The Karate Kid is back, and this time with Legends. But is it any good?
Karate Kid: Legends ★★★
There were two moments during the packed preview screening I attended of the latest Karate Kid offering when the audience erupted in cheers and applause, and each was a moment that Blind Freddy could have seen coming. And despite every cynical impulse in my body (and there are many), I was swept along a little too.
This is the absolute definition of a crowd-pleaser. Packed full of fan service, cameos and nods to tradition – both within the film franchise and more broadly within families, cultures and martial arts – Karate Kid: Legends offers little by way of innovation and plenty by way of giving the people what they want. It's derivative, corny and, in its utterly predictable way, great fun.
If you've seen the original The Karate Kid (1984), or indeed the Netflix spin-off series Cobra Kai that ran for six seasons from 2018, you've got the idea. Kid turns up in a new town, having sworn off the martial art he used to practise. A gang of bullies take a dislike to him, and beat him up. His single mum is busy working, so doesn't really notice how much trouble he's getting into.
His only ally is a cute girl, who used to go out with the lead bully, who naturally wants to smash the new kid even harder because he's jealous. The new kid's only hope for escape from this vicious cycle is to win a local tournament, where he'll get to beat said bully in the ring. But to do that he'll need the help of a gifted sensei, who will teach him The Way. Wax on, wax off. Yada yada.
Here, the kid is Li Fong (Ben Wang), who moves with his medico mother from Beijing to New York. Back home, he'd been tutored by his uncle, Mr Han (Jackie Chan). In New York, he himself becomes tutor to the pizza-shop-owning father of his sort-of girlfriend Mia (Sadie Stanley). It's an improbable move, but at least it gives Joshua Jackson (of long-ago Dawson's Creek fame) a chance to display his considerable charm and reasonably convincing chops as a boxer.
Inevitably, the kid is himself drawn back to the ring, to compete in the Five Boroughs karate tournament. The thing is, he's only studied kung-fu up to this point. Enter Mr Han, who takes it upon himself to fly to LA and persuade Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) to hop on a plane and help train the kid in the way of Mr Miyagi.
And then … Well, as Morrissey sang, stop me if you think that you've heard this one before (and trust me, you have).
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Man of Many
3 hours ago
- Man of Many
Charlie Vickers on ‘The Survivors', Building Character and Coming Home
By Dean Blake - News Published: 6 June 2025 |Last Updated: 4 June 2025 Share Copy Link Readtime: 10 min Every product is carefully selected by our editors and experts. If you buy from a link, we may earn a commission. Learn more. For more information on how we test products, click here. Charlie Vickers is on the rise. After an impressively devilish rendition of Middle-Earth's Sauron in Rings of Power, the Aussie actor is returning home to star in Netflix's The Survivors: an adaptation of Jane Harper's novel of the same name that focuses on the small, coastal town of Evelyn Bay and a series of deaths that echo through the years. In some ways, The Survivors was a particularly personal project for Vickers, who saw his own echoes in the show—a big-town man returning to his small-town roots—and who connected with the inherent Australianness of it all. Since studying acting at the College of Speech and Drama in London, Vickers has been largely living overseas, and the opportunity to return home, especially for a script he felt excited by, was too good to pass up. We caught up with Vickers ahead of The Survivors launch on Netflix on 6 June to talk though what drew him to the project, how he got started in acting, and what it was like coming back to Australia. Charlie Vickers in 'The Survivors' | Image: Netflix To start with, I wanted to get an idea of what it was about The Survivors that got you excited. What sold you on being a part of it? I love shows that adapt novels, really. The Survivors is a novel that I hadn't read, but I'd read a few other books by Jane Harper and this just sounded like a really fun adventure to be able to go on. So when I had the opportunity to potentially do it, I thought, 'It's in Tasmania, I grew up in Melbourne, but I'd somehow never been to Tasmania,' and being able to work with a whole bunch of new, amazing people and having Tony in charge of the whole project got me really excited. Also, just being able to be part of an Australian story. It's quintessentially Australian. I live in the UK now so I want to do as many Australian projects as possible, and this was such an enticing opportunity, really. The character of the town, although it's fictional, its kind of its own character in this story, and being able to film so much of it on location got me really excited. I also thought the story was interesting, and the way the script adapted the novel made me quite interested. It's quite cool seeing small-town Australia highlighted—I wanted to ask about that. Was that part of the charm for you? Is that something that reminds you of your childhood in Australia? In a way, it is . There are a huge amount of similarities between Tasmania and Victoria, and I grew up in a small coastal town exactly like . It's funny, the character of Kieran is still quite far away from who I am but he's also returning from a big city, in his case Sydney, to his childhood town, and there was a bit of familiarity there for me. I live overseas in a big city and often find myself coming back to my small, coastal town, and I think my son was about 6 months old when I was filming this, and he has a 4 month old, so there was a lot of 'world's colliding'. Having the opportunity to tell a story set in a coastal town, and you have all the dynamics . I was watching the show with my brother the other day, and he said 'god, some of these characters feel like they could be from our home town', it's crazy. Charlie Vickers in 'The Survivors' | Image: Netflix I wanted to get an idea of what you look for in a role? There's no shared characteristics of any roles , I often look for something that when I read it I get inspired, or I get excited by the idea of doing it. These roles can be completely different, but the thing they share is that I think I can bring something to the project: it has to ignite my imagination, reading it. Those kinds of jobs are few and far between, that make you excited, and this was one of those jobs. I've played quite a lot of villains in my career so far, but that's just coincidental and because of the material I've been given. How do you find your characters? When you're given a script or a treatment, how do you go about turning those words into action? For me, I try to keep it as simple as possible. I don't properly believe in the idea of 'character'. It's useful to use it in terms of referring to the character of Kieran, for example, but his 'character' is just the sum of a whole bunch of little moments. So I try not to look at things through a wide-angle lens, you know? And sometimes I watch the final product of things and find that 'oh wow, he's an entirely different person to how I had imagined him', because I tend to approach it from a moment to moment basis, and react to the circumstances he's in, and try to play to each moment truthfully, and then that paints a bigger picture of this character's life during the time period on screen. The only thing you have to be mindful of, I guess, is to think of the journey of the character throughout the show, but the specificity of each moment we see creates the 'character', I think. Charlie Vickers in 'The Survivors' | Image: Netflix Beyond being able to come back to Australia, what was the highlight of the filming process for The Survivors? There were so many. I loved being able to be in a really special place, Tasmania, that I'd never been to, with a whole bunch of amazing actors and creatives. To be able to work with these people made it an amazing experience: Actors that I've watched since I was a kid on screen. People like Damien or Robyn or Catherine and then there's this whole other amazing generation of actors like Yerin , Jess , Thom and George , and I think that's what I really love about projects. I've been really fortunate in my career in that you can just kind of go somewhere for six months and work on something and be fully immersed in the world of whatever you're doing, and then you get to move on and some of the relationships endure. That's the lasting memory of working in Tasmania : the combination of the location and the people. It was probably really good to have that filming location be somewhere you'd never been but also being very familiar in a way. Exactly, I don't know why I'd never been to Tasmania, but it really does feel different. There's an atmospheric quality to that place that is inherent, just when you're walking around. The energy there can be heavy, and I'm sure that's what Jane was trying to tap into when she wrote the novel. You mentioned earlier that you've enjoyed doing adaptations of novels, and you've done quite a few of them at this point: is there any book adaptations that you'd love to work on? I love Tim Winton's novels, and I read The Shepherds Hut recently, and also The Riders, and Eyrie, which is about a retired climate worker that lives in Freemantle, and I just think his stories are so evocatively written and I'd love to be a part of an adaptation of one of those novels on screen. I think they're pretty rarely adapted, though, and the adaptation process to take a novel to screen is often a really complex one. Those novels, when I read them, I really connected to a few of the characters and thought it'd be really cool to be a part of. I love imagining the world, that's part of the amazing thing about reading books. Charlie Vickers in 'The Survivors' | Image: Netflix You've worked in a few genres so far – is there anything you'd want to do that you haven't been given the chance to yet? It's quite a boring answer, but I'm lucky that I've been given the chance to work on bigger productions and smaller productions and things that are in pretty wildly contrasting genres that I don't really have that itch to do anything in particular. I just kind of want to work on stories that are exciting, the genre could be anything, really. If it's something that creatively inspires me, I'd be keen to do it, but there's no particular world I want to jump into anymore: which is nice, it's a nice place to be. How did you get started in acting? I did a lot of plays at school. I remember being in year 12, and I was playing Richard the 3rd in our school production of it, and it was the same year it was being done by the Melbourne Theatre Company, and Ewen Leslie was playing Richard the 3rd, and I remember going to see it and just thinking 'wow, that's so much better than what I'm doing', and thinking 'I'd love to be able to do that one day'. I remember that moment of 'wouldn't it be cool to be an actor', but then I never found it to be an accessible path. I think I was afraid. I knew you could go and audition for drama school, it just didn't seem to be a thing that was in my world, it didn't feel possible to me: getting in to a drama school and then going on to be an actor, so I didn't do it for a few years after school finished. In those intervening years I was studying a music/business degree, and while I loved uni and being around my mates and that whole period of my life, but I was really just treading water. I had no idea what I was doing, and throughout Uni I was doing amateur theatre productions. Melbourne Uni has this amazing theatre called the Union Theatre, so I did a lot of work there. Eventually, I drummed up the courage to do it, and that changed my life. I thought, maybe I should just have a go at trying for a drama school because I really didn't know what I was doing. The school I went to, the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, they come and do audition weekends in Sydney, and I decided I was going to go to it. I flew up and didn't tell anyone because I was afraid of telling people I auditioned and I didn't get in, so I did the audition over a weekend and then found out six weeks later that I'd got in, and then had to decide whether I wanted to uproot my life or did I want to wait until the end of the year and maybe try some of the Australian schools. But when you get into a drama school, it's so unlikely in the first place that I just thought I have to take this opportunity – it might not happen again. So yeah, I moved to London, and that was really the moment the direction of my life changed. The Survivors launches exclusively on Netflix on 6 June.
The Advertiser
11 hours ago
- The Advertiser
If it ain't broke...New Karate Kid is hard to dislike
The essential appeal of the Karate Kid franchise - across multiple movies and TV shows over 40 years - is pretty simple. It's a classic underdog story, in a martial arts setting with a little light philosophy and some life lessons added to the mix. Karate Kid: Legends has a few tweaks to freshen things a little - including an Asian lead - and a lot of callbacks for fans, but the basics remain. There are some dubious and coincidental elements if you're picky, but this isn't that kind of movie. If it ain't broke... At his new high school, Li becomes the target of bad-guy Conor (Aramis Knight), whose brand of martial arts is aggressive and dirty. Li's skills are rusty, so he's quickly defeated. Apparently, there are no repercussions for either boy: maybe something was lost in the edit (a thought that occurred to me more than once during the film). More happily, Li meets Mia Lipani (Sadie Sweet from Kim Possible), whose affable father Victor (Joshua Jackson from Dawson's Creek), a onetime local boxing champ, runs a pizza joint. Mia starts showing Li around the city, and he teaches her Mandarin to help her bargain with Chinese shopkeepers. Now we get into it's-a-small-world territory. See, Mia is Conor's ex (and, no surprise, he's not happy about seeing her with another guy). And Victor is in debt to a loan shark named O'Shea (Tim Rozon), who runs the dojo at which Conor trains. There's soon a match, but not the one you might be expecting. Despite his age, Victor decides to enter a local boxing match to try to win some cash, and guess who takes on the role of trainer? Yes, it's Li, applying what to Victor are some unorthodox methods. And yes, there's a training montage. We know, of course, that his mother's edict, Li will eventually face off against Conor - in the 5 Boroughs Tournament, the biggest in the city, which for some reason takes place on a rooftop (isn't this meant to be a well-established, highly-publicised, lucrative, legitimate event?) And that he will be trained by Mr Han, whose way to inform his grandnephew about his arrival is decidedly unorthodox, and the original Karate Kid himself, Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio). The former focuses on kung fu, the latter on karate, but these are, as someone sagely observes, "Two branches, one tree." This film - set a few years after Cobra Kai's ending - can be watched on its own, but takes place in the same universe as its predecessors. Devotees will relish references to previous instalments, including an appearance by Daniel's trainer, Mr Miyagi (the late Pat Morita). While a lot of movies feel padded, there's a little too much content for the modest running time. I don't know if Rob Lieber (Peter Rabbit) wrote it that way or if director Jonathan Entwhistle (The End of the F***ing World) just wanted to keep things moving along, and a lot was left on the now metaphorical cutting-room floor. The combat scenes are quite exciting, but some of the reflective and nostalgic moments and secondary characters feel underserved (but there's time for Daniel to say he's not coming when we know he will). Wyatt Oleff (It) does a lot with a little as Alan, Li's nerdy maths tutor. However, the warmth and spirit that have infused the best of the series remain, and it's hard to dislike. The essential appeal of the Karate Kid franchise - across multiple movies and TV shows over 40 years - is pretty simple. It's a classic underdog story, in a martial arts setting with a little light philosophy and some life lessons added to the mix. Karate Kid: Legends has a few tweaks to freshen things a little - including an Asian lead - and a lot of callbacks for fans, but the basics remain. There are some dubious and coincidental elements if you're picky, but this isn't that kind of movie. If it ain't broke... At his new high school, Li becomes the target of bad-guy Conor (Aramis Knight), whose brand of martial arts is aggressive and dirty. Li's skills are rusty, so he's quickly defeated. Apparently, there are no repercussions for either boy: maybe something was lost in the edit (a thought that occurred to me more than once during the film). More happily, Li meets Mia Lipani (Sadie Sweet from Kim Possible), whose affable father Victor (Joshua Jackson from Dawson's Creek), a onetime local boxing champ, runs a pizza joint. Mia starts showing Li around the city, and he teaches her Mandarin to help her bargain with Chinese shopkeepers. Now we get into it's-a-small-world territory. See, Mia is Conor's ex (and, no surprise, he's not happy about seeing her with another guy). And Victor is in debt to a loan shark named O'Shea (Tim Rozon), who runs the dojo at which Conor trains. There's soon a match, but not the one you might be expecting. Despite his age, Victor decides to enter a local boxing match to try to win some cash, and guess who takes on the role of trainer? Yes, it's Li, applying what to Victor are some unorthodox methods. And yes, there's a training montage. We know, of course, that his mother's edict, Li will eventually face off against Conor - in the 5 Boroughs Tournament, the biggest in the city, which for some reason takes place on a rooftop (isn't this meant to be a well-established, highly-publicised, lucrative, legitimate event?) And that he will be trained by Mr Han, whose way to inform his grandnephew about his arrival is decidedly unorthodox, and the original Karate Kid himself, Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio). The former focuses on kung fu, the latter on karate, but these are, as someone sagely observes, "Two branches, one tree." This film - set a few years after Cobra Kai's ending - can be watched on its own, but takes place in the same universe as its predecessors. Devotees will relish references to previous instalments, including an appearance by Daniel's trainer, Mr Miyagi (the late Pat Morita). While a lot of movies feel padded, there's a little too much content for the modest running time. I don't know if Rob Lieber (Peter Rabbit) wrote it that way or if director Jonathan Entwhistle (The End of the F***ing World) just wanted to keep things moving along, and a lot was left on the now metaphorical cutting-room floor. The combat scenes are quite exciting, but some of the reflective and nostalgic moments and secondary characters feel underserved (but there's time for Daniel to say he's not coming when we know he will). Wyatt Oleff (It) does a lot with a little as Alan, Li's nerdy maths tutor. However, the warmth and spirit that have infused the best of the series remain, and it's hard to dislike. The essential appeal of the Karate Kid franchise - across multiple movies and TV shows over 40 years - is pretty simple. It's a classic underdog story, in a martial arts setting with a little light philosophy and some life lessons added to the mix. Karate Kid: Legends has a few tweaks to freshen things a little - including an Asian lead - and a lot of callbacks for fans, but the basics remain. There are some dubious and coincidental elements if you're picky, but this isn't that kind of movie. If it ain't broke... At his new high school, Li becomes the target of bad-guy Conor (Aramis Knight), whose brand of martial arts is aggressive and dirty. Li's skills are rusty, so he's quickly defeated. Apparently, there are no repercussions for either boy: maybe something was lost in the edit (a thought that occurred to me more than once during the film). More happily, Li meets Mia Lipani (Sadie Sweet from Kim Possible), whose affable father Victor (Joshua Jackson from Dawson's Creek), a onetime local boxing champ, runs a pizza joint. Mia starts showing Li around the city, and he teaches her Mandarin to help her bargain with Chinese shopkeepers. Now we get into it's-a-small-world territory. See, Mia is Conor's ex (and, no surprise, he's not happy about seeing her with another guy). And Victor is in debt to a loan shark named O'Shea (Tim Rozon), who runs the dojo at which Conor trains. There's soon a match, but not the one you might be expecting. Despite his age, Victor decides to enter a local boxing match to try to win some cash, and guess who takes on the role of trainer? Yes, it's Li, applying what to Victor are some unorthodox methods. And yes, there's a training montage. We know, of course, that his mother's edict, Li will eventually face off against Conor - in the 5 Boroughs Tournament, the biggest in the city, which for some reason takes place on a rooftop (isn't this meant to be a well-established, highly-publicised, lucrative, legitimate event?) And that he will be trained by Mr Han, whose way to inform his grandnephew about his arrival is decidedly unorthodox, and the original Karate Kid himself, Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio). The former focuses on kung fu, the latter on karate, but these are, as someone sagely observes, "Two branches, one tree." This film - set a few years after Cobra Kai's ending - can be watched on its own, but takes place in the same universe as its predecessors. Devotees will relish references to previous instalments, including an appearance by Daniel's trainer, Mr Miyagi (the late Pat Morita). While a lot of movies feel padded, there's a little too much content for the modest running time. I don't know if Rob Lieber (Peter Rabbit) wrote it that way or if director Jonathan Entwhistle (The End of the F***ing World) just wanted to keep things moving along, and a lot was left on the now metaphorical cutting-room floor. The combat scenes are quite exciting, but some of the reflective and nostalgic moments and secondary characters feel underserved (but there's time for Daniel to say he's not coming when we know he will). Wyatt Oleff (It) does a lot with a little as Alan, Li's nerdy maths tutor. However, the warmth and spirit that have infused the best of the series remain, and it's hard to dislike. The essential appeal of the Karate Kid franchise - across multiple movies and TV shows over 40 years - is pretty simple. It's a classic underdog story, in a martial arts setting with a little light philosophy and some life lessons added to the mix. Karate Kid: Legends has a few tweaks to freshen things a little - including an Asian lead - and a lot of callbacks for fans, but the basics remain. There are some dubious and coincidental elements if you're picky, but this isn't that kind of movie. If it ain't broke... At his new high school, Li becomes the target of bad-guy Conor (Aramis Knight), whose brand of martial arts is aggressive and dirty. Li's skills are rusty, so he's quickly defeated. Apparently, there are no repercussions for either boy: maybe something was lost in the edit (a thought that occurred to me more than once during the film). More happily, Li meets Mia Lipani (Sadie Sweet from Kim Possible), whose affable father Victor (Joshua Jackson from Dawson's Creek), a onetime local boxing champ, runs a pizza joint. Mia starts showing Li around the city, and he teaches her Mandarin to help her bargain with Chinese shopkeepers. Now we get into it's-a-small-world territory. See, Mia is Conor's ex (and, no surprise, he's not happy about seeing her with another guy). And Victor is in debt to a loan shark named O'Shea (Tim Rozon), who runs the dojo at which Conor trains. There's soon a match, but not the one you might be expecting. Despite his age, Victor decides to enter a local boxing match to try to win some cash, and guess who takes on the role of trainer? Yes, it's Li, applying what to Victor are some unorthodox methods. And yes, there's a training montage. We know, of course, that his mother's edict, Li will eventually face off against Conor - in the 5 Boroughs Tournament, the biggest in the city, which for some reason takes place on a rooftop (isn't this meant to be a well-established, highly-publicised, lucrative, legitimate event?) And that he will be trained by Mr Han, whose way to inform his grandnephew about his arrival is decidedly unorthodox, and the original Karate Kid himself, Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio). The former focuses on kung fu, the latter on karate, but these are, as someone sagely observes, "Two branches, one tree." This film - set a few years after Cobra Kai's ending - can be watched on its own, but takes place in the same universe as its predecessors. Devotees will relish references to previous instalments, including an appearance by Daniel's trainer, Mr Miyagi (the late Pat Morita). While a lot of movies feel padded, there's a little too much content for the modest running time. I don't know if Rob Lieber (Peter Rabbit) wrote it that way or if director Jonathan Entwhistle (The End of the F***ing World) just wanted to keep things moving along, and a lot was left on the now metaphorical cutting-room floor. The combat scenes are quite exciting, but some of the reflective and nostalgic moments and secondary characters feel underserved (but there's time for Daniel to say he's not coming when we know he will). Wyatt Oleff (It) does a lot with a little as Alan, Li's nerdy maths tutor. However, the warmth and spirit that have infused the best of the series remain, and it's hard to dislike.
Sydney Morning Herald
a day ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
The Karate Kid is back, and this time with Legends. But is it any good?
Karate Kid: Legends ★★★ There were two moments during the packed preview screening I attended of the latest Karate Kid offering when the audience erupted in cheers and applause, and each was a moment that Blind Freddy could have seen coming. And despite every cynical impulse in my body (and there are many), I was swept along a little too. This is the absolute definition of a crowd-pleaser. Packed full of fan service, cameos and nods to tradition – both within the film franchise and more broadly within families, cultures and martial arts – Karate Kid: Legends offers little by way of innovation and plenty by way of giving the people what they want. It's derivative, corny and, in its utterly predictable way, great fun. If you've seen the original The Karate Kid (1984), or indeed the Netflix spin-off series Cobra Kai that ran for six seasons from 2018, you've got the idea. Kid turns up in a new town, having sworn off the martial art he used to practise. A gang of bullies take a dislike to him, and beat him up. His single mum is busy working, so doesn't really notice how much trouble he's getting into. His only ally is a cute girl, who used to go out with the lead bully, who naturally wants to smash the new kid even harder because he's jealous. The new kid's only hope for escape from this vicious cycle is to win a local tournament, where he'll get to beat said bully in the ring. But to do that he'll need the help of a gifted sensei, who will teach him The Way. Wax on, wax off. Yada yada. Here, the kid is Li Fong (Ben Wang), who moves with his medico mother from Beijing to New York. Back home, he'd been tutored by his uncle, Mr Han (Jackie Chan). In New York, he himself becomes tutor to the pizza-shop-owning father of his sort-of girlfriend Mia (Sadie Stanley). It's an improbable move, but at least it gives Joshua Jackson (of long-ago Dawson's Creek fame) a chance to display his considerable charm and reasonably convincing chops as a boxer. Inevitably, the kid is himself drawn back to the ring, to compete in the Five Boroughs karate tournament. The thing is, he's only studied kung-fu up to this point. Enter Mr Han, who takes it upon himself to fly to LA and persuade Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) to hop on a plane and help train the kid in the way of Mr Miyagi. And then … Well, as Morrissey sang, stop me if you think that you've heard this one before (and trust me, you have).
