, he will rise to the stratosphere on his own merits and talents, not because of who his parents are. He’s in almost every scene in the 2 hour 20 minute movie and he carries it effortlessly on his shoulders.

It’s not a perfect movie. Some will complain that it’s too long, and/or that the fight scenes are too muddy to see what’s going on. I can understand that, but it didn’t really matter to me. I enjoyed it. It was sure better than The A-Team, which, IMO, is only worth seeing for Sharlto Copley.

The Karate Kid is worth seeing for many reasons, but one of the biggest is the setting in China, with varied locations, and many of the actors being Chinese instead of vague “Oriental” types. How many modern movies do general film audiences get to see that are set in China? For millions of people, this will be the first one, and it will open their eyes, especially the young generation, to an entirely new culture and people. I hope the film’s a massive hit just for that alone.

Yeah yeah, I kinda wish they’d have changed the name of the movie too, but it is what it is.

2

I thought it was great. It far exceeded my expectations and was extremely enjoyable to watch. People in the theater were applauding at various points throughout the film–especially during the tournament. It was a lot of fun.

Agreed, agreed.

There were some genuinely funny moments that required good comedic timing. It was fabulous to see Jackie Chan in something not stupid for a change – and I’m pretty well convinced he choreographed that first fight scene. That whole segment transported me back in time to classic Jackie, complete with the humor embedded in every sequence. He is really something to behold.

One thing that kind of surprised me is that the mystic B.S. was actually not so much B.S. The master’s lecture to the student concerning still water is very much in line with my experience with Zen Buddhism. So I was all, ‘‘Hey, I know what he’s talking about! That’s not made up!’’

I also feel this film stuck so closely to the Karate Kid tradition – the true villain was the teacher not the student. The emphasis on honor and discipline is a reflection of the values of the franchise as well as a reflection of the core values of a martial artist. (I used to practice Tae Kwon Do, and I had a good teacher, who emphasized these values very strongly.) The way these films have cataloged the process that ones goes through as a practitioner – becoming more disciplined, mature, and aware – is something I think few martial arts films really portray.

And there were times the film seemed more moving than it had any right to be – when Xiao Dre was trying to comfort Mr. Han, for example. That whole wordless sequence where Xiao Dre and his Master struggled to find the stillness within themselves was really powerful to me, probably because, as mentioned above, I get what they were doing there.

There were also little realistic touches I liked – such as the unusual interest of the Chinese in the black people’s hair. That was sort of bold, I thought.

I really don’t know what else to say. This is a good movie. Maybe little Jaden Smith’s parents bought it for him, but it doesn’t really matter. It was well-produced, well-written, well-acted, well-choreographed and well-directed. I think it deserves the hype it has received, and young Smith deserves credit for his good performance.

3

A completely adequate movie in its own right. I enjoyed it.

4

I just watched the original Karate Kid film on Netflix instant watch, and to my surprise it is strikingly similar to the new film. In many parts the dialog is almost exactly the same. I like the ways in which it is different, though.

5

Hubby and I were both huge fans of the original. When I first heard it was being re-made, I groaned inwardly.

But then I started seeing the trailers for it, and thought “Huh. This might not suck.”

I had already experienced Jaden Smith’s charisma and budding acting chops in The Pursuit of Happyness. He is turning into a fine-looking young man who I think has a lot of potential.

So today, we took 10YO mudgirl to see it. We were all LOL’ing at a lot of the stuff, including the little ‘wink and nod to the original’ moments. I was crying openly during the Very Touching Scene. Seeing Jackie Chan display such grief got me to begin with, then the cut to a single tear running down Jaden’s face. . .well, I’m a wuss, what can I say?

I loved the scene where Jaden’s character went to his girlfriend’s house to plead his case with her father. Oh, hell, I loved a lot of scenes.

Still love the original, don’t think this will ‘un-seat’ it, but this was a really good movie, appropriate for families (as long as your kids aren’t too young), with a lot of good messages.

I’m not familiar at all with the actor who played the teacher of The Fighting Dragons, but thought he did a lot with just facial expression during the tournament.

I do wish the movie had clarified whether Dre’s girlfriend ever made it into the music academy. I suppose they have to save something for the sequel, though. . .:wink:

6

We saw this today and people clapped ~ clapped! ~ at the end. I don’t recall the last time that happened.

Jackie Chan was my fav part of the movie. I always thought he was a kung fu guy who was acting. Today he was an actor doing kung fu. He was just fantastic.

And the scene where he not so much beat the kids up as beat them together? Priceless!

7

watched it over the weekend with Son #1, and loved it! I enjoyed the original as a kid, but it’s never stayed with me as anything more than a few catch-phrases and the ‘underdog’ thing. This new version worked on so many levels, and we left the theatre with a LOT to discuss. (particularly issues of violence and fighting and how to deal with kids who don’t like you just for being there).

I also liked that the ‘mystic BS’ wasn’t so much BS (as was commented earlier)

e.g. the journey to the ‘magical mountain retreat’ wasn’t a simple turn-around and ‘wow, there it is’ (as happens in so many movies that try to mystify the ‘inscrutible orient’). It took them time to get there on the train. It took time to walk up the mountain. It took time to learn and improve and become the best that Dre could be. This reflected one of the core themes of the film, that the journey (and ‘the pauses’) are as important as the destination.

The magic water wasn’t presented as anything other than water. It was how you approach that water, your attitude (this is in-line with the 'secret recipe in Kung Fu Panda) that made it ‘magic’.

Another interesting issue was why Dre and his mum left Detroit. That felt ‘real’ (far more so than the contrived court-order crap in ‘Tokyo Drift’ - who the hell sends a parolee overseas?!)

I was also impressed at how complete the Mr Han character was. He had genuine tragedy in his past, which gave meaning to his relationship with Xiao Dre. I also liked the unspoken visual of ‘getting out of the car’, reflecting the deeper issues Han was dealing with (or not dealing with, as the case may be).

One thing that amused me was how many of the characters lived in old-style chinese houses. From what I understand, there aren’t very many of those left in Beijing anymore. Most folks live in places more like Dre’s mum’s apartment (China dopers cite?).

8

I believe the mom reached a plea deal that kept the son out of jail provided he leaves the jurisdiction. His father is an army soldier stationed in Japan, so his mother forced him to go to live with his father rather than having to uproot from a life she enjoyed.

9

I’m really glad to hear that so many of you like it. After all the crap it’d been getting prior to release, it’s nice to hear positive thoughts from people who’ve seen it. It did well at the box office, with $55 million over the weekend, more than twice what the A-Team made. I know a lot of bad films do well at the box office, but this is getting genuinely good reviews and word-of-mouth, deservedly so.

I’m sorry I didn’t mention Jackie Chan in the OP. He was terrific! I also liked the mother/son dynamic. Before I saw it I thought maybe the mom married a Chinese man, and that’s why they moved to China. That would have been fine, but I was surprised and very pleased to find that it was because she was transferred for her job. That was refreshing.

10

i hate to be the voice of dissonance but i hated this movie. HAAAATED. i guess i won’t bother to spoiler box anything since nobody above me did. there were loads of things that bugged the living daylights out of me:

1 - how young these kids were. 13 year olds just aren’t as menacing as a group of 17 year old cobra kais. the romance isn’t as engaging. the martial arts not as impressive.

2 - jaden’s character is a far less sympathetic character than daniel-san. i couldn’t get over how much of a brat jaden’s character was in this movie.

3 - in the letter to girl’s dad scene, he knows how to READ chinese but not SPEAK chinese? did Jackie Chan write out the chinese in ping-ying? for that matter, he’s been in china for… 6 months now and hasn’t learned a lick of chinese? and the dad was so quick to be suckered in by a half-hearted broken-mandarined apology?

4 - the language barrier was just too distracting for me. the tour guide was speaking english. the violin instructor was speaking english. the janitors playing cards knew that “mister han” meant han the maintenance man?

5 - jaden took the girl’s violin and ran through a fountain!?

6 - wtf was that ddr game?

7 - the first fight scene where jackie chan took out those kids was just overkill. for being such a pacifist, he sure was aggressive, even if he didn’t throw a punch. he was slamming kids, and throwing kids all over the place.

8 - the training of jacket on - jacket off pales in comparison to wax on - wax off.

9 - the handling of racism in this film. it’s clear that jaden was singled out originally because he was black. the parents were probably pissed that he was black AND played jeopardized their daughter’s future. then it was all wiped clean and not mentioned again? either legitimize the racial tension by addressing it, or don’t emphasize it all (with the repeated hair references, stay away from “us” references, etc). the ambiguous racial tension is just bothersome.

10 - unnecessary chinese-fication. training on the great wall? wasting time to go to the wudang mountains when really this kid is need of serious bulking up/training? i want my training old school, and i KNOW jackie chan knows how to put together a training montage with local props.

i guess the movie was just geared towards YOUNGER kids, even moreso than the original. I can see how a 12 year old might be wowed with the splendor of the china shots, and the humor in picking up laundry, but for me personally - this movie just made me appreciate the original that much more.

11

Saw it at a sneak preview. I thought it was well made and very entertaining.

I think it had heart and was a top notch version of the story, true to the spirit of the original.

It did have the hokey part of the ending where all the Chinese boys recognize the error of their ways and come show respect to Dre and Mr. Han. But that is firmly in tune with the original.

Jackie wasn’t just a goofball clown, but a real character and did serious acting.

Dre was a bit whiney, but he was 13, so that isn’t exactly unusual. Jaden did a wonderful job.

pancakes3 said:

This isn’t about a bunch of criminal gang members or anything, it’s about a boy who is getting bullied and beat up at school. I think they were thoroughly menacing for the 13 year old Dre.

It’s a romance between 13 year olds. And I thought it was fine.

What wasn’t as impressive? The lady balancing on a beam charming a cobra? The jump spinning kicks? The big take downs?

The tournament being double captioned, Chinese and English.

Wasn’t the violin instructor a Westerner? Makes total sense he spoke and taught in English. The card playing guys were next door to Mr. Han’s house, it makes sense the might get a lot of people sticking their heads in looking for Mr. Han. So understanding the Han part was all they needed to understand “You’re in the wrong place.”

Yeah, that wasn’t bright.

13 year olds are big enough they can hurt you. He let them hit each other and used their agression against them.

Yeah, the jacket bit doesn’t quite have the cachet of “wax on - wax off”. Kung fu has a different fluidity to it than karate.

12

I never saw the original Karate Kid, but I liked the new version.

I have to say, though, that I was disappointed that Jackie Chan didn’t end up fighting the evil “Red Dragon School” kung-fu teacher. Boy, I would have liked to see that guy get his comeuppance.

I thought the kid who played Cheng did a very good job in the last fight scene of letting it show that his meanness and brutality were partly inspired by plain old fear of his own teacher. You could tell that he knew that if he manifested anything the teacher would construe as weakness (including respect, restraint, fair play, or generosity), he would be severely punished for it.

Come talk about Jackie Chan’s acting in my new thread!

13

I just watched it. Overall, I think they did really well in some areas, but other areas were lacking.

  1. Martial arts: all the martial arts scenes were top-notch, and the fighting was a lot better than the original. Jaden was disappointing, mostly, since he looks like a broomstick, but the other fight scenes were well choreographed.

  2. Acting: I’m sorry to say that when your acting makes Jackie’s look good, you need more classes. Jaden, particularly in the training room scene, kept stepping on Jackie’s lines. Everyone else was pretty good though.

  3. The Shoehorn: they tried to jam some things into the remake that were in the original. For example, in the original, Danny gets bullied because he is dating the bully’s ex. In this film, the reason the bullies targeted Dre was completely ignored, but once they set their sights on him, they went after him as though he killed their puppy or something. The love story doesn’t work either. I agree that they’re too young to make a believable love story. However, if they focused on friendship only, I think that would have worked a lot better. However, some things that they kept, like the lines for Cobra Kai, worked very well.

  4. Updates: clarifying Han/Miyagi’s motivation helped a lot. Some of the script changes were improvements as well. In particular, the final conversation between Jackie and Jaden is going to be fondly remembered. I also liked how the kids showed respect to Jackie and Jaden at the end of the film. That’s something that should have been done in the original.

Overall though, it worked well as a action movie, but Jaden’s acting skills and physical abilities hurt the dramatic scenes. It needed just a little more of a push from it’s star to become an instant classic. Was it just me or did anybody else find his constant bawling annoying?

14

I just saw this and enjoyed it quite a bit.

Very impressed by Jackie Chan’s acting, and I really want to see a “Behind The Scenes” of this film to see if Chan was a real-life mentor to Jaden Smith.

Smith was at least as good an actor as Ralph Maccio in the original. And I don’t have any problem with his family helping him get into the business - I’m sure the same thing happened with the Barrymores, the children and grandchildren of Lloyd Bridges, etc.

15

My thought was that the school was probably a private English-language school, for foreign children and the kids of rich Chinese parents who wanted them to have an international education. The girl’s family certainly seemed rich.

I didn’t like the mom’s parenting - I’m not big on appeasing kids. And Dre had a good point when he said all she wanted to do was say how fabulous China was. You can’t sell stuff like that to 12-year-olds. They have their own opinions on th ematter, and aren’t going to be swayed by how great the ice cream is. And I agree that they didn’t show any reason why she would be sent to China. Certainly their Detroit apartment didn’t look like she was some high-powered executive.

I like the tournament, but missed the bit from the original where Miyagi has the evil instructor at his mercy, then let’s him off with a mild humiliation. I thought the Great Wall stuff was pretty, but pointless and unrealistic.

I thought Jaden did a reasonably good job acting and that his physique was perfectly appropriate for a kid his age. A young adolescent would look freaky with bulging muscles. I thought the romance was sweet and age-appropriate. About the apology scene with the girl’s father, I thought his favor from Mr. Han was to write out phonetically what he wanted to say in Chinese. Although I didn’t think he should’ve said he dishonoured her family - he didn’t.

jackie Chan was better than I expected. However, the training in the first movie consisted of more than “wax on - wax on”. There was “Paint the Fence” and “Sand the Deck”, as I recall. I thought the “Jacket on, Jacket off” was too one-dimensional.

The violin in water thing drove me nuts.

StG

16

Slight hijack, but that didn’t make it in for the original; it was in the sequel.

17

Jacket on/off: block
Pick up the jacket: duck
Hang it up: double hand strike

18

I agree, but I thought that her parenting failures—simultaneously appeasing and overprotective—were kind of the point. Clearly she was still somewhat off-balance from the death of her husband two years before (as established in the opening shot), and had not established a fully successful mix of caring and authority with Dre as a single parent.

And that’s a big reason why Dre had the problems that he had, and why he needed a father-figure for help and guidance. His mom, though it was obvious she deeply loved him and was a good and dependable parent overall, was either going to baby him (if anybody’s messing with you I’ll kill them, oh all right I’ll hang up your jacket for you) or make unreasonable demands of him (isn’t everything wonderful here in China, no you’re not allowed to be homesick, I don’t want to hear it).

Part of the development in the movie was her learning to let her son be who he is and act on his own judgement (as when she sits in the stands at the tournament watching him take some nasty beating but doesn’t interfere), rather than over-controlling him all the time.

And about the “violin in the fountain thing”: come on folks, the violin was in a case, and they do make waterproof violin cases. Violinists take their (cased) instruments out in the rain all the time, after all. And considering how obsessive this girl’s parents were about her music, I’m willing to bet that that yellow violin case of hers was not only waterproof to 30 meters but fireproof and bombproof as well.

19

I don’t recall the scene, but I did notice that she had an excellent violin case.

It looked like the cases a friend of mine bought for his guitars. They have a fiberglass body with aluminum edges. And the case actually has rubber seal where the two halves of the case meet. I don’t know for sure, but her case looked very similar.

It definitely wasn’t a pasteboard case coated with vinyl like you’d get with a $99 guitar. The ones my friend bought were a substantial investment, but they are rugged enough that, should he be forced to check his beloved guitars, they would survive being bounced around by baggage handlers and left in the rain on the tarmac.

Update: I see Kimstu said basically the same thing while I was editing.

20

They started out in Detroit. One possibility is that she was a assembly line foreman and her job was to travel to China to train the Chinese workers, or possibly she was an engineer and is setting up the robotic assembly line. There are a ton of positions that make under 100k that might require travel.