What’s the best film ever made?
Actually it’s a stupid question because there are no objective criteria for assessment. It’s a value judgement that boils down to taste, which cannot be arbitrated for in any unprejudiced way.
Nonetheless, if we’re going to indulge a silly question anyway I think “The Karate Kid” is a candidate. It’s got it all: Eastern romanticism, goodies and baddies, a cheesy love story, a great soundtrack, Elizabeth Shue (note: any guy who’s over 35 and pretends he didn’t have a boyhood crush on Elizabeth Shue is just a liar!), high school drama, pre-Matrix/pre-CGI comedy fight sequences, over-the-top villains – the list goes on…
Perhaps most importantly though it was greater than the sum of its parts. You watch it now and it seems like homage to a simpler world that made more sense, even with all of its 80’s imperfections (e.g., wealth inequality and entrenching class relations).
Anyway, clearly some wise person realised that the “Karate Kid” had some special about it because they’ve developed a contemporary spin-off series called “Cobra Kai.” It picks up the lives of protagonist (Daniel LaRusso) and antagonist (Johnny Lawrence) 34 years after the original story. The latter – down on his luck – decides to relaunch Cobra Kai (the dark heart of the film’s bully gang) to wrestle with his own inner demons and to toughen up wimpy Gen-Zs. The former – now a successful owner of an upmarket car dealership – sees the return of Cobra Kai as the reincarnation of evil best left buried. What follows then is the revival of an old rivalry, fought directly through the main character and indirectly through family and disciples.
The spin-off could have been a depressing reminder of things that you and the world have lost in the last 30 years, but what it actually does is take you on a wonderfully nostalgic road trip. The best thing about Cobra Kai is that it somehow upholds all the corny “guilty-pleasure” elements of the first film as mentioned above. Put another way it doesn’t take itself too seriously, the original characters are every bit the caricatures of 1984 (especially “Kreese”) and the story rehashes the modern world in 80s hues.
I love it, it’s not a “guilty pleasure” its straight-up entertainment – pantomime with 2020 production values. What more could you want?
Dr Martin James 