Stop me if you’ve heard this plot before: a kid and his single mother move to a new town where the kid meets a girl whose ex-boyfriend is a student of karate who beats the kid up for pursuing his ex, who he wants to get back together with. The boy eventually trains under an old Asian man to better his skills so he can take on the ex-boyfriend in a large tournament. Not only is this the plot to 1984’s Karate Kid, but also the plot to the 2025 film Karate Kid: Legends.

Of course, this sequel which takes place a year after the end of Cobra Kai adds a lot of new twists. Li Fong, the boy who moves from Hong Kong to New York City, is already well trained in Kung-Fu, thanks to having a pretty good uncle for a teacher — Mr. Han, played by Jackie Chan. The girl Fong meets in New York City is Mia, and the film’s major subplot involves her father, Victor, who is a retired boxer who owes a lot of money to a local loan shark, who also happens the own the local “bad guy” dojo. You can tell they’re the bad guys because everyone is wearing black, and our antagonist has a cheesy looking ponytail. Victor asks Fong to train him to be hit faster and harder in hopes of winning money to pay off his loans by reentering the ring (which he does, with disastrous results).

We learn early on that Fong has made a promise to give up fighting after his brother was stabbed to death after winning a tournament (yikes). Of course this is a Karate Kid movie and despite his promise Fong fights every single day. When it becomes obvious all roads are leading Fong to enter the Five Burroughs Karate Tournament to face Conor, conquer his own demons, and win the $50,000 purse so he can give it to a washed up boxer he just met, Mr. Han shows up just in time to assist with training. Unfortunately being a master of Kung-Fu is not going to be enough to win this tournament and so Mr. Han reaches out to the student of his old friend Mr. Miyagi, the one and only Daniel LaRusso. Togther, Mr. Han and Daniel-San teach Fong all their techniques by beating him to a pulp.

Before you know it, everything is wrapped up. Karate Kid: Legends has a run time of 94 minutes, despite adding in multiple more layers than the original which was more than 30 minutes longer with a run time of 126 minutes. At times Karate Kid: Legends feels more like a videogame or music video than an actual film, with lots of on-screen text and graphics popping up. No one is given time to contemplate or think or even breathe; every pause has been removed from the film. The death of Fong’s brother is explained in a fifteen-second flashback. Mr. Han convinces Daniel (someone he has never met) to drop what he’s doing in California, fly to New York City, and train a kid he’s never met because Mr. Han knew Mr. Miyagi in less than five minutes of screen time. The film wants to be a rollercoaster but at this pace it’s more like a bullet train.

While Karate Kid: Legends isn’t bad it’s far from the classic the original was. Fans of Cobra Kai will enjoy the continuation of the story and this new intertwining of the two previously separate franchises. Despite being older, Jackie Chan still shines in his role and his fingerprints are all over every single fight scene in the film. It wouldn’t surprise me to see a director’s cut of this film in a few months that adds another half hour back into the film as pivotal scenes like repaying the loan shark and an inevitable setup between the owner of the dojo and Mr. Han and/or Daniel are nowhere to be found.