The Original and Remake of The Karate Kid

SPOILER ALERT- I will be talking about major plot points in this post.

When I first heard they were doing a remake with Jackie Chan and Jaden Smith, I was a bit skeptical for a couple of reasons. 1) The original is so great and I didn't want them to mess with that. 2) With Jackie Chan, they were obviously going to feature kung fu, which means calling it the Karate Kid is stupid. I know the Kung Fu Kid doesn't have the same ring to it, but still. Despite my skepticism, I warmed up to it before its release and decided to see it with my family.

To be honest, I walked away liking the movie quite a bit. It's not as good as the original overall, but with Jackie Chan starring as Mr. Han and Will and Jada Pinkett Smith produce the new one with Jerry Weintraub (who produced the original) is a good sign. A lot of the movie is the same as the original, including major plot points, the way a scene moves, and even some dialogue. Here are some of the major comparisons.

First, let's get the acting part out of the way. Both Jackie Chan and Jaden Smith were good, but Ralph Macchio and Pat Morita are definitely a much better acting duo. A few of the scenes show this, but I think the most pertinent one is at the end during the final fight when the protaganist talks to convince his teacher to heal him so he can continue.

Another part that doesn't work out as well in the new one is the "how is what I'm doing training me" part. The original had a series of tasks- wax on wax off, sand the floor, paint the fence, paint the house- to keep the story moving. In the new one, Mr. Han has Dre take his jacket off, hang it, drop it, and pick it up over and over again. It was too repetitive and the story got stale at that point. However, the payoff was just as good. It didn't have the humor of Mr. Miyagi slapping Daniel in the face, but the realization that the student was learning the entire time was just as good, ending in the line, "Kung fu is everything."

Changing the way the teacher loses his family proved to be a good plot change. In the original, Mr. Miyagi was abroad fighting in World War II, and received a note that both his wife and newborn child died due to complications giving birth. He copes with this by getting in his army uniform and drinking a bottle of whiskey (or was it scotch?). In the remake, Mr. Han lost his wife and 10-year-old son in an auto accident where he was the driver. He copes with this by rebuilding the car every year that was in the accident and then destroying it on the anniversary of the accident. This works better because the medical side of giving birth has gotten a lot better, and giving a 12-year-old some alcohol doesn't quite cut it.

Some other notes about the movie:

• Despite a review I watched, Mr. Han is not really beating up the kids who gang up on Dre. All he does is block their attacks and get them to hit each other. He even makes this point after the fight is over.
• The final kick is more like what was originally written for the 1984 movie. Ralph Macchio said in an interview that the crane kick was written as jumping off on one foot, kicking with it, and landing on the same foot (since his other leg was injured). He realized that was impossible so he ends up landing on his injured leg. In the remake, the back flip causes Dre to take off, kick, and land all with the same leg.
• It was interesting to see Yu Rong Guang as the "bad guy". I was a little disappointed to not see him fight in the remake and New Police Story (another movie he did with Jackie Chan) since he is really gifted in martial arts. After all, he was the Iron Monkey!
• A bit of interesting side trivia is that Will Smith got Pat Morita to guest on an episode of Fresh Prince in a very Mr. Miyagi-like role.

Those are my thoughts. It's not worth it for everyone to see it in the theater, so I'd say rent it to those people. It's at least worth that. Hope you enjoyed the review!

blessings

2 things to check out that you may now know too much about

One book and one movie on two very different topics. But they are both enjoyable and give you lots of information on its given topic. The first is a book called Staley: The Fight for a New American Labor Movement. The second is a documentary movie called Scratch. The former gives you an in-depth look of a labor strike in the mid-90s from the workers' point of view. The latter gives you the history of the DJ in hip hop music.

I grade part time for the Labor Education dept at UIC. Staley is a new book published this past year by one of the professors, and is really an engaging story. Not only does it talk about the struggles the Staley workers faced, but also gives you a brief history of the company as well as some nuggets of labor history in general. I found myself very drawn into the story while reading the book, and was fortunate to go to a Q&A with the authors and a couple of the workers who were a part of that labor movement.

In a similar fashion, the documentary, Scratch, gives you an overview of how the DJ started hip hop music with some turntables. It is plenty enjoyable for those both familiar and newly initiated with the genre and lifestyle. A lot of rare interviews and performances from legends in hip hop including DJ Shadow, DJ Q-Bert, DJ Babu, and loads more. If you find a copy of either of these, I highly recommend checking it out.

Chinese martial artists in Hollywood

Yes, I understand that very few people would be interested in this, but why not blog about something you know about and love. I love martial arts movies. This isn't nearly complete but I think I know more than the average person.


Of course it started with Bruce Lee. That's when Hollywood really started to take notice. His last complete movie, Enter the Dragon, went on to break records in the Hong Kong film industry and make Bruce an international movie star/actor. All the fights were clearly his own design and displayed his strength and agility. In fact, a young Jackie Chan was there taking Bruce's blows in a couple of scenes.

Hollywood now knows Jackie Chan through the Rush Hour and Shanghai Noon/Knights films. But before movies like Rumble in the Bronx, Supercop, and Operation Condor were re-released in U.S. theaters, before he was misunderstood and changed into something he was not by Hollywood filmmakers in movies like The Protector, Battle Creek Brawl, and Cannonball Run, he did stunts. In Enter the Dragon, Bruce is fighting off a number of Han's men after discovering the opium factory. Jackie takes the hits a couple times, first when he grabs Bruce from behind then Bruce takes him down. And second, the last guy Bruce fights with the bo is Jackie; first hitting him in the stomach and then slashing down on his face. (Which actually made contact by the way! When you see Jackie's head turn in pain, he wasn't acting!)

So everyone knows Jackie does his own stunts. Many of his movies show outtakes at the end, which include stunts that go wrong. In Rumble in the Bronx, Jackie broke his foot. A sock was painted to look like the shoe he was wearing in the end of the film. In Supercop, Jackie jumped onto a pole from the moving train that was supposed to swing. However, the pole didn't swing, and Jackie was helpless in getting hit by the helicopter temporarily connected to the train.

Sammo Hung was also in Enter the Dragon, sparring with Bruce in the opening scene. Although he is not as well known in the U.S. as Jackie, he did a short-lived TV series called Marshall Law. He also directed Jackie in Mr. Nice Guy, which released in U.S. theaters, and has a long friendship and working relationship with Jackie beginning as kids in Peking Opera School.

Donnie Yen may not be as well-known neither, but has tremendous influence on films around the world. We finally see him in a fight scene with Jackie in Shanghai Knights. He was fight choreographer and also had a small role in Blade 2 with Wesley Snipes. He is also known in the U.S. through his role as Wong Kei Ying in Iron Monkey (thanks to Quentin Tarantino).

That's all for now. I could almost write a book on this stuff with all the movies I've watched (including documentaries), and book and articles I've read. Maybe another part will come later.