Mr. Miyagi vs Mr. Han

Saw the remake of Karate Kid last week with a friend, and my main takeaway from it is... it's too dang long!

It was nice enough, don't get me wrong. I guess I just had an awful day at work then and what was supposed to be a no-brainer evening turned into something semi-dramatic. But let's not wander too far off from the movie now.

So, if you pitted Miyagi-san with Laosher Han, Han would put up a good fight but I'm betting my money on Miyagi. (Read this as: I liked the classic better.) Cinematography-wise, this remake was bigger, more scenic, more dramatic. But then again, that's because it probably has more budget than the original. Since the setting has been change from middle America to CHINA!, there was a lot of Chinglish talk that my too-tired brain couldn't decipher. Oh, and when the subtitles were brought out, the dialogues were near copies of the original script. There was a point in the final "battle" scene that was verbatim to the original, except executed in Mandarin! Haha! (I'm such a geek, I have quotable quotes from every movie!)

It's all well and good that you a coming-of-age classic such as The Karate Kid is remade for the new generation, but I was hoping they'd throw in a couple of new twists into the movie! Not practically copy the original's storyline. Hay. Where's the creativity in that? In the throwing in of China bit?

Don't get me wrong, it was good. My friend and I had our laughs during the movie, but there was no discussion on it after. For me, that's my determinant factor if a movie was great or not, if the people leaving the cinema can't stop talking about it. That's was Iron Man 2 did for me, mainly because of Sam Rockwell as Justin Hammer, but still! This one though, absolutely no talk points at the end! Sadness.

I guess this is what the older generation felt like when Shutter Island's remake came out with Leo. Good modernization, good scenic cinematography... but storywise it's all the same. Remakes really are not for the generation of the original. It's for the appreciation of the new kids in the world, those seeing the material for the first time ever.

So, for this critic, Miyagi wins it, still. But ask a newbie, too. S/he'll most likely ask, "Miyagi who?"