Tag: karate kid

Cobra Kai was good, but can only go downhill from here

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I first heard news about Cobra Kai, I cringed.  The phrases “spin-off” and “reboot” have become so frequent and so often yielding in sub-satisfactory product, that I’ve become somewhat sensitive and triggered whenever I hear them.  Worse, when they’re attached to a property I’ve loved for nearly my entire life, The Karate Kid franchise.  I felt immediate dread and a grave concern that The Karate Kid was next in line to become bastardized by the Hollywood machine that feels the need to bilk and ruin everything that was once successful, in order to attempt to cash in on nostalgia, and feast upon the wallets of the past, in the present.

The pessimistic feelings intensified when I heard that the show had been green lit, and then was actually in production.  And then the press releases emerged with actual drop dates and that it was going to be a YouTube:RedTube exclusive, and the reality started to sink in that this was actually going to happen.  I avoided all teasers and preview trailers, and tried to unsee whenever I caught any glimpses of any promotional materials, because frankly I didn’t want to accept that Cobra Kai was actually going to happen.

A friend of mine began telling me how pumped up he was that the show was coming, and how it was going to get him to actually pay actual money in order to get a RedTube subscription so that he could watch it.  When I said that I didn’t really want to watch it, he called me a hipster that was being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian, and that I should be more open minded.  I leveled with him, and told me that if he legitimately thought it was good, then I would give it a chance, but his judgment would be on the line if that were to be the case.

When the show dropped, my friend started texting me about how good it was.  It’s easy to get caught up in the early episodes, but I didn’t want to watch something that was going to disappoint me in the long haul.  The texts kept coming, spoiling some non-essential situational plot points that admittedly intrigued me.  And then the next day, I get a text detailing how tired he was at work, because he had stayed up to just watch the whole series.  Then my brother texts me asking me if I’d started watching yet. 

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The Kung Fu Kid vs. The Karate Kid

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

At first, I had wanted nothing to do with the idea of Will Smith using his influence and pull to recreate one of the greatest movies of all time, in The Karate Kid, but using his own kid as the titular role. And then when the premise of the plot was butchered to where instead of being in the United States, but instead China, I was a little beside myself; obviously from the get-go anyone with half a brain knows that it’s no longer karate. I thought the idea for the film was utter crap. However, that ended up changing somewhere down the line.

And that was when I found out that Jackie Chan was the actor chosen to essentially be “The Mr. Miyagi” of the film, and then suddenly, my tune began to change real quick. I’m a huge admirer of Jackie Chan, not just for the entertainment of all his acting, acrobatics, and martial arts, but I really admire the guy’s intelligence. He speaks so many different languages, has a massive fanbase both in the United States as well as Asia, and there’s something about the guy that seems genuine and that he truly puts himself into all his roles. With him as part of the flick, suddenly the movie didn’t seem like it could be that bad.

In conclusion? I was right. The Kung Fu Kid wasn’t bad at all . . . Mostly because pretty much, we’ve already seen the entire movie before. (Potential spoilers, plot summaries ahead)

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