The Next Karate Kid

This officially brings to a close the Karate Kid collection. I have now officially seen all of them. Out of all of them, the existence of this one confuses me the most. I'm not really sure why they bothered to make this one. It's not that it's too bad of a movie, it's decent entertainment. It just really doesn't feel like this was a story that really needed to be told. 

Daniel is gone, without even an explanation about where he went. Instead this time around Miyagi is training a female. You would think this would be a good thing since by the third movie I wanted nothing more than to smash Daniel's head into fridges. However the character they chose to replace him is almost worse! She does somewhat redeem herself in the final half of the movie but the first part you really don't want good things for her. Plus I kind of missed what the hell she was doing with Miyagi in the first place, so that just made everything even more confusing and even more infuriating.

The villains in this movie, as usual, make you want to reach into the TV screen and choke them. These movies are so fucking good at this! This time around they are confusing though. They all seem to be some sort of security force that protects their high school and are led by this evil drill sergeant type character. Did that sentence sound strange? Well that seems to be what's going on. Again I was fading in and out during the first part of this movie so chances are I just missed something about just how the hell these people were, but that's the conclusion that I came to. You still do hate them though and no matter what happens to them in the end, it just never seems like it's enough. You want tigers to eat their faces off or something, but sadly the writers didn't think of that.

I guess next down the road will be the remake of the first Karate Kid, which I maintain is a terrible, TERRIBLE, idea. The casting is horrendous so far, and the rumours of the other casting is almost worse. I just know Will Smith's son will play the role like he did in the Day the Earth Stood Still remake, so he will actually make Daniel even more annoying! It's odd that this will be one of the first remakes I'm completely opposed to, but I think it's pointless and have really no interest in it.

This movie was ok and doesn't really deserve a lot of the hate that it seems to always get. It's pretty stupid and the script has some pretty awful dialogue through pretty much the entire thing, but there's just something about the Karate Kid formula that's fun to watch. Not a complete waste of time, but easily the worst of the series.

5.5/10