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Jennifer Longe asked:


Wax on: Jackie Chan as Mr. Miyagi, wax off. Wax on: Jaden Smith as “the kid”, wax off.

The Karate Kid franchise started off really well. The original movie The Karate Kid (1984) grossed over $90,000,000, helped Pat Morita’s career and started Ralph Macchio’s. The Crane Kick, mostly referred to as “Sweep The Leg” has been depicted in many other movies; like when a character would pretend to know karate or try some. Last time I saw it was in Ice Age 2: The Meltdown (2006), Scrat had gone to the “other side” and was going towards a giant nut, when Sid gave him mouth to mouth and brought him back. Angry, he “Swept The Leg”, then started hitting Sid. The Karate Kid 2 (1986) was even better and grossed over $115,400,000.

The Karate Kid 3 (1989) performed poorly and grossed less than $40,000,000. The Next Karate Kid (1994) which stared a newer, fresher and female kid, Hilary Swank, performed worse than Karate Kid 3 and only grossed $8.9 million.

Now comes the next Karate Kid remake for which people are not so thrilled about. Many believe that it won’t be as popular as the original and that nothing will ever replace it.

Since the rumors started, there are a couple of things which puzzled me:

1- Jackie Chan would be playing the role of Mr. Miyagi and the guy is Chinese. Not that it matters a lot, but there is still a difference between Chinese and Japanese and the guy does more Kung Fu than Karate in his movies.

2- Jaden Smith, the son of Jaden Pinkett Smith and Will Smith - He was so cute in The Pursuit Of Happyness – will be playing “the kid”. He’s younger, 11 years old, that the original Karate Kid who was a teenager.

While making research about the plot, PopCrunch.com said that the “movie will loosely follow the plot of the original film”, TheHollywoodReporter.com wrote “The setting will be relocated from the U.S. to China.” And IMDB has “Untitled KARATE KID Remake (2010)”. So before we make a final decision concerning the movie, maybe we should wait to hear the whole story first. Well the main part at least, after all, we don’t want to spoil the fun at the theater just in case it turns out to be better than expected.

The first Karate Kid, Ralph Macchio, now 47 years old, told MTV “I think Jaden - you know, Will Smith’s kid - the kid’s got chops. He’s young; he’s like eleven…That story will work forever, when well-told. So, it makes sense in that respect.” And “From my personal view, the filling the void of what Mr. Miyagi was - and the magic of that character - is going to be the toughest task,” Then added “I (also) don’t know where the romantic story-arc goes (with Smith’s Daniel) at that age.”

We don’t know what Pat Morita’s take on the remake is, since the sensei died of natural causes on November 24th 2005 at the age 73.

“The Movie” will be directed by Harald Zwart (Agent Cody Banks (2003), Pink Panther 2 (2009)), written by Chris Murphy (Seems like this is his first project) and produced by Jerry Weintraub (The Karate Kid (1984), Ocean’s Eleven (2001)) with Overbrook Entertainment’s James Lassiter, Ken Stovitz and Will Smith – I wonder how Jaden got the role!

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