Will The Real Karate Kid Please Stand Up?

A bloody-nosed Johnny Lawrence steps off the mat to see his sensei. Fueled by righteous indignation, Johnny is defending his All Valley Under-18 Karate Championship title against Daniel LaRusso, the supremo jerk who just waltzed into town, stole Johnny’s recent ex, picked fights with the Cobra Kai dojo kids, and thinks he can kick their ass at the tournament after just two months of training. Two freaking months. Sensei John Kreese cleans the blood under Johnny’s nose and tells him, “Sweep the leg.”

Johnny’s face drops – he is no fan of Daniel’s, but dealing a vicious blow to his already beat-up leg was not how he envisioned winning the title. “You have a problem with that?”asks Kreese. “No sensei,” Johnny replies, knowing that Kreese would cream him for losing to a fledgling newbie. “No mercy,” Kreese barks back.

Johnny returns to the match. He seizes Daniel’s leg and elbows it, sending the kid sprawling onto the mat, curled up in pain. A Cobra Kai teammate yells with glee, “Get him a body bag! Yeah!” Pangs of guilt cut Johnny like a knife; he rues the day he signed up for karate lessons at Cobra Kai, thinking Kreese could be the father figure he never had. Down to the final deciding point of the match, Daniel raises his arms and injured leg in a weird stance, and before Johnny knows it, Daniel kicks him in the face. Wham! It hurts like hell. The room spins as Johnny crawls on the mat and listens for the ref to call out the illegal kick, something like “No point! Illegal contact to the face.”

But he doesn’t. Everyone is carrying LaRusso around the mat. He won. Johnny feels like shit. This cements his father’s opinion of him as a loser who can’t cut it. Tears run down his face. He sees the big trophy coming and decides the best thing to do is to be the bigger person — he hands Daniel the trophy and says, “You’re alright LaRusso!” Truth is, inside, Johnny is drowning in humiliation — the worst, most excruciating kind — down to the pit of his stomach.

He is destroyed.

. . . . . .

If history is written by the victor, as the old saying goes, it rings true in new Netflix series Cobra Kai – tell the story from the perspective of the loser-slash-bad-guy, and suddenly, he’s the real hero, he was victimized, he deserves pity… and the victor is… kind of an asshole. The series has the same characters as 1984’s The Karate Kid, but this time, we see the story unfold through Johnny’s eyes.

In the first episode of season 1, we see William Zabka return as Johnny, a downtrodden, Coors-guzzling handyman who tools around in his Pontiac Firebird while listening to Poison. He drives past a billboard ad that says LaRusso Auto Group. On it is a photo of his longtime rival in mid-karate kick, his smug mug next to the slogan, “We Kick The Competition.” Ralph Macchio’s Daniel, on the other end of the spectrum, was idolized for winning that karate tournament and parlayed his regional fame into a wildly successful car dealership, complete with karate-themed ads. He gets a narcissistic high from taking jabs at Johnny in public. Seriously, after thirty-fucking-four years, the guy is still living in the past and holding onto his karate king image? What a schmuck!

It mind-blowingly flips your perception of The Karate Kid. Cobra Kai is fifth in a line of sequels and remakes, all of which attempted to stretch the story of the first movie into oblivion and, as a result, were major flops. It originally aired on YouTube Premium in 2018, until Sony dropped it after two seasons, citing their plans to axe all premium scripted shows. Netflix saw its booming potential, and in June 2020 bought not just the streaming rights but the entire series, branding it as a Netflix original.

Starting from a streaming service liberated the show from constraints of Hollywood commerciality. The new series is a proxy for how streaming platforms can kickstart a dead movie franchise the right way, serving as a universe where known Hollywood commodities — like cult 80s movies franchises — can not only be reborn but explored the way they should be.

When a platform like Netflix or YouTube is involved, the result no longer has to be a blockbuster moneymaker. The gross commercialization of something with so much creative and multifaceted potential as a Karate Kid reboot is a recipe for disaster. Proof lies in the 2010 remake of The Karate Kid — in a cynical choice to tap the vast Chinese market, Columbia Pictures flung the show to the farthest end of China, replaced Mr. Miyagi with Jackie Chan, cast Jaden Smith as his disciple and swapped karate for kung fu. The movie was marketed as The Kung Fu Dream in China. The formula bombed — flushing away the premise and characters while using the original movie’s tropes as a crutch left Karate Kid fans and critics with a bad aftertaste.

If the reboot of The Karate Kid had been funded by Hollywood studios, the whole endeavor would have been in service of extending the old plot to make more money, not in service of the fans like Cobra Kai is. Big movie execs sitting around a conference table would have named it Karate Kid 4, to bank on the familiarity of the first movie, and picked directors, writers and producers that were on contract or tied to the original movies.

Sans the big studio choke-hold, three devoted fans of The Karate Kid — Josh Heald, Hayden Schlossenberg and Jon Hurwitz — took the reins as creators and executive producers of Cobra Kai. They drew inspiration from the most organic source imaginable.

. . . . . .

In How I Met Your Mother, Barney, the creep of the series played by Neil Patrick Harris, was always annoyed at how everyone got The Karate Kid wrong. In an episode in season 8 where his friends throw him a bachelor party, Barney is deeply offended when Macchio turns up. “The Karate Kid was William Zabka, star pupil of the Cobra Kai dojo,” Barney proclaims in a huff. “Whom this monster defeated with a cheap, illegal head kick in the most tragically haunting film ending of all time.” When Zabka reveals himself as a surprise guest at the party, disguised as a clown, he and Barney embrace passionately as Barney yells, “Wallliam Zzzabkkkah!”

Neil Patrick Harris’ declaration caused a crisis of conscience in the Karate Kid fan universe, inciting them to question their allegiance to Daniel. Zabka and his Twitter fans called it #Zabkatage, deeming his character’s shift from bully to victim a Johnny Lawrence Renaissance — a Johnny Lawre-Sance, as his followers came to affectionately refer to it later. Zabka says it was a cathartic, redeeming moment for his character as it embodied the true, virtuous heart of Johnny Lawrence. “It snowballed into a really nice character arc for me,” Zabka said on a phone interview. “In my head, Johnny was never the bad guy! I never thought someone would finally put it out there.”

Macchio said on IGN that the episode “started this whole onslaught of pop culture saying maybe LaRusso got lucky and Johnny Lawrence was just a good guy with a bad teacher.” Macchio went on to reflect how giving Johnny this new, fresh angle is similar to the device used in Creed. “Sylvester Stallone was brought into that film, not from the point of view of the Rocky Balboa story, but from the point of view of Apollo Creed’s son,” said Macchio. “There are smart ways to re-enter a world.”

In an interview with The New York Times, Hurwitz says the idea that came out of all this was to give Johnny the Better Call Saul treatment. “It's that kind of classic underdog story where what if you could step into that universe again, how would you rearrange the chess pieces to tell a different story, to tell a richer story instead of just a rehash?” mused Hurwitz. “We loved the idea there is this long-festering karate rivalry from high school that had landed both of these adults in different places: one atop the mountain and one down in the valley.”

After Zabka described his approach to taking on the role of Johnny Lawrence at an early meeting, the notion of explaining why his character did bad things started floating around. “He was just another [senior] in high school, he had a girlfriend who broke up with him,” Hurwitz told Book & Film Globe. “He was going through a tough time and he had one year to make it work and turn things around. And then this kid comes to town and throws a wrench into all of it. He was just trying to do his best, and this guy comes in and wrecks it all.”

. . . . . .

Coming from such a genuine starting place, Hurwitz & Co. were aiming for the right thing. They captured the spirit and authenticity of the first movie, delivering a revival filled with emotion and heart. The series brought back the old characters and shed new light on them, revealing who they really are on the inside and adding a deeper meaning to why they acted the way they did. There are flashbacks to Johnny’s childhood wrought with torment — his mother married a wealthy but abusive man who heaped insults on Johnny and made him feel like a failure.

The producers kept the same actors, knowing that these were two faces that were irreplaceable. The Karate Kid is, and always will be, Macchio. Macchio as Daniel LaRusso is just as much of a pop culture touchstone as the movie was, and so is Zabka as his nemesis. It’s like replacing Keanu Reeves with another actor in a remake of Bill & Ted, which would kill the veracity of the movie. Having the same actors reprise their roles cemented the series as a part of the legacy that so many know and love.

The show also carries on how John G. Avildsen, the director of the first movie, made his heroes scruffy and flawed, that speaks to how the Cobra Kai creators were going for creative originality. The imperfect underdog story is pushed forward by new narratives: Johnny dusts off his karate moves to intervene when a pack of bullies start roughing up a defenseless kid, which spurs him to reopen the Cobra Kai dojo. Unlike how the old Cobra Kai trained jocks to be bullies, sensei Johnny turns nerds and misfits into bully-busting butt kickers. But his “strike first, strike hard, no mercy” mantra gives his students too much pomp; their egos inflate and they end up taking things too far.

Another stroke of authenticity was naming the show Cobra Kai – it instantly triggers a realization in those who watched the first movie: if the series is named after the bad dojo, it must be about the bad guys. Ding ding ding! It piques so much interest in how such a story can be spun and drew old fans in. “When they told me the name of the show is going to be Cobra Kai, I was like, that is genius,” says Zabka. “I knew these guys were on the right track.”

In stark contrast to Cobra Kai and its endearing sincerity is Selena, another Netflix series that has just released. It really pales in comparison to the 1997 movie starring Jennifer Lopez and comes across as another “stretch the plot when there’s nothing left to stretch” attempt to milk the story of the Tejano singer for all it’s worth. If the producers had aimed for originality and applied the Cobra Kai playbook to it, they could have used the perspective of Selena Quintanilla’s husband, Chris Pérez, who reportedly has his own side of the story to tell. That, could have been a hit.

. . . . . .

A hit like Cobra Kai. It ported over to Netflix in August this year and instantly rocketed to number one on the platform’s trending ranks.

A lot of factors made Cobra Kai a success, but the biggest is the core creative choice — the rashomon decision to flip the story arc, turning the old villain into the new hero. It works because it breaks down the injustice of Johnny’s infamy and makes viewers go “Hmm…” when thinking in retrospect of the first movie. Daniel took a cheap shot at Johnny on the beach. Daniel saw Johnny trying to get back together with his ex but moved in on her anyway. There’s the unprovoked water hose incident at the Halloween party (where Daniel ruined the spliff Johnny was rolling – who does that?). Daniel continued to taunt Johnny and gang with impunity when their senseis called peacetime until the tournament. Up to the point where Johnny’s sensei told him to “sweep the leg,” he was fighting square and clean. And, conversely, the series brings to light that the iconic “crane kick” to Johnny’s face was illegal and stoops even lower than the leg sweep.

Twisting the perspective also makes the series so much more than a nostalgia fest. If the Cobra Kai creators had gone the way of the sequels — continuing the first movie’s plot line — or tried another remake — rejigging the cast, location — it would have likely been tired and blah. There are moments of extreme cheese meant to echo the 80s vibe of The Karate Kid, like when Daniel is bobbing his head to an REO Speedwagon hit and Johnny says, “You like Speedwagon?” Aside from these bits sprinkled here and there, the series packs new baked-in tension that thrills across generations, attracting both creaky-kneed relics that watched the show in the 80s and a new crop of young fans. Drew, a 17-year-old, runs a YouTube Channel called Cobra Kai Kid with 60k subscribers – he says “the storytelling has inspired me and the life lessons from the show have changed my life.“

And, ultimately, bringing the bad guy to life cranks up the series to full-bore karate opera. If Johnny had been kept as a one-dimensional character, whom we know very little of, returning with intentions to exact revenge on Daniel, there would be no emotional punch to fuel the series. The new plot lets the true baddies come into the limelight (cue the return of evil sensei Kreese in season 2), creates an interesting dynamic between the warring dojos, neither labeled as good or bad, and addresses how holding onto fragments of the past can both empower and limit a person’s true potential.

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Other 80s movies should take a cue and come back with sequels or a remake given the Cobra Kai treatment. Back To the Future 4 with Biff’s story at the forefront would be riveting, telling the tale of the tough upbringing Biff had, that we had a glimpse of in Back To The Future 2, and other factors that made him a bully. Imagine a series that follows Pretty in Pink, but with James Spader’s Steff as the star. Turns out, he’s the most real character, sincere to the royal prick that he really is.

Or a remake of 1987 cult classic The Lost Boys told by the vampires — bring back Kiefer Sutherland and Corey Feldman, but, by all means, avoid a Twilight-esque pitfall. What about a sequel to 1982’s The Thing, that ended with the heroes, Kurt Russell and Keith David, not knowing if either of them was “the thing”. To revisit Russell as an older man, but he is “the thing,” as he hatches an evil plot to take over the planet, would be supremely tasty.

But would these reboots only gain high viewership if they came from a streaming platform? It raises the issue of what happened to Cobra Kai on YouTube, where viewers were either ignoring it or unable to access a really bang-on series on its original platform, needing the sheer reach and marketing power of a streaming service to spread it around. This is similar to the cases of Lifetime’s You and Fox’s Lucifer, which struggled on TV only to become Netflix sensations, which suggests a broader problem of sustainability – Netflix can’t keep relying on rival companies to produce commercial bombs (and cult hits) just so they can be ‘rescued’ by Netflix.

It does seem like an inevitability, as nothing right now can compete with Netflix. “Google sucks at marketing, ” reflects industry analyst Alan Wolk. “Netflix has really good data, and can boost up Cobra Kai views by promoting it to just the right people who have watched similar shows or have similar tastes. And unlike YouTube, they are also in every country except for North Korea, China and Syria.” So to diversify the market, YouTube, TV channels and other streaming services that are popping up will all have to change their business models, expand their licenses worldwide, and for an advantage, incorporate value-adding elements that Netflix has not tapped into, like stories on how a show was developed and interviews with the crew. “For the most part, linear TV will fade away,” says Wolk. “It’s time to evolve.”

. . . . . .

So thanks to Netflix, Cobra Kai will wax on for a third and fourth season, season 3 set to premiere in January 2021. In The New York Times interview, Schlossenberg paints a pretty picture for the show’s future: “We have an end in mind for the story we’re telling. In terms of how many seasons, we’ve mapped out a few years ahead.” This series is definitely not ready for a body bag.

Sources

Collider Interviews - https://youtu.be/I213CnQXdoU

Cobra Kai EPs explain Netflix move, tease possible spin-offs - https://ew.com/tv/cobra-kai-netflix-season-3-preview/

‘Cobra Kai,’ YouTube’s ‘Karate Kid’ Update, Returns for Another Round - https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/23/arts/television/cobra-kai-karate-kid-season-2.html

Cobra Kai’s Creators on Bringing the Series to Netflix for Season 3 - https://www.cbr.com/creators-cobra-kai-netflix-season-3-interview/

Cobra Kai: Ralph Macchio and Billy Zabka on Reigniting Their Classic Karate Kid Rivalry - https://www.ign.com/articles/2018/05/09/cobra-kai-ralph-macchio-and-billy-zabka-on-reigniting-their-classic-karate-kid-rivalry

The BFG Interview: Jon Hurwitz, Co-Showrunner of ‘Cobra Kai’ - https://bookandfilmglobe.com/creators/cobra-kai/

Cobra Kai Kid YouTube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/c/CobraKaiKid