My Personal War Against The Karate Kid Part III

Nothing says "watch our movie" like having both leads looking depressed at the prospect of being dragged back into this.

This is my apology combination rant and review. I've been so busy with life and being horribly sick that I haven't had time to properly punish myself for your amusement all under the guise of being a legitimate critic of films. So, to make it up to you, we're going to talk about something that has been requested more than anything else. Something I swore I would never talk about, let alone acknowledge the existence of. Today we're talking about that time they decided to shit on two solid films by milking it with a third film. Yes, they made a fourth film too, but we're not there yet. And since people kept asking me what I thought about Cobra Kai throughout this year, it feels appropriate we're dipping into this particular vat of toxic wasted potential.

By the way, I thought Cobra Kai could've been great but it lost me the minute they dragged Daniel back into it. More on that later.

Here's your set-up: Daniel overcame his bullies, matured as both a person and as a fighter, fell in love, won a literal deathmatch, and his story felt complete from beginning to end. Well, not when Hollywood can drain that last ounce of cash out of the well before it's good and dry. Make no mistake, this film was not a labour of love like the first two. This film is the very definition of a cash-grab, using the name recognition and the actors still under contract to crap out a quick messy dumpster fire to shove down the hill towards the hungry fans. Can you tell I don't like this thing? Because yeah, I loathe this movie. It very well may be my most hated movie ever.

Trust me, when you wade through shit like I do, that's pretty impressive.

A long time ago I made a list of my most hated movies and I feel like it should just be deleted, because it's not entirely honest. A big part of that dishonesty comes from this film not being present in the top spot of said list, because I have absolutely nothing but ill will towards this smouldering wreckage of what was a perfect story. Now, I am not one of those guys who is going to sit here and bitch about how something ruined his childhood, because the truth of the matter is I never actually watched the first two films as a kid. I was more interested in horror movies, robots, G.I. Joe, and He-Man. Inspirational stories about standing up to abusers and becoming a more well-rounded mature person were not in my purview just yet.

Oddly enough though, I distinctly remember watching the cartoon. Weird.

Bearing that in mind, I came at the franchise from a fresh perspective of a guy in his late 20s when I first sat down to take in these beloved films from an decade full of beloved things. The thing about The Karate Kid that I discovered was that it was less two films and more like one long film broken in two parts. A saga of a boy growing up and of his mentor coping with loss that pulled me in deeply. When Part II ended I was so satisfied. Then a friend pulled out the third film and I was just like "there's a third one?", staring at it with confusion as to where the story could possibly go after such a neatly tied-up plot. Could it have been about Johnny, his bully from the first film, overcoming his sensei's teachings to become a better person and confront his abusive former master?

"No! But that's almost the plot of a Temper Trap music video!"

While that was what I wanted, what I actually got was the most disappointing waste of my time I've ever sat down to watch. This wasn't Daniel's story anymore or even Miyagi's. No, this horrible waste of celluloid was the tale...of the abusive Cobra Kai sensei as he teams up with a Vietnam buddy to try and get revenge for being humiliated in a parking lot by an elderly Japanese man. I am not kidding. This is a film in which two grown ass men decide to terrorize a teenage boy so they can attempt to murder his teacher. This is how the studio decided to close one of the most iconic franchises of the 1980s. What are Daniel and Miyagi's plotlines? They have the same one: they open a flower shop.

Nobody wanted this. I didn't want this. Did you want this?

It was the lamest and most by-the-numbers martial arts B-movie plot I had ever seen at that point in time. They followed up an epic tale that ended with our young hero in a literal fight to the death with two middle-aged men desperate to get back at an old man for honking one of their noses. Do you see why I hate this film? Do you see the inherent problems? Don't worry, I'm gonna break it down a bit more for you. First, the film literally begins with some horribly written bullshit that completely tosses out the character building from the previous film. Daniel and Miyagi, both of whom seemed intent on staying in Okinawa, are now just back, because executives wanted to beat this horse to death with croquet mallets. Did  you love that organically built-up relationship between Daniel and Kumiko? Well, fuck you, that's done now. Meet generic white girl who will fill the female quotient of the film while having nothing of real value to add to the plot.

"My name is Jessica and I'm from Ohio. My boyfriend has sex with mayonnaise sometimes."

And no, I'm not saying that a female lead has to be a romantic interest, because that's stupid. What I am saying is that she is written in such a way that it's clear they had no idea what to do with her after they decided she wasn't a love interest, making her a very two-dimensional character who seems to only exist because someone said a woman must exist in the plot because the other films had them. So, rather than have her be a new student of Miyagi or have some link to the antagonists, she's instead just this prop that shows up. Now, onto the second major issue of the film: Daniel's weaker for no reason. What I mean by that is the former film featured Daniel advancing in his training to the point that he kicked the ass of someone much tougher than the two generic douchebag villains in this one, yet he still manages to not be any match against them.

I mean, surviving a deathmatch with a violent Yakuza thug is nothing compared to two aging white guys who feel like henchmen from Commando, apparently.

After overcoming Chozen, Kreese and Silver are the absolute lamest threats ever. Silver looks like a knock-off of Steven Seagal, for fuck's sake, and I am supposed to take him seriously? Have you seen Steven Seagal? He looks like he's an evil Baron who subsists on hamburgers and pomade. And Kreese, the guy who Miyagi smacked about in a parking lot? The guy whose life apparently fell apart after his nose was honked outside of a martial arts tournament? I am more threatened by my Destro bobblehead that sits next to my desk constantly judging me.

I started writing this in November originally and he has not stopped giving me shit over it.

The finale problem with this trainwreck of a film is the most damning of all: it's a bad remake of the first film. Seriously, it really is. It has the now retroactively weak lead moving to a new place, meeting a woman, getting bullied by other martial artists, and it ends with a tournament where the bullies get shown up. Only it's worse, because the bullies are grown ass men who seemingly have serious mental problems because they want to terrorize and possibly murder at least two people because one of them GOT HIS NOSE HONKED IN A PARKING LOT. God, I just hate this entire set-up so much because it is so uninspired, so contrived, and so poorly executed. The Karate Kid Part III is the worst film to me because it has no intrinsic value as a film. It doesn't complete the story arc of the heroes, as that was already completed. It doesn't introduce a bigger threat to escalate things after the previous film. And it made me hope for creative send-off while delivering nothing but a hokey mess.

I can't even laugh at how silly Terry Silver looks. Look at him. I can't laugh at that. That's how mad this film makes me.

For ages, when people asked me about the Karate Kid films, I would only discuss the first two and sometimes the fourth film. When the question about the third one came, I answered the same way every single time: "There is no third Karate kid film" and then I would tell them to not ask again. Early on in this site's existence, my love of these films got out somehow and I got hundreds of requests to cover the third film. It was like all of you collectively knew my revulsion and wanted to see the bile pour from my orifices onto my keyboard as a cacophony of vitriol was given life in the form of a review of it. Years later, here we are. This is the closest you're ever gonna get from me. I'm done talking about this dumpster fire. Now to ignore the requests to talk about Cobra Kai for the next 6 years. Later days, bleeders.

Want my review of it? Pay me. I'm not sweeping this particular leg for free.