It definitely has its ups and downs but Silver at least makes it worth the watch. LaRusso has a weird arc though.
I always found Daniel to be really his own worst enemy, throughout all the movies. Johnny's Season 1 side of the encounter story in the first movie could actually be interpreted as being somewhat truthful, if a bit exaggerated. In the second movie, he got himself in a bad situation at the ice-breaking competition in the bar when he was arrogantly judging someone else's technique, saying it was "all wrong", then someone calling him out on it. He got lucky in that one, as I never thought his "technique" was all that great, either, to be honest. Then the third movie REALLY sent him off the rails, with him blaming Ally for the car breaking down (something she directly addressed in the last season as being complete BS), compounded by his very pouty, passive-aggressive weirdness towards Jessica, along with his absurdly disrespectful attitude towards Miyagi throughout the entire film. He really was an insufferable twit of a teenager. We've seen some growth in him, but the real substantive growth has been with Johnny all along. Sure, we can dismiss him as the "poor little rich white boy" quite easily, but we've seen that his life really wasn't all that and a bag of chips. He fell harder and had a longer mountain to climb, while Daniel soared in his life and career, all along thinking he was the better man and didn't have anything else to learn until many things in his life came up to smack him in the face. In a way, his growth was severely stunted by his runaway success as a famous auto salesman. At the end of the day, I think I would prefer Johnny as a friend over Daniel. LaRusso literally has way too much to prove to everyone around him - a bit of a Napoleon complex, really. That's not the kind of person you want watching your back.
I think Johnny and Daniel are very similar which is what makes the show very interesting. Both are their own worst enemies, continually falling back in to old habits. It's painful at times to watch in its frustration of them not learning. Good show, if a bit frustrating.
To me, that's particularly true during the first few episodes of season 1. I couldn't believe how much of grudge Johnny was still holding after 30 years. It's been 30 years, you'd think he'd learn to let go, and take a high-road, yet the very first thing we see is him drowning his in own sorrow and pity and still clutching to old ideals that were outdated long ago. It's nice to finally see him (by season 3's end) realize there are worse things out to get him. In some ways, I feel it took too long for him to take that venom out of him, which was only leading him down a darker path. I guess it took Kreese's threat to knock some sense into him.
Johnny did seem to be a walking anachronism, still stuck in all things 80's, right down to the thin black headband (LOL). Yes, Kreese's appearance and subsequent usurping of Johnny's dojo was definitely the main catalyst for his change, but I feel he started seeing the value of being a true Master Instructor of Karate when he got his first generation of students. They helped start to open his eyes to a bigger picture and he, in turn, began to instill within them a sense of belonging, confidence and self-worth. It was a symbiotic relationship that I think really started working for him. Yeah, the "Lots of Hashbrowns!" and "Gender What??" scenes were funny, but make no mistake, he has grown tremendously as a person, especially compared to LaRusso, who has essentially stagnated in his own success.
Any villainy provided by Silver was deflated by the fact Daniel was afraid of a so-called "bad boy" of Karate after he just fought in what was intended to be a battle to the death against Chozen. Daniel knew & accepted that after Miyagi's warning. After being bold enough to engage in that--and defeat Chozen, there's no realistic way Daniel would be afraid of Mike Barnes on the street or in a tournament. The plot of III completely falls apart for reversing Daniel's life experience. ...and by the way, Chozen was a superior martial artist to Barnes, yet Daniel was--as Silver joked--peeing in his pants about a scowl with a crew-cut. Sheesh.
Yeah, KKIII really was the worst of the trilogy. A shame it went so poorly. I never saw KKIV (Next Karate Kid?) with Hillary Swank, so I have no idea if the franchise redeemed itself by that point or if it only dug itself in deeper. Somehow I think the latter...
Still an entertaining enough movie and works well enough for me. Fear is not a perfectly rational thing for humans.
Yeah, I guess one could say, that Daniel was blinded by his own success. Or maybe more precisely, he felt he didn't need to fear retribution from so long ago. He'd moved on. I mean, for the most part during season 1, he was minding his own business and had his head elsewhere. It wasn't until he realized Johnny was training a new generation of students with aggressive tendencies that he realized the status quo was no longer the same. Johnny was one bitter individual who used his students to wage his own war, then when Kreese came along, they became unleashed and uncontrollable. One has to wonder what Johnny was thinking. He was proud of his students, yes, but I also think he bit off way more than he could chew, and the whole situation has snowballed, in a particularly bad fashion given that apparently there is no police authority in the show.
Yeah, the police AND teachers seemed to be completely feckless morons in that show, going so far as showing a teacher emerging into the mega-fight at the end of S2, yelling "Screw this!" and running away in the opposite direction. I could see the cops getting there and scratching their heads on arrival, claiming "WTF? We trained for active shooter situations, not Kung Fu movies!"
Yeah, it's one of the things that's bothered me the most in this series. I mean, I can understand it to a certain point, but after awhile, it just gets to be ridiculous how much of a free pass they're getting. And then it doesn't help that the show skewers in favor of Johnny and the Cobra Kai, which leads to them getting away with the most inane stuff that make it not terribly realistic.
Because the police in this universe is useless. You want justice? LEARN KARATE! I mean, in the movies he almost strangled Jonny and assaulted an old man in a public parking and nothing happened!
There's always been suspension of disbelief about kids beating each other up and not getting in trouble, but there's a difference between that and Creese's psychopathic desire to raise an army of teenage bullies.
Wait, and it gets worse. After a I while I was convinced that The Karate Kid universe was a just a little nicer version of the Hokuto No Ken one. ETA, by the way, this is lampashaded in the show itself, like when Spoiler They went to the police to make a compliant. It was useless.
Yep, that's exactly what I'm talking about. Spoiler And the one time they show police, it's when Daniel's wife goes to file a complaint against Cobra Kai/Kreese and learns that Kreese has filed a restraining order against her. At that point, I rolled my eyes hard. Seriously? It's one thing to expect a rivalry and a few fights, but when they constantly go unchecked, it becomes a bit much. I know the show is named for the Cobra Kai, but come on. It's sending a bit of a wrong message in terms of bullying.