‘The Karate Kid’: The unexpected blockbuster that became a cultural phenomenon

Before the release of The Karate Kid (1984), director John G. Avildsen and screenwriter Robert Mark Kamen attended a test screening at the Baronet Theatre on Third Avenue in New York. They smoked a joint and drank some tequilas while waiting for the audience’s first reactions to a film that had been described by its editor, Bud Smith, as “a little movie that no one was going to give a shit about.” When, after the screening ended, they approached the main entrance and saw some suited executives trying to do the crane kick, they knew they had a hit on their hands.

The now-legendary crane kick with which Daniel LaRusso defeated Johnny Lawrence was Kamen’s idea: “I made it up. It was just something I thought up on the spot. How cool would it be if you saw Mr. Miyagi on a log doing this impossible thing? You have no balance. Your hands aren’t in a defensive position. It’s just cinematic.” An absurd move in the words of martial arts experts. Even illegal. “In an actual tournament, that’s a disqualifying kick,” admitted Pat Johnson, the film’s choreographer, in The Crane Kick is Bogus: A Karate Kid Oral History, a detailed review of the movie published in Sports Illustrated.

Made up, unrealistic, and illegal — but also one of the most recognizable elements of one of the most influential movies of the 1980s. Just like the first phrase that comes to mind when its title is mentioned: “Wax on, wax off,” or catching a fly with chopsticks, one of the most difficult sequences to film. They built a system of transparent tubes to simulate it, even hired a fly trainer who tried freezing them to slow their flight, but as they warmed up, they flew faster.

In the end, they used a fuzz from the script supervisor’s sweater tied to a thread. Eighties special effects. But as its star Ralph Macchio put it: “Yes, you have them catching flies with chopsticks, you have the crane kick. But I think the human element is why it connects and relates.”

The Karate Kid marked a generation of teenagers who dreamed of flying kicks and leg sweeps, filled gyms with kids fantasizing about heroically standing up to their bullies, and sparked a true passion for martial arts.

Thousands upon thousands of young people discovered an ancient discipline, perhaps because previous films in the genre — quite niche at the time — were set in distant Shaolin temples, while this one took place in a not-so-glamorous Los Angeles neighborhood high school and featured no ancient curses or struggles, just plain old bullying of those who were different. The same kind of bullying James Dean experienced in the seminal Rebel Without a Cause and that countless kids face in schools everywhere — from Los Angeles to Cádiz.

Forty years later, with the sixth film in the saga about to be released, its impact on popular culture is undeniable — and that was something no one could have predicted since it was originally meant to be just a Rocky copy for teens.

Kamen admits that Sylvester Stallone joked with him about it. “He says: ‘You just fucking ripped off my movie.’” And Kamen admitted it: “Yeah, you know what, you’re absolutely right. You had one good idea and I ripped it off!” Columbia didn’t even try to hide it. They hired the same director, brought Bill Conti back for the soundtrack, and the main song was a leftover from Rocky III.

But The Karate Kid was also based on an original story. Producer Jerry Weintraub had bought the rights to an article about an eight-year-old boy from Hawaii, the son of a single mother, who had asked to be enrolled in karate classes so he could stand up to neighborhood bullies who beat him up. He earned his black belt and didn’t just learn to fight — he found a mentor who took him under his wing. Weintraub knew there was a story there, especially at a time when teen movies were beginning to boom.

He contacted Columbia, and they called screenwriter Robert Mark Kamen. Kamen — practically a beginner back then, and now established thanks to his work with Luc Besson on the Taken and Transporter franchises starring Liam Neeson and Jason Stathan — was the right choice. He had suffered bullying in his youth and studied martial arts to defend himself, and just as he would portray in his film, he knew two styles: the ruthless fighting of his first teacher, reflected in John Kreese, and the life philosophy of Mr. Miyagi.

The plot was simple. Daniel LaRusso, an Italian-American teenager (another similarity with Rocky), moves with his widowed mother to a Los Angeles neighborhood where he is bullied by a group of kids who practice martial arts — and to top it off, he falls in love with the ex-girlfriend of the gang’s leader. After a beating, he receives help from Mr. Miyagi, a silent man full of secrets who trains him to face his bullies.

When the actor who would eventually play LaRusso, Ralph Macchio, read the script, he thought “it sounded like a bad after-school special.” Ron Thomas, one of the actors who would be part of the Cobra Kai, was even more blunt: “My manager told me: “This movie has no audience. It’s not going anywhere.’” However, Avildsen thought otherwise. “This is going to be a classic,” he said on set, much to the disbelief of the cast and crew.

Casting had been complicated. To play LaRusso, they had auditioned half the young actors in Hollywood. Emilio Estevez, the first favorite for the role, and his brother Charlie Sheen; also Nicolas Cage, C. Thomas Howell, Anthony Edwards, and Eric Stoltz. For his antagonist — the role that William Zabka would ultimately play — they considered Robert Downey Jr. and Crispin Glover. For Ali, they tried Helen Hunt and Demi Moore, though the final choice was Elisabeth Shue, who at the time had only done a Burger King commercial.

In the end, the part went to Macchio, who came backed by his tragic role as Johnny Cade in The Outsiders (1983) by Coppola. Despite being 21, he still looked like a teenager and was also a “string bean,” just what Kamen was looking for. Finding Miyagi, an essential role, was more complicated. The first choice was Toshirō Mifune, Kurosawa’s favorite actor and star of Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, and Rashomon, and famous in the U.S. for his majestic portrayal of Toranaga in the TV series Shogun. The problem was that when they brought him to Los Angeles, they discovered he didn’t speak a word of English.

Another difficult search began: there was no star system for Asian actors because there were no leading roles for them. John Avildsen suggested Pat Morita’s name, and everyone thought he was joking. Morita was a comedian famous for his live shows where he’d show up high, drinking, and disheveled, and he was associated with his role on the 1970s family sitcom Happy Days. He wasn’t a dramatic actor and had never taken on a role of that magnitude. But his performance was so extraordinary that with that role, he became the first Asian-American actor nominated for an Oscar.

Morita knew that, given the scarcity of roles for Asian actors, the character of Miyagi was a real gem. The role was deeply developed, perhaps because Kamen was drawing from someone very dear to him — his own teacher. That attention to detail in portraying the characters is what sets The Karate Kid apart and elevates it.

Kamen used Miyagi to tell the story of a generation of Japanese Americans who, after the paranoia following Pearl Harbor, were confined in internment camps on U.S. soil while a battalion composed exclusively of Japanese soldiers fought on the front lines for the United States.

“I thought it was important that the American public remember the Japanese were interned in this country during World War II, that these Nisei kids felt so patriotic that they had their own regiment, the 442nd, and won more medals of honor than any other in World War II,” he explains.

Morita brought a unique depth to the role, perhaps because he also had a tragic background. He was the son of immigrant farmworkers who moved around the country in the 1930s. At two years old, he had broken his spine and contracted spinal tuberculosis, which forced him to spend his childhood in the hospital, raised by Western doctors and nurses. When he recovered, he was taken to the internment camp where his family lived — a place filled entirely with Japanese people, a world he had never seen before and did not identify with.

The scene where a drunken Miyagi, dressed in his military uniform, recounts how he discovered on the front that his wife and baby had died in the internment camp made the entire crew cry during filming. However, Columbia tried to cut the scene. “Once they showed it to a full audience, everyone shut up. Could you imaginenothaving that scene? The whole tournament, you’re rooting for Daniel because you’re rooting for Miyagi,” Macchio admitted years later.

Macchio and Morita had proven their dramatic abilities, but there was a problem: neither knew anything about martial arts. Not a thing. To help them, they brought in martial arts choreographer Pat Johnson, a fighter who had trained with Chuck Norris, one of the few Western actors actually fighting in his movies at the time.

Johnson put all the actors through tough training to help automate some moves. And to build rivalry between LaRusso and Lawrence’s Cobra Kai, Avildsen kept them apart. Macchio and Zabka barely saw each other during filming. The director was very specific about that confrontation: he wanted the antagonists to march like Nazi youth and even asked them to dye their hair blond.

Martial arts experts appreciated the film’s effort but didn’t buy the fight scenes. Den of Geek magazine consulted karate expert Hermann Bayer, who made the obvious clear: it’s not a documentary, it’s a movie. “This means that we need to concede that fascinating viewers by something pretty, amazing, or spectacular to look at is more important than authenticity.”

According to Bayer, Daniel LaRusso in The Karate Kid goes from zero to hero too quickly. Not even Pai Mei’s harsh training in Kill Bill is more effective, though both he and Uma Thurman’s character share a teaching style based on seemingly mundane tasks, something partly true because “the repetitive nature of martial arts practice is boring so any way to invigorate enthusiasm is welcome.”

But no matter how much you wax cars or paint fences, you won’t become a martial arts star. “If it were, the MMA cage would be dominated by car washers, carpenters, and house painters. That’s the magic of movies.Movie martial arts are no more realistic than movie car chases,” says Bayer.

With a budget of barely $8 million, it grossed over $100 million and became one of the year’s highest-grossing films. Critics also praised it. “The Karate Kid was one of the nice surprises of 1984 — an exciting, sweet-tempered, heart-warming story with one of the most interesting friendships in a long time,” wrote Roger Ebert.

The filming of the sequel was such an event that they had to build a helipad to receive a visit from president George H.W. Bush. There were three more sequels, an animated series, a musical, and in 2018, Cobra Kai, a quiet success born on YouTube that became one of Netflix’s most-watched series. Made by and for fans of the saga, it fulfilled its role in keeping the spirit of The Karate Kid alive and reclaiming the underrated character — Johnny Lawrence, another victim like LaRusso. And now comes Karate Kid: Legends. It does not star Morita, who passed away in 2005, but features Jackie Chan and Ralph Macchio, who is returning to reprise the role that defined his careers on the big screen.

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