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By Sean J. Carey,
Owner/Head Instructor--Front Range Martial Arts
It was 26 years ago today (June 22,
2010) that the theater lights dimmed and I sat, as an excited 14 year
old and watched the first Karate Kid movie. I had always been
interested in the martial arts, but living in a small town in central
Kansas didn’t afford the opportunity of training at a school, or even at
a recreation center or YMCA. The nearest city with a Karate School was
some 26 miles, to Manhattan, Kansas. With my interest in karate, I
begged my mom and dad to let me go see the Karate Kid movie, and so they
drove one of my friends and I to Manhattan (also the closest movie
theater) and dropped us off at the theater.
Being opening night, it was packed!
I remember the audience, grimacing as Daniel got beaten up, ducking and
dodging as he fought in the tournament, and the collective intake and
holding of breath when he stood up and assumed the “Crane” stance, and
the applause and cheers when he won the tournament. I remember cheering
and whooping myself, the excitement of a large karate tournament seemed
so cool! Needless to say, if I had an interest in the martial arts
before, my interest had now been kindled into a roaring bonfire of
desire to take Karate.
For the next few weeks, I was
incorrigible. I nagged my mom and dad night and day, begging them to
take me to some karate classes. Finally they relented. My mom had
found a Karate class taught at the YMCA in Manhattan that offered
several 6-week
summer sessions. She drove me to Manhattan three times per week for the
next 6 weeks as I finally got the chance to take some Karate lessons.
Unfortunately, I was unable to continue throughout the school year, but
I took several sessions of the classes the following summer as well. The following
summer, we moved to a larger city, and I was able to finally attend a
martial arts school on a regular basis, and the rest as they say, is
history.
Fast forward nearly 26 years to June
20, 2010. There’s a new “Karate Kid” in town, and while I did not see it on opening
weekend, I did manage to see it on its second weekend in theaters, I was treated to
viewing the new “Karate Kid” movie as a Father’s Day gift. What a great
experience to sit in the theater with my own kids, and experience the
re-telling of the story that changed my life forever. The Martial Arts
are truly a way of life for me, and to share that experience with my
wife and children was truly an amazing event.
So, after 26 years of Martial Arts,
having seen all of the Karate Kid movies countless times, what did I
think? Well, first and foremost, if this movie touches the life of one
child in such a way that his or her life is changed for the better as
mine was by the Martial Arts, then it is truly a masterpiece. As a
movie, yep, I loved it…I thought it was great. In a way, it was much
more true to the original than I had expected. I assumed that it would
be a re-imagining of the original, but as it turns out, they apparently
thought why mess with a good thing? So they changed the location from
California to Hong Kong (making the fish-out-of-water aspect much more
powerful), and Daniel-san became Xiao-Dre, and other than that, the
formula was pretty much scene for scene right out of the original.
Jaden Smith did a solid job,
reprising the role of the Karate Kid. He is still young, so there were
a few parts that made me raise my eyebrows a bit, but there were also
flashes of brilliance, where he almost seemed to be channeling his
father’s acting style. If you’re familiar with Jackie Chan, he is
usually bright, bubbly and all over the place. However in this, he
plays a very subdued role as the mentor, and does a fantastic job. He
had several amazing quotes, and when Jaden Smith’s character has had it
with “put the coat on…take if off…drop it…pick it up…hang it up…take it
down…put it on…” (this movie’s ‘wax on-wax off’), and is about to quit
training, Jackie Chan’s Mr. Han takes control. He walks up to Jaden to
show him what he’s actually learned, man that was GREAT! Jaden Smith
did a fantastic job here with looks of amazement, as if ‘how in the heck
did THAT happen’, and Mr. Han just keeps showing him what he has really learned.
This movie really should be “The
Kung-Fu Kid” rather than “The Karate Kid”. That being said, with
Kung-Fu being a more circular style, emphasizing hand-speed (much like
American Kenpo does, being a mixture of Japanese Karate, Jiu-Jitsu and
Kung-Fu), it made the the tournament sequences very entertaining.
The ‘bad’ Sifu on the other side was predictable, based on what we know
from the original movie, but nevertheless, the fight scenes and
choreography were all excellent. And yes, even though it was a week
after opening weekend, and it was an early showing, the theater was
still over half full, and there was cheering, whooping and clapping,
just as I remember in the first one.
The original “Karate Kid” movie was
the impetus for my martial arts journey, which so far has spanned 26
years. When we got home from viewing the movie, my own children (yes,
they’ve been taking Kenpo from me for a few years now) were excited as
well. We spent some time in the studio talking about what happened in
the movie, how they can improve their own martial arts, and then working
on various movements (instigated by them, I might say, not by me—made me
proud!). As I said before, if this movie changes just one life for the
better, then it is already a success. However, I am sure that like the
first Karate Kid movie, it will touch far more than one life, and it
will likely reach out over time for years to come and will continue to
influence kids to seek out quality martial arts training, and for that,
cause them to become better people.
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