I planned to write about something else today, but when I saw this news, the 80s kid in me couldn’t resist switching gears and covering it

Anyone around my age grew up with The Karate Kid. It was an incredibly popular movie. The story might have been a typical one: boy gets bullied, meets mentor and learns how to overcome the bullying, wins in the end (and gets the girl). It's an old story and a somewhat tired one. But The Karate Kid gave it a twist, introducing karate into the mix.

While I think the public was aware of karate due to Chuck Norris, the popular martial art at the time I believe was kung fu, made popular both by Bruce Lee and the Kung Fu TV show staring David Carradine (Bill from Kill Bill, kids). The Karate Kid changed that and overnight the Japanese martial art became the one that everyone wanted to do and the word that people used to describe any martial art.

Anyway, The Karate Kid became one of the biggest hits of the 80s. Every kid wanted to learn karate and meet their own Mr Miyagi. @bozz, @raymondspeaks, and the oldest of the @stickupboys were probably both begging their parents for karate lessons and were looking for a Mr Miyagi around their neighborhoods. I know I was.

The movie introduced several phrases into pop culture, among them "wax on, wax off". A sequel followed a few years later that was just as popular. A third followed some time later that kind of sucked. Macchio was older but the movie made him act like a spoiled kid and was kind of terrible as a result.

The studio then tried to recapture the magic of the first film by keeping Mr Miyagi but replacing the now-too-old Daniel-san with a girl (Hilary Swank), and it was ok but also kind of sucked. So it was that two bad sequels killed the franchise and it laid fallow for years.

Then 15 years later they made a new The Karate Kid. This one was marketed as a reboot staring Jackie Chan and Will Smith's kid and taking place in China. The question many immediately asked was "If it's in China and it's staring Jackie Chan, that's not really karate, is it? Why not call it The Kung Fu Kid and make it a sepreate movie instead of trying to tie it back to another series?"

Anyway, it came out and it was also just ok, kind of like the third and fourth films that had previously killed the franchise. And just like those, this one also killed the franchise again.

Years passed. But then, just when fans thought the franchise was done, a surprise revival in 2018 breathed new life into the world of The Karate Kid”. Ralph Macchio, the original Danial-san, and his opponent from the first film, the bully Johnny, played by William Zabka, started a new TV sequel to the first four films called Cobra Kai. It was and has been extremely successful and has been going for six seasons (60 episodes). The sixth and last season is still airing and is unfinished.

We, the fans, kind of thought Cobra Kai would be the last we see of Danial-san. Little did we know...

About a year ago Ralph Macchio tweeted that he was work with Jackie Chan on a Karate Kid film to unite the two Karate Kid movie series (the original four with Mr Miyagi and Chan's reboot).

I read the tweet and got excited, sharing the news with a few people (including a few Hive users on Discord, I think) but after a few months passed and I didn't hear anything, I kind of dismissed it, thinking while it was a cool idea, it probably never made it past the discussion phase.

Imagine my surprise when I woke up this morning and saw this!

(If that embed doesn't work for you go here to watch it directly)

Looks great! I have a few nitpicks—such as it seems more like Kung Fu Kid, part 2 instead of The Karate Kid, but at least Ralph Macchio is in it and it looks like it is at least attempting to bring the two movie series together.

While I think Cobra Kai is probably the more proper The Karate Kid sequel and the best we will ever get, this new Karate Kid movie with Macchio and Chan looks like it could be really good too.

Are you as excited about this as I am? Share your thoughts below—will this be the sequel we’ve been waiting for or another so-so one that once again kills the franchise for the next dozen years?

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David is an American teacher and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. He blogs here and at laspina.org. Write him on Twitter or Mastodon.

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