The Karate Kid (2010) remains one of the most successful US–China co-productions to date. What was the secret behind its global success? At this year’s Odyssey Film Festival — themed around #Sports — Senthoran sat down with director Harald Zwart to reflect on the film’s impact, 15 years after it first made waves worldwide.
Senthoran: We have linked your biography above for readers. For context, would you be able to outline the circumstances that led to the making of the Karate Kid?
Harald: I was just finishing Pink Panther 2 around that time, having worked with a great cast with talent like Steve Martin and John Cleese. I was sent the script for Karate Kid and really loved the script. I went in for a pitch competition. And the way my wife and I won the project was by building and presenting a 3D model of Jackie Chan’s (miyagi-esque character) house as a set with revolving doors and contraptions that would have be used when filming. We showed it to the head of Sony at the time, Amy Pascal, as well as Will Smith. They saw the mechanics and heart of the movie through both this and my pitch. My pitch was essentially that this was not a kid’s movie. Any situation where a child is assaulted in a playground is as serious as it would be had it been a grown-up. It was no label of a kid’s movie but in fact a family movie.
Also, I wanted to shoot it in a style more aligned with independent filmmaking with the use of handheld cameras just on the streets and as you can imagine, this would be tricky with massive movie stars like Jackie Chan and Will Smith involved. This spirit of independent filmmaking with a tight-knit crew was how we made the whole film. Will (Smith) really appreciated the filmmaking of it all.
Senthoran: As you know Jackie Chan is having a huge 2025 with tentpole films like Karate Kid: Legends as well as global hit The Shadows Edge. As you mentioned, Jackie’s star power is overwhelming, and I am curious to know the extent to which his sphere of influence affected the filming of Karate Kid. Especially when filming in location.
Harald: He is a massive star. But when it comes down to the making of the movie, he was simply just a great collaborator along with the rest of the crew. In fact, once I caught him vacuuming the carpet! He was always helping out. It becomes a little group of people who wanted to make the best movie possible. None of use really considered how big stardom came into things. We only noticed that when we shot one sequence in the streets of Beijing. I believe Jackie is carrying Jaden back home from
the mountain after the training, that shot did not make the final cut of the movie, and we thought: Let’s wing it. Let’s just shoot It… and we got one take done. The moment everyone realised he was there we could not shoot anymore. Just pandemonium.
You know, this idea of “Jacket on, Jacket off’ in the movie… that came from Jackie the first time I met him! We were trying to figure out an equivalent of “Paint on, Paint off” (from the 1984 film), and he said “Kung fu is anything it could even be raising a kid with discipline”. That sort of became the new idea, so it came from him!
Senthoran: Wow, and speaking of training sequences, one of the most memorable shots of the film, and really of my childhood, is that beautiful shot of the lady martial artist mimicking a snake at a shrine atop Wudong Mountain. Looking back, it almost feels Herzog-esque with its ambiance. The scene is also a distinct addition in relation the 1984 film. How did this come to be? What was the inspiration for this?
Harald: Will has a great research team and we had access to every kung fu expert available. We spoke to historians, and we had access to a lot of super smart people, but no one really came up with a good solution. In my mind it can’t just be another move, can’t just be another crane move. We had to elevate it – it needs to be something mental. Something larger than life.
And I had this conversation with this kung fu expert, and I had asked him, “What kind of stance do you use? “
And he said, he doesn’t normally have a pose, because he invited people into his peace. ‘I don’t want to take a stance to be fighting, I am just peaceful and I invite you to join you in my peace”
Afterwards, he had said ‘I don’t know if you had noticed, but I’ve been tilting my head to one side, and then you had tilted your head to the same side, when I tilted the other direction, you had done the same”
I replied, ‘Oh my god, you are right, I’ve been tilting my head exactly the way you’ve been tilting your head’
There it was, there I had my idea. That was the endpoint. From there we reverse engineered the script to incorporate this philosophy. We do that in scriptwriting sometimes.
Senthoran: Karate Kid is a singular success, in its success both in the Chinese domestic box office and overseas. To what extent did you mold the story to appeal to Chinese sensibility?
Harald: In the end, you should not star a film by saying, ‘How do we make the audience?’ It’s the wrong end. We just fell in love with China. It was the festivals, the temples and just this enormous culture that we felt we just got to have in the film. Really a respect for the tradition that underpins it all.
We had a great collaboration with China Film Group. We were the first co-production with them, and in fact we were the only people who were allowed to open the central doors in the Forbidden City. Reason being, we wanted the shot to be symmetrical, and somebody pulled some strings to open the doors. The front gates had not been open since the shooting of The Last Emperor (1987).
But overall, it was really a love letter to China, I had lived there for a few years and just loved every moment of it. I thought it was an amazing place.
Senthoran: Working with the CFB is an incredible opportunity. What lessons have you learned that could inform people who are exploring potential U.K.- China co-productions? Especially in terms of balancing the commercial and filmmaking components. Also, what your approach to addressing any cultural misunderstanding whilst shooting?
Harald: Deals were made for sure. That was very smart people who somehow figured the logistics out. We were only interested in making the best possible story whilst being respectful.
There was so much we wanted to show – the markets, local artisans – all this craftsmanship. I never felt resistance of any sort.
The technical side of things were all the crew involved and that’s collaborative by nature like shooting anywhere in the world. Jackie’s crew managed the stunt choreography, so we were focused on the story. There may be timing misunderstandings between cast, but we can just do another take.
As an aside, here is a story I recall from casting for the character Mei Ying. We had all these talented Chinese ladies that would audition, and they could all speak English and play the violin. The problem is they did not give the feeling of being a world apart (from Jaden’s character).
Keep in mind those are the only two real requirements for the role. Here she (Wen Wen) comes, and she was from out of town – did not speak English and had never touched a violin. We did a chemistry test with her and Jaden, and she was amazing, conveyed emotion so well. We showed the video footage of the auditions to Amy back in America and Amy was equally impressed. Amy did ask, ‘What are you going to do?’. And we just said she will learn the lines. She learned all the lines phonetically and she had no idea what she was saying.
And then there was the violin. I just needed her to play one bar of Chopin. We went with expert trainers, and she just played that one bar, again and again. So that is the first tracking shot, and then the rest is just two girls playing the left and right hands like a puppet show. It just goes to show that you must go for the right person!
Senthoran: Now I must ask – and this is a question I and others have debated over the years – it is technically kung-fu being practiced and not karate. Were there any discussions to call this the Kung-Fu Kid?
Harald: We went back and forth on that a lot – spent so much time on that. We built it into the movie. In the playground, they say ‘Oh look, it’s the Karate Kid’, they’re making fun of him here. So, we turned ‘Karate Kid’, into a stigma.
We thought, it’s the Karate Kid franchise. As long as we address it in the movie, and we justify it somehow, then its fine. We all know it’s Kung Fu in China, you know? I guess that’s how we got away with it.
Senthoran: And they have retconned it in your favour! It seems the Miyagi family is a descendant of the Han family branch and so the Okinawan Karate that was practiced in Hollywood, once upon a time, came from those those mountains you showed us. Finally, if you had any advice for the future filmmakers and craftsmen, we would love to hear it.
Harald: There is something that Will (Smith) said that struck me. He said genius balances on the edge of pathetic. Either the audience fully accepts it, or they do not buy it at all. Think of the ending of Blade Runner (1982), when Rutger Hauer is sitting there in the rain – crying. He tells us about the Tannhauser gate, tells us of all the things has seen. You’re sitting there going, ‘Oh my God, the Tannhauser gate!’.
Don’t hold back, you have to go all the way with your emotions. It may sound a little weird on set, people may say ‘Is that too much?’
No. Always go to the Edge. No one has made a movie about ‘Alexander the Average.’
Senthoran: I am sure that last line will have people thinking about their approach. Rest in peace Rutger Hauer, truly a great, and I am sure he is amongst the C-beams that glitter in the dark.
Thank you sincerely for your time. On behalf of UCFC and Odyssey, we look forward to supporting your future work, and excited to see where our respective journeys take us.
Bonus: The photos of the 3D designs that Harald and his wife Veslemøy Zwart had built to win the Karate Kid project at Sony Pictures.
Karate Kid (2010) is being recommended as part of Odyssey 2025 the festival programme.
