Lu Weicheng (陆伟程), better known as Cheng, is the secondary antagonist of The Karate Kid (2010). He is portrayed by Zhenwei Wang.
Biography[]
Cheng was born in October 20, 1995 in China and resides in Beijing. He started practicing martial arts at the Fighting Dragons Studio at a young age and rose up the ranks to a high ranking member of the dojo with a black belt, becoming an extremely skilled fighter. Cheng is also close friends with Liang, Song, and Zhuang. At some point before Dre moved to Beijing, China, Cheng met his love interest Mei Ying and his family and his parents is closer to Mei Ying's. It is also implied that Cheng and his friends were bullying the neighborhood for quite some time before Dre moved in.
Cheng is the counterpart of Johnny Lawrence in the original film: being the bully, wealthy, popular, the top student of their martial arts dojo, the leader of their own gang of friends representing their dojo (though Cheng’s group numbers six, contrary to Johnny's gang of five), and distressing and thrashing both films' main protagonists.
Cheng is a student of Master Li in the remake. He harasses Dre Parker (the remake's protagonist) for his interactions with both boys' love interest Mei Ying.
Throughout the film, Cheng and his friends continually harass Dre and bully him at school. When Dre beats Cheng in the finals, he earns Cheng's respect both to him and to Mr. Han. Cheng then personally awards the trophy to Dre. After offering the trophy as an apology and showing respect and friendship, Cheng and his friends part with Dre on good terms. Cheng and all of his friends are then convinced by Mr. Han and Dre to cut ties with Master Li. After apologizing, they all become Mr. Han's students and Dre's friends, much to the Li's dismay and anger.
Personality[]
In the beginning of the film, when Cheng first appears at the park, he is seen to be quite rude, obnoxious, disrespectful, uncomplimentary, and vituperative, as Cheng abruptly marches in without warning. Cheng is shown to have a short fuse, especially when Dre keeps goading and provoking Cheng by constantly interfering in an argument between Cheng and Mei Ying by constantly retrieving and giving the music sheet, only for a frustrated Cheng to throw it away. As Cheng grows increasingly agitated, he pushes Dre over. Dre musters up some courage and challenges Cheng to a fight, but Cheng overpowers Dre and viciously attacks him. Dre loses and gets beaten up and bruised.
Throughout the film, Cheng and his friends are seen to be arrogant, oppressive, uncompromising, manipulative, and merciless to Dre, but they are happy when they are together. Cheng and his friends also behave very violently, uncivilized, uncaring, cruel, and ruthless towards Dre and are very standoffish, hateful, mean, unfriendly, and sadistic. They consistently pick on Dre and love to torment him, beating and bashing Dre and turning his life into a living hell, even when Dre minds his own business. Cheng and his friends are also very contumacious and rebellious, resisting civilized authority. When Dre's principal stops Cheng from attacking Dre and reprimanding Cheng, he stops but this only makes him more frustrated and angry. However, when Cheng tries to be extremely loyal, fearless, and trustworthy to his love interest Mei Ying, she grows uninterested in him after Cheng beats up Dre, and instead, she and Dre fall in love and become extremely close.
Surprisingly, Cheng and his friends are not purely malicious, unpleasant, cunning, evil and pitiless at heart. As Mr. Han tells Dre, there are no bad students, only bad teachers. Instead, they are taught to be spiteful, nasty, mean, loathsome, and unsympathetic towards their enemies by Master Li, their Kung Fu master. Master Li even intimidates them and forces them to be mean, and be bloodthirsty savages. Their dojo, the Fighting Dragons, run by Master Li, is crooked, dishonest, and fraudulent with the unforgiving and monstrous Li teaching his students a new form of child abuse: kids fighting and beating each other up. Cheng and his friends do not necessarily enjoy bullying people and they know what they are doing is wrong, but feel compelled and committed into doing it as they feel like they are turning their backs or betraying Master Li by being nice and making peace to their enemies since he taught them to be monsters.
In the finals, Cheng is also initially fearful, horrified, pusillanimous, and reluctant to do such an illegal and brutal/deadly move (not only beat up Dre but also break his bones), but Master Li threatens and intimidates him into doing it anyway. After Cheng loses to Dre in the finals, he realizes that he was doing it all wrong. Cheng has a change of heart and shows friendship and respect to Dre by personally offering the trophy as a peace offering as well as an apology to say he was sorry for beating and bashing Dre. After congratulating Dre and offering him the trophy, Cheng and his friends part on good terms with Dre, Cheng allows Dre to win Mei Ying's heart, and Cheng and his classmates all bow to Mr. Han, accepting him as their new master.
Fighting Style[]
Cheng is a very aggressive fighter who shows no mercy to his opponent. Cheng carries a lot of size and strength as well as pace, which causes a lot of problems for those he comes up against. Cheng adds a lot of combos to his style including fast paced kicks and punches. This is shown throughout all his fights, especially during his fight with Dre in the park and his fight with Wu Ping in the semi-finals of the tournament. Cheng's lessons taught by Master Li make him one of the best fighters in school as well as the most ruthless out of the Fighting Dragons students. Cheng was able to ease to the later stages of the Kung Fu tournament and easily be able to defeat skilled fighters such as Wu Ping with ease.
Trivia[]
- Johnny Lawrence is his original counterpart from the original film & Cobra Kai.
- Cheng is the only antagonist in the film to speak English.
 Villains
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