With the second season of last year’s surprise hit Cobra Kai just around the corner, which is a continuation of the classic Karate Kid franchise, cast members of both the current show and the original film, William Zabka and Martin Kove, spoke at WonderCon and reminisced about the original film, discussing various aspects.
First up we have Martin Kove, who plays the merciless Sensei John Kreese discussing how his character never received a third opportunity to defeat Mr. Miyagi. Kreese was bested on two occasions by Miyagi.
“This season you’ll learn that he didn’t. He would’ve liked to but as he tells Ralph, ‘My condolences.’ He doesn’t have any lost love for Miyagi, but it’s really Miyagi Do that needs to be snuffed out. There’s only one game in town.”
Kove also talked about how the original film’s director instructed him to play John Kreese to basically be the coldest son of a bitch on Earth, as Kove explains below.
“For me, you do a character who’s venomous and you give ‘em a sense of humor. John Kreese didn’t have that in the movies. John Avildsen would come to me and say, ‘I don’t want a Marty Kove twinkle. I don’t want a smile. I want death.’ He really said that so everything was quite stoic. Everything was rigid.”
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Moving on to William Zabka who played the bully Johnny Lawrence in the original film, talking about how his character and Ralph Macchio’s Daniel LaRusso could have easily found themselves on each other’s paths.
“Oh yeah, I always say that. Ralph and I joke about that all the time. If Johnny would have stumbled into the South Seas Apartments and made a bonsai tree, he would’ve turned into Daniel Larusso. And if Johnny wasn’t at Cobra Kai the day he peeked his little head in there, Daniel was this close to getting into the clutches of Kreese. So it could’ve gone either way and we could have a whole different story but that’s like life. You’re affected by who you run into, who takes over your life, who you give power to.”
Since the release of Cobra Kai, Zabka’s Johnny Lawrence hs found new life, showing the character in a different light, longtime fans of the original film are now seeing maybe Johnny isn’t so bad after all. Zabka explains below that he has always seen Johnny in this way.
“The two parts in the script that I held onto, which was the first one when he says, ‘I’m an ex-degenerate’ and the second one when he hands Daniel the trophy after Kreese says sweep the leg. When I read those two parts in the script, I’m like oh, so he’s not just all bad. At the end of the movie if Daniel would’ve kicked him in the face and Johnny would’ve come at him with a baseball bat, then he’s unredeemable. I saw, oh, okay, he’s got a conscience. Because of that, I was able to play all the other colors.”
Zabka continued:
“Any interview I ever did since then until now, I never ever saw him as the bad guy. He was the antagonist in the film and he was the villain in a sense but I always saw him through his own story. He was justified almost in everything he did because he was trained a certain way to respond a certain way. Here’s, from his point of view, a stranger coming in from out of town, gets in his business, takes his girlfriend and then takes his title. I mean, he wipes out his identity so to me, that was that story but it was the story, for me, as the actor and you have to always have your story. In the big picture, for me the story was a story of a kid waking up a little bit and that crane kick actually liberated Johnny Lawrence and set him free. But then all his foundation for 18 years, all his training and everything goes out the window and now what do you have? You can’t reach back to that so he’s been a lost kind of soul for this many years and now he’s finally getting to the point where he’s going to try and make some changes and grow up. I think there’s something about that that people relate to.”
I was a huge fan of the original film growing up, and throughly enjoyed the first season of Cobra Kai, and I am anxiously awaiting Season 2. The series is nostalgia done right and really does show the viewer there is much more to both Daniel LaRusso and Johnny Lawrence, and it may not be what you think.
Are you excited for Cobra Kai Season 2? Let us know in the comments down below!
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Source: /Film