MovieChat Forums > Karate Kid: Legends (2025) Discussion > Linking the 2010 "remake" with the origi...

Linking the 2010 "remake" with the original canon was a smart move

posted 13 days ago by DevonteHuntley (243)
2 replies | jump to latest

It makes the franchise feel entirely whole now and gives the 2010 movie some purpose and not being the black sheep just left to wander solo and this odd entry. I still hate how they didn't just call it "The Kung Fu Kid" as even Jaden Smith referred to it as once production ended. Marketing move understood but made ZERO sense given the concept and setting.

As far as the continuities being linked goes, I guess you can say I called it because years ago I tweeted to one of the Cobra Kai creators how they could link the remake in the same universe since it technically uses different characters and setting. If they used the original character names and or the same setting it wouldn't have worked obviously. Of course, this creator would tell me only the first four are canon with the TV show, but here we are years and the remake is now officially part of the canon. I was shocked.

[–] Cognoscente (2648) 13 days ago

I still hate how they didn't just call it "The Kung Fu Kid" as even Jaden Smith referred to it as once production ended. Marketing move understood but made ZERO sense given the concept and setting.

I remember John Kreng addressing this in his review on the Kung Fu Cinema site. His excuse: "The controversial use of the word “Karate” in the title is somewhat slightly justified at the beginning of the film when Dre tries to practices Karate moves to an instructional show on TV."

[–] DevonteHuntley (243) 13 days ago

That's pathetic. Him using karate briefly for one scene in the beginning doesn't justify naming the whole movie that when the main aspect of it is him learning Kung-Fu. John Kreng fumbled the ball here and knows he had no business really titling this as such. It was done to market off of the existing franchise and nothing else.

But what's even funny is, you would think with it being pre-written for Dre to even be doing a bit of karate in the story's opening, they would stick with that throughout the rest of the story with Dre and his mom moving to Japan instead. But that's only if they knew this would be "The Karate Kid", which again is unlikely given how Jaden referred to this during production. I need to look more into this, but if this was really initially "The Kung-Fu Kid" then why not have Dre practice kung fu at the start?