The Karate Kid

The biggest sleeper hit of 1984 was this martial arts / coming-of-age drama about a lonely Italian-American teen from New Jersey who moves to the Reseda neighborhood of Los Angeles with his single mom. Picked on by bullies, the scrawny Daniel LaRusso decides to learn to defend himself and seeks out the tutelage of a wise martial arts master working as the handyman at his new apartment complex. The story came from Robert Mark Kamen, one of the screenwriters of Harold Becker's 1981 hit TAPS. Kamen had a life-changing experience when he attended the 1964 New York World's Fair as a seventeen-year-old and was beaten up on the way home by a gang of older kids. As a result, he took up martial arts to learn how to defend himself. But his first teacher was an aggressive dude who taught martial arts as a tool for violence and seemed little better than the young toughs who had given Kamen such a hard time. The future screenwriter switched to an older Japanese teacher who did not speak a word of English but was a master of Okinawan Gōjū-ryū Karate.

Years later, when producer Jerry Weintraub (Oh, God!, Cruising, Diner) optioned a newspaper article about a kid with a single mom who had learned karate to defend himself against neighborhood bullies, Kamen was hired to combine his own life story with the article to create the screenplay. Weintraub was looking for a teenage Rocky, and that's pretty much what he got after hiring Rocky director John G. Avildsen. The similarities between Stallone's iconic, Oscar-winning film and The Karate Kid are unmissable. The Karate Kid is an underdog story about going the distance through sheer force of will in a non-team sport; it’s just that this very ‘80s picture ends on a far more triumphant note.

For the titular role, Weintraub and Avildsen cast Ralph Macchio as Daniel LaRusso. He was an ideal choice. Macchio was the smallest, skinniest, and most vulnerable of the greasers in Francis Ford Coppola's hit film of S. E. Hinton's The Outsiders. Though in reality, Macchio was one of the older cast members, his Johnny Cade looks like a little kid next to co-stars Matt Dillon, Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, Tom Cruise, and C. Thomas Howell. In this film, he even looks small next to his costars, Elisabeth Shue and Pat Morita. The diminutive Morita was best known up to this point as a stand-up comedian and sitcom actor on TV shows like Sanford and Son, M*A*S*H, and his recurring role as "Arnold" the owner of the drive-in diner everyone hung out at in Happy Days. Weintraub had his heart set on landing the legendary Japanese megastar Toshiro Mifune for the role, but that was a long shot. Morita doggedly pursued the part, auditioning many times with various approaches until he finally won the role. Audiences hadn't seen Morita in a dramatic context, and the quiet stillness he brings to the character of Mr. Miyagi surprised everyone, scoring Morita a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his work.

I vividly remember seeing this film with my mom at the old Somerville Assemble Square twentyplex. As a thirteen-year-old, I came out of the theater thinking I'd just seen one of the greatest movies ever made. While it didn't get me to sign up for karate classes, I fully understood why it had that effect on so many of my contemporaries. I returned to the movie over and over on VHS. Later, as an older guy who'd seen thousands of movies, I became a little less enamored with The Karate Kid because of its mustache-twirling baddies. William Zabka as Daniel's main adversary, Johnny Lawrence, and Martin Kove as John Kreese, Johnny's sinister karate sensei and co-founder of the militantly deranged dojo Cobra Kai, are not the type of complex villains I relish. The picture's thrilling climax at the Karate tournament, which I loved so much as a kid, was also a little too over-the-top cheesy to me once I'd seen Rocky. But there's no doubt that the depiction of bullying in this movie taps into the authentic adolescent feelings of being picked on and hazed.

There's much to love and admire about many of the other '80s aspects of this film. First and foremost, the wonderful depiction of a teacher. I'll always love the way Mr. Miyagi reluctantly agrees to take Daniel on as a student and then begins training him by forcing him to do menial chores the young, impatient boy doesn't even realize are foundational Karate techniques. The lessons he imparts feel solid. There are also wonderful training montages—the kind one can only see unironically in '80s movies. Conveying the passage of time and the acquiring of skills through tightly edited sequences set to a rockin’ pop tune is still the best way to convey narrative beats that would be boring done via scenes of dialogue. The pop-music montage sequence was so overused in this decade that it basically became a joke, but in 1984, it was still being produced with sincerity, and The Karate Kid features surprisingly subtle training sequences with gorgeous cinematography that resulted in iconic shots like Daniel practicing balance on the bow of a rowboat floating along the water at sunset, and attempting his crane kick on a peer at the beach. It's notable that there is no scene of Mr. Miyagi teaching Daniel this move, which will figure so prominently in the climax; we remember it only because of how striking the brief shot of him trying to master it is in the montage.

The Karate Kid also launched the career of Liz Shue, who plays a popular high school cheerleader who falls for Daniel after breaking up with Johnny. Shue would quickly go on to star in films like Adventures in Babysitting, Cocktail, and Soapdish and score the Best Actress Oscar nom for the film Leaving Las Vegas. As the 5th highest-grossing movie of 1984, The Karate Kid spawned multiple sequels, remakes, reboots, video games, and an animated series. Part II and Part III reunited Macchio, Morita, Kamen, Weintraub, and Avildsen. Those direct sequels were followed by The Next Karate Kid in 1994, directed by Christopher Cain, and starred Hilary Swank in her breakthrough role as Mr. Miyagi's next karate student. In 2010, a remake was made with Jaden Smith and Jackie Chan playing similar characters to Daniel and Mr. Miyagi, which focused on Kung Fu, though it was still called The Karate Kid. In our current reboot/legasequel era, the web series Cobra Kai brought back Ralph Macchio and William Zabka to reprise their roles but made Johnny the protagonist and Daniel's rival. Made for YouTube's fledgling TV channel, Cobra Kai was a surprise mini-hit and eventually moved to Netflix. A sixth film, creatively titled Karate Kid, in which Ralph Macchio and Jackie Chan will somehow reprise their roles from the original and the remake, is scheduled for release later this year. I have to admit that I've not seen any installments of The Karate Kid "franchise" beyond the original picture. But I still consider that first film a good movie with a lot going for it.