KARATE KID: LEGENDS Review: Old-School Formula Reworked for the 21st Century

The 1980s were a veritable Golden Age for fans of The Karate Kid franchise.   Starting in 1984 with the John G. Avildsen-directed The Karate Kid, the loose trilogy took Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio), a lifelong underdog and first-time martial artist, and his Japanese-American mentor, Nariyoshi Keisuke Miyagi (Noriyuki "Pat" Morita), into a series of life-affirming lessons, occasional romances, and periodic hand-to-elbow-to-foot combat, mostly in local tournaments, for fame and glory.   An audience-friendly formula not dissimilar from another Avildsen-directed film, the Oscar-winning Rocky released almost a decade earlier, The Karate Kid, a box-office hit at the time, naturally led to sequels, one two years later, The Karate Kid II, the third and temporarily last, The Karate Kid III, five years later. But while LaRusso’s story...

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