I Watch Films: The Karate Kid (1984)
The Karate Kid (1984)
Daniel LaRusso’s mother moves them from New Jersey to Los Angeles, so he has to start again at high school. They live in an apartment block, whose handyman is an eccentric Okinawan immigrant, Mr Miyagi. He’s kind and helpful. It turns out there’s a definite class element to groups at school, and Daniel’s on the poor side and gets bullied. He makes friends with Ali Mills, and this makes things worse as her ex- Johnny Lawrence makes him a target. Johnny is the top student at the Cobra Kai karate dojo run by John Kreese, a Vietnam War veteran who makes strength and winning the only virtues.
At the Halloween dance Daniel squirts water on Johnny as payback for the bullying; chased back to the apartment block by Johnny and his friends they’re confronted by the short, elderly Mr Miyagi who effortlessly defeats them with martial arts. Mr Miyagi takes Daniel to talk to Kreese who is aggressive, saying that Daniel should look after himself. Mr Miyagi retorts that one on one fine, but five on one is unfair. He suggests Daniel enter the All-Valley Under-18 Karate Championship, where he can face the Cobra Kai students on fair terms. With six weeks to go Mr Miyagi starts to train Daniel.
The training begins as Daniel doing odd jobs for him, waxing his old cars – wax on, wax off. The film takes a while to explain, it’s when Daniel complains that Mr Miyagi shows that the repetitive motions have trained him. They start to bond, Daniel learning about Mr Miyagi’s past – in World War 2 he served in the US Army, but his wife and child died in a US internment camp. On Daniel’s 18th birthday he gives him one of his classic cars and a gi to fight in.
At the tournament Daniel does well to the surprise of Cobra Kai and the audience, reaching the semi-final. Kreese instructs Bobby, Daniel’s opponent, to do a dangerous attack to the knee, which disqualifies Bobby but injures Daniel. Daniel has Mr Miyagi do a pain relief technique seen earlier, and is able to return for the final against Johnny. With the match drawn, Kreese tells Johnny to attack Daniel’s knee. In the final point, Daniel, only able to put his weight on one leg, does a Crane stance from earlier in the film and wins, gaining the respect of Johnny.
This is a fairly simple and straightforward story – boy comes to new town, gets bullied, finds a mentor, defeats bullies gaining their respect. There’s a couple of interesting elements – the intrusion of class, Daniel’s living with his single mother in an apartment block in Reseda, Johnny and Ali are from large houses in Encino, a smarter neighbourhood. This often comes in in American teen dramas of the 80s. The other is that both Kreese and Miyagi are veterans. Miyagi’s war was a tragedy, and he values spiritual strength, while Kreese’s war is his whole personality, and violence, ruthlessness and physical strength is uppermost.
Watch This: Classic kid martial arts film
Don’t Watch This: Kids get beaten up a lot
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