Director Harald Zwart on "The Karate Kid"

MakingOf: You really wanted the job.  Tell us why and tell us how you got brought into the mix.

(Harald Zwart): Well, after I met Amy I met Will (Smith) and we had a really good conversation.  He responded to my take on the movie, which was that I kind of wanted to make it almost as if it was like an independent movie, very handheld, very reality based, very emotional.  I talk more about that than the actual fights.  I also wanted the fights to be very realistic.  I've had my share of fighting back home where I come from, and it's as serious to a twelve year old boy as it would be to a grown up.  So what I thought was really important was that I don't want to treat it as a kids movie.  To me it's not a kids movie.  It's like "Stand By Me," it's a grown up movie with kids in it.  From the beginning I wanted the fighting to be as in-your-face dangerous and emotionally tough as The Bourne Identities and all those fights, which I think are great fight scenes.  So that was my template for that, and I think all of these ideas just really sunk up with how he had seen the movie, and Overbrook in general and Sony.  So I got hired and off we went to China, and started scouting, and getting everything together.

MO: What would you say would be the biggest surprise for people who may have an idea in their mind about the karate kid when they come to the theater?

(HZ):Well I've heard from people who've seen the movie so far that they forget after a few minutes that they're watching the remake.  It takes on its own life, which I'm really happy with.  We also wanted to have a nod at the original, so if you look really carefully you can see the iconic, the fly sweater, you know, the fly and the stick, that was an idea that we had of, sort of signing a contract with the audience saying 'We know that you're waiting for these moments, and you're going to get them.  You're just going to get them a little differently.'  So you can see the crane move in there as a shadow on the wall.  In one scene Jackie (Chan) is washing the car, but doesn't mention anything of it.  So those moments are all in there, and I think people will appreciate that we've really just taken the idea and the core story and respected that and made it again a deep and emotional movie. 

But I think the biggest surprise, you know, I think people are going to be amazed at Jaden (Smith), how fantastic of an actor he is.  It's such a great performance, both emotionally and physically.  But you'll also be very surprised at Jackie, I don't think anybody has seen Jackie like this before.

MO:This is just an opportunity for you to talk a little bit about kung fu, because it's kung fu, not karate, and there's been a little bit of dialogue about that.  Tell us the reasoning behind that.

(HZ):Well the karate versus kung fu was a very early conversation we had, and I think the smart idea was to make "The Karate Kid" title the stigma.  He comes to China having just learned karate from some video tapes he has.  The first fight he gets into he gets into a karate pose.  We had it in the movie, we didn't need it after a while, but it's in there that they make fun of him because he does karate and they all do kung fu.  So it became a stigma, which I thought was a really good idea.  That was much more of a good reason to keep the title than what, most people think it's a marketing idea, but that has also proven to be a much better, you know, the brand "Karate Kid," it's much bigger than establishing a new kung fu kid, which I guess would have been the name.  But it works in the story, and when you see the movie, you know, his mom, she doesn't really know the difference.  So there's a scene where they go and see this kung fu school and when they walk home she says 'You didn't like that karate class?' and he says 'it's not karate mom,' so we know and they know the difference, and we point it out in a sort of elegant fashion I think.

MO:Can you paint one picture for us of, maybe a behind the scenes of what life was like on set for a particular scene?

(HZ):I wanted to go into the streets of Beijing and I wanted to go into these temples where you can't show up with 90 trucks.  So we all sat down and I said 'We have to make a light version of our crew where there is no video photographers shooting behind the scenes, there's no makeup, we do makeup back at the hotel.  We'll arrive in one van.  Will (Smith), you put on a baseball cap and sunglasses.'  You know, because you can't walk around the streets with Will and Jackie.  With Jackie it's Beatlemania when you walk around with him.  So they, all these guys, we back it up into the neighborhood, one little clampshell monitor, we'll bring these lenses, and we'll just jump out and we'll shoot it.  And that's how we got the real streets, and that's how we got the airport, that's how we got the forbidden cities in all those locations; because we were just small, and that's where the independent movie making idea sort of played in. 

Also when we went to these mountains, you know it's a place where you fly down for two hours, and you drive another two hours, and then you take a bus for another hours, and then you take a 40 minute gondola, which is smaller than this.  So I knew I couldn't go up there with the whole crew.  So that was one place where you saw Jackie carrying lens cases, and Will was carrying sound equipment.  We were just a handful of people shooting all those scenes, and that gave that movie a very realistic, and just a great spirit.  And when you see Jackie Chan, and Will Smith, and even Jaden, you know, just carrying stuff because we all want to get the picture, or get the shot before the sun goes down, you feel that you're pulling the same train.  That is an enormous energy which is unforgettable I think.

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