'The Character Is Still Canon': Karate Kid: Legends Director Clarifies Jaden Smith's Place in the Franchise

The martial arts drama franchise The Karate Kid premiered in 1984, and has just released its sixth film, Karate Kid: Legends. The new entry brings back several characters from the franchise, but not the previous leading star from 2010's The Karate Kid remake, Jaden Smith

The 2010 film followed Smith's Dre Parker, and had Jackie Chan's Mr. Han teach him the secrets of self-defense after he moved with his mother to China. Chan returns in Karate Kid: Legends, as well as franchise star Ralph Macchio as Daniel LaRusso, but Smith didn't return. In a new interview with Inverse, Karate Kid: Legends director Jonathan Entwistle revealed whether Smith's character is still canon to his universe.

The new film in the franchise stars Ben Wang as Li Fong as the character, a character who moves from Beijing to New York City. Smith's Dre Parker is not a part of the film, but the director confirmed his character is canon to the universe.

"He does exist," Entwistle revealed. "I think he still is. Absolutely, the character is still canon, but he’s no real reference to Li Fong. He’s no real reference to this particular chapter."

The filmmaker continues, "It’s not to say that he’s not a reference to a chapter of Mr. Han’s story, that’s for sure."

The 2010 film acted as a soft reboot for the franchise, and the filmmaker had a difficult job trying to bring together the original star Ralph Macchio and Jackie Chan. Speaking about what got him the most excited for the film, the filmmaker highlighted how the recipe for success was there in the series, but he wanted to see Jackie Chan fighting Macchio on a rooftop.

"Then I was just like, "Well, what if Jackie Chan fights with Ralph Macchio on a rooftop in New York?" I was like, "That’s also awesome too." That’s when we started to fold in the visual pieces of it. It’s not really cynical to want to see Jackie Chan doing awesome martial arts on a rooftop. I’m like, "Yes, this is what I want to see when this movie goes out." I was very excited about that too. What does Jackie bring to the martial arts piece of this movie? What are the visual aspects of seeing that? Very, very exciting."

Karate Kid: Legends Is Not Off to a Great Start

The sixth entry in the franchise didn't live up to the success set by the series Cobra Kai, which just wrapped up after six seasons on Netflix, with an overall rating of 94% from the critics and 90% from the audience. Karate Kid: Legends debuted with a 55% score on Rotten Tomatoes. The score has further dropped to 53% as more reviews have come in. At the time of writing, there is no audience score available.

The sixth film's rating is in line with most of the entries in the franchise. The best-rated film in the franchise remains the original, which had an exciting 81% Certified Fresh score from the critics, and a similar 83% from the audience. The second highest-rated film is the 2010 movie, which had the critics and the audience in agreement with 67% from both camps.

The 1986 sequel The Karate Kid Part II features an unfortunate "rotten" score of 49% and 52% from the audience, while the 1989 follow-up has an abysmal 18% score from the critics and only 35% from the audience, followed by 1994's The Next Karate Kid with 20% from the critics and 24% from the audience. Compared to these films, Karate Kid: Legends falls behind 2010's The Karate Kid, with the audience still left to weigh in on its quality.

Karate Kid: Legends is playing now in theaters.

Source: Inverse