The Kung Fu Kid (The Karate Kid - 2010 edit)

Original Film Name: The Karate Kid
Film Studio Name: Columbia Pictures
Film Release Date: 2010
Original Runtime: 140 min.
Fanedit Release Date: Jan. 2011
New Runtime: 108 min.
Amount of time cut: 32 min.

Intention: The goal of this edit was fairly simple. That is, to tighten up the film and give it more of a centralized focus of the relationship between student and teacher and the journey Dre takes to overcome his issues of fear and displacement.

How did I achieve this? I basically took an axe to much of the scenes involving Dre's "love" interest, and to some of the scenes with Dre's mom. There are other smaller pieces removed as well to improve overall pacing.

Cutlist:

* Cut opening scene in apartment in Detroit and of everyone sending them on their way, including Dre's friend giving him a skateboard.
* Cut scene of Dre's mom forcing him to speak Chinese to the stranger on the plane as well as the rest of their conversation.
* Cut Dre's mom talking about nothing being old in China as they arrive.
* Cut Dre's line about where his mom worked.
* Cut Dre's mom's talk about eating together everyday and the "Airplane lag" bit.
* Cut shot of Dre trying to explain to workers about hot water being out.
* Cut short scene when Dre first goes to school. Removed his mom demanding he return her "I love you."
* Cut Mr. Han's comment about saving the environment when showing Dre how the water switch works.
* Cut scene at school where Dre see's girl practicing her instrument and then being picked on by Chinese kids.
* CUt scene of Dre pretending to sleep with TV on.
* Shorten scene of Dre's mom trying to find out why he's upset.
* Shorten chase scene to remove some of the more over the top moments.
* Remove girl asking Dre to festival.
* Remove Dre trying to hide his jacket so he doesn't have to work with it.
* Cut Dre's mom arriving at Mr. Hans to take them to festival.
* Cut entire festival scene.
* Trim Mr. Han working on car.
* Cut Mr. Han telling Dre they won't be working the next day.
* Cut "date" scene (parts used later).
* Cut girl's audition and her father forbidding her from seeing Dre.
* Removed scenes during training montage involving girl avoiding Dre (Replaced with a few moments from "date").
* Removed scene of Dre asking forgiveness from girl's father.
* Replaced music during tournament with "You're the Best."
* Altered subtitle so Dre has more than just two minutes to have treatment given by Mr. Han (sorry for those who know Chinese).

* New title added near the beginning.


Available Now:
SL DVD (MU)
720p AVCHD (MU)

5.1 ac3 audio

Disclaimer: Source material has Cinavia protection and in certain blu-ray players (PS3 included) audio will mute after a time.

Just sat thru the dvd making edit notes to myself, and you've covered every one of them, kudos I'll be checking out soon. Thx!

Just had a Karate Kid marathon, parts 1-3, on New Year's Eve and watched The New Karate Kid last night. I was surprised at how true to the story they stayed since I hadn't seen the original in years, since I was a kid really. Aside from having him movie to China instead of Los Angeles and modernizing it a bit the movie is pretty much the same. It's amazing what two bad casting choices can do to a great movie, and by great I'm talking about the original of course :lol: . Looks like you got rid of a lot of stuff that bothered me so I can't wait to see how your edit ended up.

A question about Cinavia protection. I just googled it to see what it was and it seems it only affects newer Blu-Ray players and PS3's. Shouldn't DVD ripping software be able to remove this form of copy protection though?

Kevinicus said:

Disclaimer: Source material has Cinavia protection and in certain blu-ray players (PS3 included) audio will mute after a time (at least I think so, it does on a blu-ray).

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This part troubles me. Is this something you added or could not circumvent?

thunderclap said:

This part troubles me. Is this something you added or could not circumvent?

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Could not circumvent, at least there's no way I know of yet (it's been about a month since I checked). I suppose if someone sent me the the .ac3 file from the retail DVD instead of the blu-ray source that I used I could see if I could apply the edits to that and get one that will work on all players. As far as I know it's only a handful of blu-ray players that are capable of dealing with this protection. Most blu-ray players, and all DVD players should play without issue.

I'm also not sure if the protection only applies to blu-ray discs, or if DVDs in said blu-ray players are affected as well.

And of course, I still need cover art for those interested.

Kevinicus said:

I suppose if someone sent me the the .ac3 file from the retail DVD instead of the blu-ray source that I used I could see if I could apply the edits to that and get one that will work on all players.

Click to expand...

This would be discouraged publicly.

TV's Frink said:

This would be discouraged publicly.

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I don't see how, as long as both parties own copies of the original movie.

If he owns the source, no reason to ask for it.

TV's Frink said:

If he owns the source, no reason to ask for it.

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The DVD doesn't contain the Cinavia protection where the blu-ray does. Alas I got blu-ray only, not the combo with DVD not knowing about the Cinavia protection.

Kevinicus said:

And of course, I still need cover art for those interested.

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Where is this film set? china? hong kong? And i know that i should know this, but, is kung fu a chinese or japanese thing?

China, in Beijing.

Chinese thing.

Kevinicus said:

The DVD doesn't contain the Cinavia protection where the blu-ray does. Alas I got blu-ray only, not the combo with DVD not knowing about the Cinavia protection.

Click to expand...

I guess the question is if you have to also own the DVD if you want to use the DVD. Obviously it's worse to use the Blu-ray if you only own the DVD rather than the other way around, but still...I don't know if this would be considered ok or not.

My opinion is that, as long as one owns a store-bought copy of the movie, format is irrelevant. More so taking in consideration that formats are changing all the time.

Or does that imply that those of us that don't own the movie on BD won't be able to download and watch the edit, even owning the movie on DVD?

If you only own the DVD, I don't think you should be able to DL the HD version. It gets trickier going the other way, but...well, look at it this way. Should you be able to download a DVD fanedit if you only own the retail VHS?

I think format is relevant.

TV's Frink said:

Should you be able to download a DVD fanedit if you only own the retail VHS?

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Yes. If I have a perfectly good copy of a movie, I'm not one to upgrade, or double-dip or triple-dip (I rebought a lot of VHS movies on DVD because of the original aspect ratio that VHS mostly ignored, but you get the idea). And I have paid for the movie, sometimes more than the cost of a DVD, so I have right to watch the fanedit. Plus, some fanedits I've seen looked worse than VHS :embarassed:

Forget "the right" to watch a fanedit for a moment. From both a legal and a moral standpoint, it's a grey area. What we are talking about here (for this edit) is what FE.org can accept and what it can't. I might be wrong, but I don't think the admin team would approve an edit where the editor used a DVD source downloaded from a torrent site, regardless of if they owned an expensive VHS copy.

Again, that isn't quite the situation here. Kevinicus is going in the other direction quality-wise, but I still think it's a valid question.

Time for the admins to weigh in, I think.

Remember, we're not talking the video quality here, we're talking audio, which is identical (except for cinavia) once you factor in the downgrade from HD audio to the core ac3 to do the edit in the first place.

I'm not commenting specifically on what should be done in terms of Kevenicus' audio issue (the admin team will decide that). But here's how it used to work:

In the past, it would have been the rule to own the source you are using. So if he wants to use the DVD audio, he has to own it. I'm not sure what the current team thinks about this. The same applies to soundtracks and scores. Owning the DVD doesn't permit you to download the score. If you need a source for the edit, you own the source. Similarly, owning a R1 DVD, doesn't permit you to download a R2 DVD because it has subtle differences in content.

As for the discussion about format and upgrades, I totally agree with Frink, and it has been a long standing rule at FE which (according to my discussions with reave) still stands. Ownership of a lower res copy of the film (VHS, DVD) does not cover you to download and watch a HD edit. It may sound silly to some, but the studios are watching. I can forsee them having major problems with someone not owning the film on Blu-ray or HD-DVD and then grabbing a Blu-ray or AVHCD fanedit. Nit pick about semantics all you want, but FE is in major gray area. It was always the rule of thumb to be better safe than sorry.

But that's some history on the subject. Perhaps the new admin team has a different perspective, though I would be surprised if they did. I'll let one of them weigh in on it.

Just giving my opinion, of course, but I don't think an alternate audio track is comparable to a score. A score is a separate, different commercial product, whilst an alternate audio is just what you already own and paid for, only in a different file.

Let's also consider this: A certain faneditor has been known to include alternate language tracks in their edits. Those tracks are exclusive to the region the source DVD was published in, in this case Region 2, and are not in the Region 1 version of the same edit. Should or should not a person who owns the Region 1 DVD be able to get the edit, or should they buy copies that include all the alternate language tracks even if they're intending to watch the edit in plain English?

Oh, and if any admin thinks some of the content in my posts can negatively affect FE.org's status (as in giving out ideas), feel free to delete them and I'll get the message.

And now, for something completely different, the cover of a great book:

Dwight, I'm not going to argue with your reasoning on the audio. As I said, I'm not going to comment too much specifically on the audio issue here. The admins can chime in with what they think. Whether or not I agree with your reasoning there or not is moot. The fact is, its definitely venturing into the gray area.

What I did want to comment specifically on is the whole resolution and format issue. IMHO, owning a VHS copy of a film does not make it fair to download a DVD, AVCHD or Blu-ray version of an edit. I can foresee the studios having a major issue if we allowed that. I think you should own at least as good a format as the edit you intend to view.

But I think we are steering off from The Kung Fu Kid. Lets get back to the edit. Any further discussion about fair use and formats should go in the general discussions section.