Jaden Smith, the New Karate Kid

If "Never Back Down" was not enough - Recently I read at Variety that Jaden Smith will, officially, be the next Karate Kid. That's right - Thanks to his daddy, one of the producers of the new film, Will Smith. Mr. Smith has been wanting the rights to this franchise (The Karate Kid) for some time now and has finally got them. I'm not for sure on how long he's had them but at this point that doesn't matter - He has them and is now going to try to re-vamp the series. Honestly, is this really necessary?

The original 1984 version of The Karate Kid was not amazing by any means. As a matter of fact, if you look back, it is quite terrible. The writing would, nowadays, be considered extremely cliche and frowned upon. The acting performances would be considered putrid, and there are even problems with editing here and there. The direction of the film... Well that's an entire other article! However, as I've mentioned in previous articles, there is an essence that films carry and The Karate Kid was a hit because of it. It is a classic.

Anyway, this new Karate Kid film is set to be shot in Beijing, China and a few other cities (probably around Beijing?). To me it doesn't sound like a great idea to have this film based in China, it just seems a little weird, but I have been wrong about things like this before. Maybe it's just being shot in China and in the film it will be described as a "sacred area of California" somewhere or something.

There's just something that doesn't play out in my head about all of this in general. Has anyone noticed Will Smith's recent growing collection of remake films? He's on a roll. Remaking "Superman" (basically) with "Hancock", "Last Man on Earth" with "I Am Legend", "Oldboy", and now he is going to be responsible for the remake of The Karate Kid. If you go to any film forum of any kind, you will see that Will Smith is slowly losing his credibility. Whether or not he cares is another thing, but unless he wants to keep earning big bucks at the box office he should probably be very cautious about what he does within the next five years. That's just my opinion though. Just look at what happened with Tom Cruise - Great actor, but he's got about 5% credibility (if any, really) left on his dock due to the lack of a great publicist.

The only (seemingly) good thing about this new Karate Kid film is that Jerry Weintraub, the man who was responsible for launching the original franchise, will return as a producer alongside Will Smith, James Lassiter, and Kevin Stovitz. The film is scheduled to start shooting next year and according to the article published by Variety, it seems to have nearly the same plot as the original film. With the growing trend of Hollywood inappropriately casting particular people into roles nowdays, (which I am convinced is mainly just for "kicks and giggles") I would not be surprised to see a guy like Zach Braff be Jaden Smith's "Karate master" in the film. If they did that, I'd definitely go see the film, that's for sure!

What's next, Snoop Dogg as James Bond?