What’s the story with this ‘Karate Kid’ remake, starring Will Smith’s son, Jaden? I don’t do Karate, but it seems to me like this could be another case of film misrepresentation. I mean, if you’re going to call a movie ‘Karate Kid’ then it should feature elements of Karate. What seems obvious from the hype is that they completely changed the characters, the role of Mr. Miyagi, not to mention, turning Karate into Kung fu. How did that happen?? A couple who came in to join the Fitness Kickboxing class asked me what I thought about all this. I told them that it seems like a blatant misuse of the original ‘Karate Kid’ films and that I won’t spend my money watching this on the big screen. Let me digress for a minute…I’m reminded of my undergraduate years, when I had a professor in an Asian American Studies who exposed us to a lot of films that featured unsavory characters, misrepresentations and stereotypes of Asians and its cultural nuances. Unlike him, I’m not out to be extremely critical when it comes to every film. For many Americans, including Asian Americans, this may not be such a big deal. Yet without being overzealous, I won’t spend my money on it. Because by doing so, it’s like saying it’s okay for Hollywood to keep making these overt misrepresentations. By the way, the Fitness Kickboxing couple I talked about earlier, who never did any type of Martial Arts training whatsoever, noticed that the new version of the ‘Karate Kid’ was more like Kung fu and mentioned that Jackie Chan had no idea who Mr. Miyagi was prior to playing this role. Now, if everyday people can spot these mistakes, what more for people who spent their entire lives practicing Karate or Kung fu? There’s certainly a whole lot of inaccuracies going on in this world. But one of the things I cannot tolerate, is the misrepresentation of Martial Arts. At the very least, they should’ve called it the Martial Arts Kid. I have nothing against Jaden. He seems like a great kid with lots of potential. As for the ‘Kung fu Kid’, I mean, the ‘Karate Kid’, I’ll let the audience decide for themselves.