Karate Kid Ralph Macchio returns to the film franchise that made him famous

West Australian

a day ago

Back in the 1980s, there were a handful of truly iconic moves from hit films that every kid in the school playground could replicate, or at least attempt to.
One was the Top Gun high-five, performed by Tom 'Maverick' Cruise and Anthony 'Goose' Edwards, which combined a traditional high-five with a sneaky, behind-the-back low-five as the other participant was walking away.
Done right, nothing was cooler (to boys between the ages of eight and 16).
A close second, and only because it was considerably more difficult to execute, was the legendary crane kick from The Karate Kid.
Let's set the scene… After weeks of intense training under the tutelage of karate master Mr Miyagi (the late, great Pat Morita), protege Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) found himself in final of the All-Valley Karate Championship.
But there was more at stake than just a trophy. To get to this point, Daniel-san had fought his way through the entire roster of the dastardly Cobra Kai dojo, who also happened to be the same boys who mercilessly bullied him at high school.
Naturally, head bully, Johnny (William Zabka), the worst of the bunch, was Daniel-san's opponent in the final, but our hero was hobbled by a leg injury sustained through dirty Cobra Kai fighting earlier in the tournament.
Even still, things were looking good until the Cobra Kai sensei delivered this unforgettable line: 'Sweep the leg'.
Though conflicted by the unethical move, Johnny nonetheless obeyed, causing further injury to Daniel-san's leg, leaving him incapacitated.
At least, he would've been if it wasn't for the one-legged crane kick he'd been working on in an extended montage earlier in the film.
With Mr Miyagi watching on, Daniel-san delivered the decisive blow, winning the tournament (as well as begrudging respect from his opponent), and going down in cinematic history.
Macchio went on to star in two Karate Kid sequels (Morita did a third sequel on his own) and, more recently, six seasons of spin-off TV series Cobra Kai.
Now the 63-year-old brings the franchise back to the big screen with Karate Kid: Legends, and, though he's no longer a kid, his karate credentials have vastly improved since the 1984 original.
You see, Macchio was no martial arts expert in those days, and only earned his black belt in April this year.
Unlike Ben Wang, who plays Li Fong, the titular karate kid in Legends, and is proficient in karate, kung fu and taekwondo.
So, the filmmakers were able to up the ante with the fighting sequences, and cast action hero Jackie Chan as his uncle Han, leading to a situation where the kid had two masters – Han and LaRusso.
Elevating the technical know-how also meant it was time to retire the crane kick and replace it with something a little more impressive to modern audiences – an unbeatable flying, spinning move known in the film as the 'dragon kick'.
A move you just know Li Fong will need to pull out to beat a fearsome adversary in his own version of the All-Valley tournament.
Macchio laughs when asked what he would have done back in the 1980s if the director had asked him to perform such an advanced technique.
'I would've said, 'Where's my stunt guy',' the actor says over a Zoom call with Wang and PLAY.
'The crane became a piece of cinema history, a little bit of magic, but it was never teed up, it was just layered in the movie and then paid off.
'Where the dragon kick is, like, the thing that needs to be done, but hopefully it's another piece of magic.'
A necessary piece of magic, according to Wang.
'The only reason we had to do the dragon kick was because the crane kick was already so iconic, right, so we had to top it somehow,' the 25-year-old says.
Putting the two moves side-by-side is also a way to compare the character arcs of Daniel-san and Li Fong.
'Daniel LaRusso was the kid who had no business winning anything, he knew nothing of martial arts,' Macchio explains.
'So, the crane kick was that simplistic magic trick, but now we have a character that is very well versed in kung fu, so how do you create his struggle and his internal overcoming of obstacles?'
To answer this question, Legends leans into the fish-out-of-water storyline of Li Fong moving from Beijing to New York, adding a stronger cultural element to the original movie's plot that saw LaRusso move from New Jersey to California.
Though it leaves significant meat on the bone when it comes to examining the migrant experience, what Legends lacks in political punch, it more than makes up for in literal punches.
Let's just say the training is a lot more gruelling than a bit of 'wax on, wax off'.
In one particularly enjoyable sequence, Li Fong learns to combine kung fu teachings from Uncle Han with karate techniques from Sensei LaRusso.
That's a nice way of saying the audience watches as Wang gets his butt kicked by both.
Not that he's complaining, of course. Quite the opposite.
'It's really sort of the wildest dream scenario to get to do a fight scene with Jackie Chan and Ralph Macchio at the same time,' Wang says.
'We prepped and prepped, and then we had a lot of fun.'
A lot more fun than Macchio had during one specific fight scene in the original, in which he was jumped by the Cobra Kai boys on Halloween.
'Getting my ass kicked by five guys in skeleton costumes, that was a tough one,' Macchio recalls.
'It was one of the few times I actually caught one in the jaw, and we had to go home early, but I lived to tell about it.
'Me and William Zabka constantly joke about that – he says I leaned in and I'm like, 'You overreached', and we blame each other constantly.'
With Legends, Macchio hopes history will repeat for the new Karate Kid, even if the chances of young boys successfully performing the dragon kick in the playground are slim to none (seriously, do NOT attempt it).
'This film is multi-generational entertainment,' Macchio says.
'I always talk about the communal experience of being in the cinema, cheering with your neighbour, on your feet. You know, we had that in 1984 and let's hope we have that in 2025.'
Karate Kid: Legends is in cinemas now.