Jolt Country

Sony Pictures has announced that a reboot of The Karate Kid is in the works, scheduled for a 2024 release date. 2024 marks the 40th anniversary of the original film, and comes 14 years after the reboot. Er, the first reboot.

There are multiple reasons that movies get remade or rebooted, almost all of them bad. Sometimes it's as simple as a director admiring a film so much that s/he decides to remake it for vanity purposes Sometimes these directors make shot-for-shot remakes (Gus Van Zant's 1998 Psycho, or the 1997 remake of 12 Angry Men) while other directors add their own flavor (Rob Zombie's Halloween). More frequently, film studios remake films to cash in on trends or nostalgia. ("Hm, we've got a few kids who can dance... Footloose was a film about kids dancing against the machine... yeah!") Horror movies trending at the box office? Let's remake Friday the 13th! And A Nightmare on Elm Street! And Halloween! And The Hills Have Eyes! And The Amityville Horror! And Carrie! And... well, you get the idea. Because people are familiar with these brands, they are simple to market and have an established audience. Studios know the scripts work because they already worked. Imagine trying to explain Star Wars to someone who has never seen it. ("Wait, wait, wait -- what the hell is a Jawa?") It's much easier to market, say, a remake of Footloose. It's a movie people liked, but with new young faces your kids will recognize. And of course there's the nostalgic factor. I liked Red Dawn as a kid but my kids hate 80s movies, so when they remade it... hey, win/win!

The other reason these movies get made is to reverse the genders or swap ethnicities. Remember Can't Buy Me Love? They remade it with black people and renamed it Love Don't Cost a Thing. Remember the original Overboard? On that one they swapped genders -- this time he's the yacht owner and she's the employee -- and remade it as well. Sure, they did Ghostbusters with four dudes, but what if they rebooted it with four ladies? Then there are remakes that do both. Remember What Women Want? They remade that as What Men Want, with a black actress. Every box checked!

The reason these films work as remakes is because they are timeless stories. "A Star Is Born" worked in 1937 with Janet Gaynor; it worked in 1954 with Judy Garland, in 1976 with Barbara Streisand, and again in 2018 with Lady Gaga.

Which brings us back to a remake of The Karate Kid which, for multiple fundamental reasons, I don't think will work.

At the core of the 1984 original we had Daniel LaRusso, the new kid in town who dated the wrong girl and got crossways with the school's gang of bullies who also happened to be members of the Cobra Kai dojo. After assaulting Daniel a couple of times and ganging up on him in a five on one beating, the fight is broken up by Miyagi, who gives the bullies a free karate lesson and ultimately trains Daniel in the art of karate so that he can not only protect himself, but eventually defeat the Cobra Kai at the local tournament.

A couple of things to address here. In the 1980s, this is how shit got solved. If you stole another man's woman, you had better be prepared to defend yourself on the playground after school. One time I told my bus driver that some kids were getting off at the wrong stop just to beat me up and she suggested I double-knot my shoelaces so I wouldn't trip over them while running home. I knew a kid who got stitches after taking a hit to the temple by a metal lunchbox. The 1980s were brutal. Back then, we called it taking your lumps.

Today, we call them "felonies." If five kids wearing skeleton costumes were to have cornered my kid and beat the shit out of him, the next day the police would be at the school and it would be on the news. And likewise, if any teenager -- bully or not -- ever gets karate chopped by a middle-aged maintenance man, you can bet your Bonsai tree that'll make the papers.

Also, let's talk about karate. I took karate for seven or eight years and quit after I became a brown belt (my place wouldn't let you test for black belt until you were 18 and I had no interest in being a brown belt for 2 1/2 years). Three nights a week we kicked bags, punched Styrofoam heads, practiced defending ourselves from knives and fought each other. Remind me to tell you about the time I was sparring against two people and got knocked out, only to wake up with an adult's hand halfway down my throat because he (mistakenly) thought I was choking on my mouthpiece. Fast forward 30+ years. My nephew took karate for a while. He was an orange belt with a bunch of stripes or something. They weren't allowed to hit each other. Nobody ever bled. I'm not sure this is a generation that can relate to the Karate Kid.

Another problem with the original story is the idea of an old Asian man working as a repairman who happens to be a karate master. You know who doesn't like Asian stereotypes like that? Asian people. Also, in 1984, I was young enough to believe that there were grown people willing to defend a kid and teach him karate for no reason. When's the last time you saw some kid in your neighborhood and was like, you know what, maybe I'll just invite that kid into my home and teach them karate. Yeah, that's called Stranger Danger. We teach our kids not to do that. If my 16 year old came home with a classic restored car and said oh yeah that nice maintenance man who lets me hang out at his place every day gave it to me, that's about the time you break out the dolls and start asking your kid where the nice maintenance man touched them with his screwdriver.

Last week I saw a kid taking a wooden pallet from a trash pile and dragging it down the street. You think I went out there and helped him? No. I got my phone and took like 20 pictures. And a video. I don't know what he was going to do with that thing but I got 200 likes on TikTok. You think I'm teaching a kid karate? Jesus.

The one time my son got bullied, a bunch of girls at his school got together and texted him things like "kill yourself" over and over. That's what bullying is today. It's saying mean things about other kids in Snapchat or getting some classmate to send you nudes and then Airdropping them to everyone in school. Maybe that's what 2024 Karate Kid will be about. Some kid is getting bullied over the phone and the building's IT worker shows him how to block callers not on his contact list. I would watch that. Then the man would be like hey, you wanna come inside and play Xbox and then the kid's Life 360 would go off and his mom would call and be like, "why are you in someone else's apartment? STRANGER DANGER." And then the kid secretly recorded the old man and uploads it to TikTok and is like "fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuk old people lol" There's you Karate Kid remake.

What's the oldest kid you think you could beat up. You think you could beat up an 18 year old? We're talking one year away from playing college football. I don't know. I think I could kick most 12 year old's asses. Like, sight unseen. I will fight any 12 year old. There, I said it. It's on the record.

Things went off the rails here somewhere.

The problem with anyone making something related to populr culture is that the people greenlighting the project are 20 years older than the culture they are trying to emulate or examine.

It's like the saying, "The generals all design plans for fighting the pervious war," They look at how things were back in their day when they were the age that the work they are creating is intended to cover, then presume it's still that way now (the now of when the picture was made).

I have an article about the regular sexual mores change direction. It's a whole separate issue so I won't go over it here. Read that on Caltrops.

So, again, the point is that those who have to decide what to offer audiences are often offering selections from what was popular for that age range a generation ago when things were at that age back then.

The 2011 remake of Footloose made $63 million in theaters worldwide.

Flack wrote: Fri Sep 23, 2022 10:24 am The 2011 remake of Footloose made $63 million in theaters worldwide.

Granting for the sake of argument it did do so, that means nothing unless we know how much it costs to make it. 63 mil is a nice return, unless it cost more than half that, as overhead and expenses mean a film usually does not make a profit until it earns back 2x production cost.

I would also guess that there were two additional factors in it being successful. One, they had competent writers and director, and two, that they had conversations with current teenagers on what is going on in their world, and actually listened.

I think Flack was implying profit by his use of the word "made." I get your point, Commander. I do. But I think Flack was saying that was what the profit was.

And if you disagree, perhaps there should be a dance off!

Will there ever be a new movie franchise that makes people stand in line for hours to see it? Is the era of the movie blockbuster over? Are all the stories told now?


THE
BACK COVER
AARDVARK

Hidden on the Footloose wikipedia article.

Flack wrote: Fri Sep 23, 2022 4:27 pm Hidden on the Footloose wikipedia article.

I didn't bother validating what you said, because (1) I didn't care one way or the other. I make no profit and take no loss, no matter what it does, make money or lose money.
(2) I have no obligation in a discussion to verify or validate someone else's claims. In any discussion over an issue, the person making a positive claim is the one bearing the burden of proof. I made no positive claim, I made a negative claim, and you came back with an example which conceivably could put paid to my claim. Because I really didn't care if it made or lost money, I conceded for the sake of argument it was true. If I felt there was a point to make or I thought you might be wrong, then I would probably have checked.

From what I know of you, Flack, I figure that you're not the type to make unsubstantiated claims, especially involving facts. Also, instead of saying, "conceding for the sake of argument that is the case" I could have said, "accepting that as true in this case." If the issue were important to me, I would verify. I can make mistakes, or have errors, but generally I don't make false claims intentionally. Usually I just take what people say as correct unless suspicion is raised that the actual facts contradict what they say.

The Boy That Dances Away Oppression!