Sony may have skipped San Diego Comic-Con, but they came to the Big Apple on Friday for New York Comic Con showing off exclusively to the room, and not to anyone else, the first trailer for Karate Kid: Legends, which brings back not only OG Ralph Macchio’s Danny LaRusso from the original 1984 movie and Cobra Kai series, but also Jackie Chan’s Mr. Han from the 2010 Jaden Smith reboot. The film is billed as reuniting all the Karate Kid worlds.
Karate Kid: Legends opens May 30. The one sheet and the title debuted this morning. No talent was onstage.
The trailer for Karate Kid: Legends begins in a martial arts academy, where Chan’s instructor from the 2010 film shows up to recruit the movie’s young star, Ben Wang. At the academy, we also get our first look at Macchio — as well as a glimpse of a portrait of Pat Morita’s character from the original film. The action quickly switches to New York and a montage showing the city in some of its more intimidating moments including bullies on the subway, and Chan’s voice is heard saying, “In life you only have one question: Is it worth fighting for or not?”
One fight sequence shows Wang hurtling up a brick wall, parkour-style, in an alley. In a calmer moment, he sits on a curb with Macchio, donning the movie’s iconic head scarf. In between scenes, including flashes of martial arts matches, words flash on the screen: “When families unite a new legacy begins.”
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Kraven the Hunter star Aaron Taylor-Johnson made a surprise appearance at Sony’s panel for the Marvel action movie, which lived up to its R rating in a pair of bloody clips shown exclusively to the NYCC audience.
Sony screened the film’s first seven minutes, which begins in a Russian prison colony that Kraven enters as an inmate before revealing his true purpose: to kill an imprisoned mob boss. Kraven does so with brutal theatricality, driving the tooth from the head of a Siberian tiger rug into his victim’s neck. A second clip shows him making short, gory work of a commando-style team sent into a forest to try to either capture or kill him. One of Kraven’s would-be assailants winds up with a bear trap wrapped around his face. Director J.C. Chandor practically said to expect as much, describing the project as both a character study and an opportunity for “some really intense grindhouse.”
Pic’s blurb: Kraven’s (Taylor-Johnson) complex relationship with his ruthless father, Nikolai Kravinoff (Russell Crowe), starts him down a path of vengeance with brutal consequences, motivating him to become not only the greatest hunter in the world, but also one of its most feared.
Chandor told the attendees at the Empire Stage, “Aaron Taylor-Johnson was born to play Kraven.”
“He’s real, he’s not a visual effects monster, he’s a man who has made a choice to be a hunter,” Taylor-Johnson, said taking the stage.
In regards to whether Kraven is a conservationist, the Golden Globe-winning Nocturnal Animals actor said, “Like all great hunters, Kraven respects his prey, top of the food chain … he’s a hunter, not a poacher. Like every hunter knows, sometimes you have to call the herd, to call order. Once he applies to human beings, it becomes a dark story.”
Kraven the Hunter opens December 13.
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Sony saved Venom: The Last Dance for last with star/co-scribe Tom Hardy, director/scribe Kelly Marcel, Juno Temple and Chiwetel Ejiofor.
“It’s sad to see him go,” said Hardy about his last go-round as the anti-hero.
Marcel says “we’re always starting with the comics and the books, it always starts there.” Hardy joked that he just talks at Marcel, while she acknowledged that there’s “a lot of drawings.”
Hardy expressed his adoration for playing the part as he’s deeply involved in the “fiber of it.”
Part three picks up after part two. Eddie and Venom are fugitives on the run, outed from the big finale fight in Venom: Let There Be Carnage.
Ejiofor plays a military man in the threequel “dealing with these creatures.” As Dr. Payne, Temple’s character doesn’t agree with Ejiofor’s.
Temple and Hardy starred in Dark Knight Rises, but acknowledge that they had never worked together in a given production day on that set.
Marcel teased while this is the last Venom movie, there “are other symbiote stories,” and this threequel will likely nod its way to what’s next.
“I would like to fight Spider-Man, I’d like to fight him now,” exclaimed Hardy to the crowd.
“As you or Venom?” asked the moderator.
Beamed Hardy, “Both!”