The Karate Kid (Cinematic Reflection)
Every generation in the history of film probably has at least one movie that did irreparable damage to male culture. Gen Z has Joker, millennials have Fight Club and Scott Pilgrim, and Gen X has The Karate Kid. Ask anyone who was in high school or college when this film came out and you’ll have a story about how they made their parents sign the up for karate classes immediately after seeing the film, practice karate moves on their own while imagining they’re in the film, or seeing someone perform karate at a party to show off to the girls. The Karate Kid, as odd as it might sound to younger folks who haven’t seen the film, took the world by storm. It’s also still a great movie.
Part of what makes The Karate Kid a timeless classic is its nuance, attention to character, and its ability to tap into a primal emotion we can relate to on feeling like a small fish in a large pond. There’s a layer of subtext on how youth can be misguided between how Mr. Miyagi teaches Daniel karate and how Johnny learns from his time at Cobra Kai, how Daniel learns karate to build confidence and how Johnny was taught to establish dominance. It’s this subtext that makes Karate Kid a great movie instead of a good one. Think about it: Would the movie still be compelling if Johnny was just a jerk without a sensei? Would the heart of the film still resonate if Mr. Miyagi directly taught Daniel how to fight instead of teaching through chores and patience?
According to an oral history of the film documented by Sports Illustrated, The Karate Kid is semi-autobiographical to the life of the screenwriter, Robert Mark Kamen. When he was young, he was beaten by a gang of bullies after visiting an expo. He then studied martial arts to defend himself, and reportedly was unhappy with his first teacher who taught martial arts to be a tool for violence and revenge. Instead, Kamen decided to study under a Japanese teacher who barely spoke English but who learned karate from the creator of Gōjū-ryū Karate. As Kamen started to work in the industry as a screenwriter, a producer, Jerry Weintraub, had optioned a news article for a feature about a kid of a single mother who had studied karate to earn a black belt and defend himself against local bullies. Kamen took the assignment, adding his own experience to the story, and thus The Karate Kid was born.
And though none of the sequels outside of Cobra Kai ever recaptures the magic of the original (Cobra Kai still never truly did, but it still makes a solid, genuine, postmodern attempt), The Karate Kid is still immortal. I could show this to my thirteen year old brother and he’d probably dig it, though I’d probably have a better discussion with him about the themes of the film than my parents did for me. Maybe that’s something we should all practice when introducing the younger generation to the film bro classics…
A new Karate Kid is in theaters this week, but it’s most likely not the same. You can’t capture lightning in a bottle twice, especially without Pat Morita, who passed away in 2005. A fact (though not a fun one) is that one of Morita’s final films, Act Your Age, was filmed in my hometown of Champaign, Illinois, made by a director that’s unintentionally the local clown. The film was released posthumously in 2011, but thankfully is not his final appearance. That would be 2014’s Rice Girl.
There’s more to write about The Karate Kid than I had originally thought when I accepted this assignment. I’ve seen it plenty of times growing up, the last time being before going off to college, and I never recalled how thoughtful the film was. Barney from How I Met Your Mother raises a good point about how Johnny is the real hero of The Karate Kid, but, on rewatch, I think that’s only half the argument. The real hero is Mr. Miyagi, a man who goes out of his way to show the kids a better future, that there’s more to karate than just throwing punches. It’s about discipline, patience, and balance, all important traits for life.
And when Mr. Miyagi reveals to Daniel that his chores were actually training, that’s cinema, baby.