Mommy, Can I Be Daniel Larusso for Halloween?

Recently I’ve been interested in remakes, so I was eager to see The Karate Kid, which revisits the now-classic 1984 film of the same name. The remake is one of the most faithful I can remember; in a time (in a world?) of updates and adaptations that wax nostalgic about TV, film, and toys of the 1970s and 80s while turning up the CGI, it was truly startling to see such a “classic” remake. The casting director even managed to find a Chinese actor who looked almost identical to Martin Kove’s Sensei John Kreese. Impressive.

When a remake is as faithful as this one, it’s worthwhile to look carefully at the divergences for any lessons they might teach us, either about the film or about the practice of remakery itself. Here are the ones that stuck out for me:

(1) Twelve?

In the 1984 film, the main characters (Daniel Larusso, Ali Mills, and Johnny Lawrence) are in high school. And the actors playing those characters (Ralph Macchio, Elisabeth Shue, and William Zabka) were pretty close to high school age, for film standards anyway (they were all in their early 20s).

By contrast, in real life Jaden Smith is just about to turn 12. (In the film, his character is explicitly asked his age, and responds that he is 12.)

The result verged on the comical at times, particularly in the already overdetermined montage scenes that show Smith’s still-boyish body, drenched in sweat, performing push ups and leg stretches.

Furthermore, the love triangle between Daniel, Ali, and Johnny was totally absent from the remake, presumably due to the issues brought up by the characters’ ages (and perhaps the very different cultural setting). In the original, Daniel has two motivations to defeat the bully, which become intertwined in the country club scene (which doesn’t make it into this version; it’s replaced with a short, somewhat pat take on Meiying’s audition). Not so in the remake.

With Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith executive producing, the film was clearly meant as a vehicle for their young son. But Smith is famously deliberate about the films he chooses to star in or produce. I can’t help but wonder why he felt compelled to remake the film now, while his son was so young. Surely it wasn’t mere accident.

I wonder if it has something to do with shifting audiences. In the 1980s, karate was very popular among kids around 8-12, and The Karate Kid was as an aspirational film for them, at least in part. But today, Harry Potter and its copycat fantasy series have taken over that age group. I wonder if the remake was meant to appeal to a much younger family audience, those with kids for whom Jaden Smith’s 12 year old Dre would serve the same aspirational purpose.

(2) Date Night

One of the most unforgettable scenes in the original film is the date scene, which takes place at a miniature golf/arcade. There are two changes to this scene in the remake. First, the scene at the love interest’s parents’ house is moved from this scene to a later one (more on that in a minute); instead Dre and Meiying skip school and wander around what appears to be a mall of some kind in Beijing. They too play videogames, but this time it’s a dance game instead of a coin-op cabinet.

The motivation for this change is clear enough; the twelve year olds aren’t really old enough to date, so they have to steal away time. Clearly the miniature golf/arcade is largely a dead cultural object today, and in any case I’m sure they don’t have them in Beijing anyway. But I was struck with the choice of a mall to replace it, another dead vestige of 1980s teen culture, at least in the United States (in fairness, it wasn’t even clear if the scene takes place in a mall, but that’s how I read it). The total failure to remake this scene effectively was the biggest disappointment in the film for me.

Random fact: I once went on a date, at night, at the Norwalk Golf N’ Stuff where The Karate Kid was filmed.

(3) Character Development

The remake is about 15 minutes longer than the original, and I think most of that extra footage comes in the first act. A few disambiguations comprise part of the new material, the most prominent being an explanation for why Dre and his mother are leaving Detroit (his father had recently died). But mostly the first several scenes are extended considerably. I can only imagine that the filmmakers thought they were doing extra character development, but I found the results unconvincing.

Weirdly, the famous wax-on/wax-off/paint-the-fence/sand-the-floor scenes were cut, or at least condensed, into the single pick-up-the-jacket routine, which felt way beyond implausible in comparison to the original. I’d have rather they left more of the opening scenes on the cutting room floor, and rethought the early Mr. Han lessons, devoting more character development to the latter and less to the former.

Even more weirdly, even though Meiying gets a much more central role than did Ali in the original (not to mention her own goals), very little time is devoted to developing her character and her motivations beyond the pat “stern Asian family success” trope. It seemed like a missed opportunity.

(4) Influence, not Class

There’s a strong dose of class warfare in the original film. Daniel’s mother promises him a house with a pool, but they end up in a run-down apartment in Reseda, pool emptied. Later, Daniel picks up Ali at her family’s enormous Encino home, and the disapproval of her parents is clearly a matter of Daniels socioeconomic class, and how poorly he fares as a prospect for their daughter.

In the remake, Meiying’s family is clearly wealthy, at least more wealthy than Dre’s, but economics plays a rather small role in the film. Apart from a few shots of Meiying’s father’s Audi and the requisite doorstep scene, there’s very little economic differentiation among any of the characters in Dre’s school. (Aside: what kind of school is this, anyway?) Indeed, it’s not class strife that leads her father to disapprove of the boy, rather it’s his “dangerous,” lackadaisical Western influence on his daughter.

When a remake is particularly faithful, even small divergences gain tremendous significance relative to the original, as they resonate uncomfortably with present or absent counterparts in that original. And over time, like an echo, those reverberations grow even stronger. I enjoyed the remake, and I see no reason to question that enjoyment overly seriously. Yet, now that a few days have passed since I saw it, I can’t help but think chuckle at its cuteness, like little kids in dress-up clothes, playing as if they were teenagers.