If remakes of movies we all enjoyed as children hitting the theaters makes you feel old, image how it makes the stars of those movies feel? Ralph Macchio, star of the original “Karate Kid” told Access Hollywood that was his first reaction to news of the remake:
“It’s like mixed feelings. At first, I felt old. Number one, you feel old when they start remaking your stuff,” Ralph, 48, told Access Hollywood at ” The Karate Kid ” premiere on Monday night in LA.
But, once he got past the shock that he was old enough for his childhood claim to fame to qualify for remake status, Macchio found that he appreciates the story being shared with a new generation.
“Once I got past the fact that there’s a whole new generation, it was more about, ‘OK, you can retell this story because it’s a beautiful story,’” Macchio continued. “It’s a testament to the legacy that we created that we didn’t even know we were creating. I don’t look at it as the end of an era and the beginning of a new one. It’s not the passing of the torch as much as it is the celebration of a great story.”
Macchio brought his 14 year old son, Daniel, named after his character in the original film, with him to the new movie’s premiere on Monday.
“We didn’t have a big premiere for that movie, it was a little sleeper. I spoke to the writer [Robert Mark Kamen] earlier and he said, ‘Tell me how the after party is. Ours lasted 26 years,’” Macchio said. ”We didn’t know what we were doing. We didn’t know the magic that was happening and the Pat Morita performance [as Mr. Miyagi] and all the Cobra Kai and ‘wax on, wax off’ and catching flies with your chopsticks and the crane just became part of everyone’s childhood and that’s what I’m here celebrating.”
