How to Train Your Dragon (2010)
It’s quite unfortunate for the team at Dreamworks that How to Train Your Dragon
came out around the same time as Avatar. They’re not the same movie, to be sure, but they both have the whole theme of taming some flying beast so you can ride it into battle.
The plot, realistically speaking, is fairly formulaic in nature. You get the social outcast (Hiccup) who doesn’t quite live up to the Viking way of life and he manages to befriend a dragon, rather than slay one. Through this friendship, he learns that there is a lot more to these flying beasts than their insistence on burning down their homes and stealing their food.
At the end of the day, I found myself enjoying Despicable Me a fair bit more than How to Train Your Dragon. The comedic elements aren’t particularly strong and the end result is yet another animated movie that blends in with all the rest. It’s no Toy Story 3, that’s for sure.
The Karate Kid (2010)
I went in fully expecting that this remake would be bad. And it completely lived up to those expectations. How can you have The Karate Kid
I give credit to the movie makers for attempting to recreate many of the legendary scenes from the 80s original, but so few remakes ever live up to the source material. For my part, I’d rather spend the time re-watching how to wax on, wax off, and sweep the leg than put up with this brutal facsimile.
Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010)
You have to go in to Resident Evil Afterlife
Grown Ups (2010)
Despite having a premise that is anything but original, I was hopeful that the cast of Grown Ups
Not a good weekend for movies for ya? I want to point out that you can call it “The Karate Kid” technically. The reason is that Karate in translation Empty = Kara Hand = Te
The Kung Fu he is learning, is more Empty Hand that weapons, so……stretching the rubber band makes the title correct.
That’s a bit of a stretch, because you can start clumping together all kinds of martial arts together and call them all karate.
But they do that already!
I’m a 2nd Dan in Okinawan Shuri Ryu Karatedo and I cringe when I see everything called Karate just because it looks good on the sign and gets more people to come in and sign up. karate actually comes from the Okinawan people studying the Chinese styles of martial arts (Kung Fu) and adapting it to life on Okinawa. Gichin Funakoshi actually called it karate when he was asked to come to Japan to teach his Shurite to the Japanese people.
So, Kung Fu is the father of karate.
I understand that, but just as the Ford Model T is the “father” of the modern combustible engine vehicle, we don’t go around referring to a Lamborghini as a Model T.
But that analogy isn’t the same. The Ford engine is not even close to the engine that is made today. Whereas, Empty Hand is Empty Hand. It hasn’t changed that much, and I forgot to mention that the initial kanji for Karate meant China Hand. Funakoshi changed the kanji, which is very similar, to make it mean Empty.
In my book, The Karate Kid (2010) ranked up there as far as shitty Hollywood remake goes.
Instead of the classic wax-on, wax-off moves, they re-invented the wheel and came out with “take off the shirt and hang it up” move.
Not even Jackie Chan can save it.
You’re totally right about The Karate Kid. I’m normally not a fan of remakes anyway and I had a feeling before it was even released that it would be a dud. It’s very rare that a remake actually matches up to, let alone surpasses, the original. True Grit is one that apparently is such a movie released recently though.
I’ve been meaning to go and see “Grown ups” for the longest time, I guess I just haven’t gotten around to that yet. I definitely didn’t even wanna see The Karate Kid, in general I am not a huge fan of remakes.
-Jean
I’ve seen grown ups and karate kid. they didn’t live up to the hype but at least they weren’t a total loss.