Bleak future for “Karate Kid” remake
March 16, 2010
I am likely to see the new Karate Kid film if only for the awesomeness that is Jackie Chan. However, I already have issue with the movie based on the trailer.
Nowadays, big media seems to harbor the perpetual desire to make things more ethnic. Have no doubt, this is only to increase sales, and is in no way a reflection of true diversity in those green-lighting movies. But does it do a disservice to the film to have arbitrary hip hop music and iconic black (or other minority) images instead of, say, a protagonist who just happens to be black?
Consider the first Karate Kid. Here is Ralph “ethnically ambiguous” Machio. A skinny Mediterranean kid from Jersey who finds himself on the blunt end of an early butt whoopin’. The antagonists: a group of white, blonde haired, blue eyed California boys who might as well have been wearing SS uniforms. Whether intentional or not, the film is full of race oppression, and ends with Machio – an icon of all minorities in the film – gaining the respect of his uber-white peers through standing up for himself and exercising self-dicipline and character.
Cut to anything done today, where ubiquitous hip-hop music and animated, over-the-top blackup typifies any film with characters under 25. Let me take a shot in the dark at the fate of our new Karate Kid. Has a single mother who probably moved to China for a job ’cause Daddy left them high and dry. She wants to be a good mother, but can’t help him because her job takes all her time or she thinks fighting doesn’t solve anything. New Karate Kid rebels by being indignant, and an all-around little bastard in trying to deal with his bum circumstances, manifest in petty crime, a desire to rebel against authority, trite vernacular English, and feelings of racial isolation.
Is this really the black character that African-American culture wants to put forward? The kid has corn-rows for cryin’ out loud and couldn’t harbor anymore archetypical black stereotypes if he sported bling and wore his pants around his ankles.
I have little doubt that any MTV-ifying of this classic film’s remake will do little more than hurt the depth of the film while boosting the initial bottom line. Even the not-so-subtle references to the first film in the preview (sure to be rife in the actual film) speak to the certain watering down of this remake.
They’ll make it hip, pay tribute to the original, and then they don’t have to worry about making it any good, ’cause people will see it anyway.
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