Cobra Kai

TopTierHealer said:
Let me rephrase it: it is still not Citizen Kane. When people talk about "having respect for the originals" it makes me believe that the OG movie was some sort of groundbreaking piece of art when in reality it was just a movie. Just another flick in a time when people gave a damn about craftsmanship.

Same with The Ghostbusters. It's some sort of strange phenomenon where consoooomers act reverential towards what they have been hammered are pop culture icons. I swear, if God doesn't exist we need to invent it. Otherwise we will start worshipping Rick and Morty.
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Citizen Kane wasn't even that great, what's your point?

People enjoy a continuation of a movie that gives them fond memories, a continuation that was handled in a respectful and original manner. Why does this put such a large stick up your ass?
 
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TopTierHealer said:
Let me rephrase it: it is still not Citizen Kane. When people talk about "having respect for the originals" it makes me believe that the OG movie was some sort of groundbreaking piece of art when in reality it was just a movie.
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If people are still talking about a movie 40 years later, then there's more to it than that. Something is there of substance.
 
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Ok, it's no secret that I've loved this show so far, and have been pretty clear about that fact from the beginning on here. But the thing is, I did *not* grow up watching *any* of the "Karate Kid" movies, not even the one with Hillary Swank. (And especially not the later one where Will Smith paid money to try and fail to make one of his mediocre children into a movie star.)

Regardless of all of that, I've fucking loved Cobra Kai so far... (and I am hoping like hell that they don't fuck it up in this next/last? season.) My point is, this show is *not* directly nostalgia for me, (I have since seen the first 3 Karate kid movies, and they're all... fine. I'm not gonna lie, I still like Cobra Kai a hell of a lot more than any of them.)

With all of that said, I still don't understand how Kreese as a homeless bum with no income, was entirely able to usurp control of the Cobra Kai dojo from Johnny last season.
I do remember, Johnny had something of a handshake deal with his shitty landlord, and said landlord also kind of hated him... But I'm going to say it again, Kreese was a homeless bum with literally no job, and no income. Ok, Kreese changed terms of the contract through shady means, but how the hell did he pay for that change? He couldn't have even stolen the money for it from Johnny, because Johnny didn't have any money to steal... Johnny *himself* had to steal from his rich ass step-dad to get money in the first place.

I've watched the trailer, Kreese has allied with Terry Silver again *now* but they clearly weren't in cahoots again before this. (Silver was rich, even back then, but again...) Kreese was literally homeless before last season. How was Kreese paying for the strip mall dojo that even Johnny had to exploit his shitty step-dad to pay for before that? That's a minor gripe though.

As long as they still tell a good story though, I'm still down for what happens next.
 
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I'm hyped after seeing the new trailer.

No other show exists for me right now. You bet your ass I will be spending my New Year's Eve watching the entire season. I might even binge the previous seasons again, too.

Cobra Kai is just effortlessly entertaining and engaging; an absolute rarity among modern media.

Also, the show has managed to subvert my expectations, unlike the piece of crap media that has boasted itself in doing such things. This is a series that I never asked for ... But it ended up becoming something I never knew I wanted.
 
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We're only a couple of hours away from the new season dropping. I've already seen the first episode and thought it was pretty great. I can't wait to see what happens next.
 
White Devil said:
Season 4 is dropping in December.

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This show looks a thousand times awful. Two 60-year-old faggots who fought in a kid's karate tournament in 1984 are having epic gang battles between their respective schools because they have dementia and think the tournament literally happened last weekend. Also, everyone they ever interacted with keeps coming back into their lives to be recurring season villains. Its on Netflix. It's about karate.

fagman.PNG
 
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Sex Cannon Lupa said:
This show looks a thousand times awful. Two 60-year-old faggots who fought in a kid's karate tournament in 1984 are having epic gang battles between their respective schools because they have dementia and think the tournament literally happened last weekend. Also, everyone they ever interacted with keeps coming back into their lives to be recurring season villains. Its on Netflix. It's about karate.

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It's cringe. But enjoyable cringe. 4 seasons is definitely pushing it though.
 
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Johan Schmidt said:
It's cringe. But enjoyable cringe. 4 seasons is definitely pushing it though.
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Hopefully this will be the last season and it goes out on a high note.

I much rather this not be like stranger things, where it told the story it needed to tell in season 1, then overstayed its welcome.

I have several problems with how it turned out, but my main problem was they overexpanded the main cast and had too many plot threads, it needed more focus. It kept jumping around too much and there were things they could have cut or moved to the background perhaps adding to supplementary material.

A notable thing they cut have cut was that kid's girlfriend who none of the other boys believed was real sideplot and did you really need that musical number?

Then there is too much relationship drama. Now with Cobra Kai the show is all about relationship drama, that is why you are here. It is basically a martial arts Soap Opera. The original appeal of ST to me was the horror aspect, but then it became a soap. I am here for the horror nit the relationship drama.

Also season 3, they kicked up the wokeness which got on my nerves. I wish Max would go away and it seemed like they made the guys at the newspaper place cartoonishly misogynistic. The love interest of what's-his-name being a lesbian was ok, they made the reveal of that made sense in context. A few points there.

I can go on but I will cut it here.
I do see a danger that Cobra Kai could go down a similar path, but as of Season 3 things have been fine. I am trying to temper my excitement as it is now a Netflix show.
 
Sex Cannon Lupa said:
This show looks a thousand times awful. Two 60-year-old faggots who fought in a kid's karate tournament in 1984 are having epic gang battles between their respective schools because they have dementia and think the tournament literally happened last weekend. Also, everyone they ever interacted with keeps coming back into their lives to be recurring season villains. Its on Netflix. It's about karate.

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Okay.
 
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I don't know anything about Stranger things, but they've literally already finished filming Season 5 of Cobra Kai, so there's at least one more coming.

Also, I really liked season 4.
 
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Season 4 was fan-fucking-tastic, and I absolutely can't wait for season 5.

After seeing Season 2, I was like "Well, I can see just ONE more season happening and that's it." Then, season 3 happened, and it ended in a way that got me stoked for season 4. For a year I've been saying "Ok, after season 4, I don't see how the show can continue from there."

Yeah, no; I was wrong again. I want season 5 ASAP now.

The final two episodes of season 4 in particular are insane. If I can only list one thing that this show does well, it's season finales. Every single season finale thus far has been great.

EDIT:
The Robbie vs Hawk tournament fight may very well be my most-favorite fight of the entire series thus far. DAMN, that was fantastic!
 
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I have now finished Season 4. I tend not to "watch TV" but when there's something I particularly like I set aside a Sunday morning or similar and just spend it watching that show all at once. I treat TV series like movies, usually. Sometimes means I'll start watching something 9pm-ish when my day is finished and wrap up 2am+.

Cobra Kai works well for that because the episodes just flow into each other so well. For some reason they always feel short to me but I think that's because they're so packed and you have to really pay attention.

I was caught off-guard by S4 not being the last Season. I had thought it would be but I had worked out a few episodes in that it wouldn't be through the introduction of several new and long-term arcs. I'm with a couple of others here in saying that S4 was great and I enjoyed it but I'm slightly wary of them trying to spin this out for too long. I do want to see a conclusion to this and a good thematic end. I don't want to see it just peter out without a real conclusion to Johnny and Danny's arc.

So anyway, personal sperging over, this continues to be a really fun show. Danny, for all his peace and defence only homilies, can be a real arrogant prick sometime. It's really impressive how the characters can feel so true to the original movie. A movie which I watched when a kid but made no special impression on me. I think it retained its cultural presence in large part to people endlessly quoting "wax on, wax off" at each other. I never saw the sequels. And I honestly don't want to. From the flashback scenes they look pretty 80's and pretty broad-strokes. The show is well-written enough that when I meet the characters of that Japanese lady or Kreese or Silver I get a good feel for them and how they fit in just from that.

One thing that I both am impressed by and have to make an allowance for is that it sticks to old Martial Arts tropes about learning secret moves, competing styles, and other Eighties martial arts culture stuff. It pulls this off in an era of MMA and "cool" karate culture having somewhat passed successfully but it's complex. They do this in a number of ways. One way is that the students are kids. They literally don't know any better and are totally up for learning "secret moves" and joining a special Martial Arts school of ancient traditions (Miyagy-do) or becoming a "real man" (Cobra Kai). That's how fifteen year olds think - it's very believable to me that they could get sucked into seeing their Sensei's as life-teachers and going for all this Bullshido. The second thing is that the adults teaching them this stuff are stuck in the past as well. Johnny and Danny both had glory days in the Eighties, loved "Martial Arts" stuff. Bloodsports etc. in Johnny's case, "ancient tradition and oriental philosophy" stuff in Danny's case. They totally LOVE that after living in a 'real' world for so long they suddenly get to share their mindset with a bunch of kids and feel like they matter and their worldview matters once again. Even though that Eighties martial arts stuff seems to have gone a bit these days, the show makes it believable that these characters and these kids would be into it. And this stuff still exists. I joined a Karate dojo years ago where I was eventually kicked out for studying other martial arts at the same time because their school was the 'one true way'. And senseis would start lecturing with animal parables and such. The show does tread a fine line with balancing modern believability with continuing the slightly off-realism of the original films. A guy with a lot of martial arts experience beating up a couple of younger guys is not out of bounds. Robby's fight in juvie is a good fight scene showing karate training in a real world situation. Karate is useful and you get to see Robby pull off some pretty practical moves in a realistic fight when he first gets jumped. I have trained at an actual practical Karate school - they do exist. Just there's a lot of crap ones. More, I would say. It might also be why Robby is one of the best fighters - because unlike most of the other students he has actually been in real world fights outside of the dojo and tried to use karate in actual street fights.
 
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