Why Does The Karate Kid Persist as the New Cobra Kai? A Critical Consideration by Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast (#82)

Did any­one sus­pect that the beloved 1984 film The Karate Kid (and its decreas­ing­ly beloved sequels) would now be not just remade but revived as the YouTube-Red-turned-Net­flix hit Cobra Kai? Is this new show actu­al­ly good, or just liv­ing unhealth­ily on nos­tal­gia and the fas­ci­na­tion of watch­ing teens and mid­dle aged peo­ple fist­fight and fall in love.

Your Pret­ty Much Pop hosts Mark-san, Eri­ca-san, and Bri­an-san sur­vey the show and all the films for non­sen­si­cal plot­ting, vil­lain moti­va­tion, ques­tion­able act­ing, and more. It’s almost as if PMP is the best… around… and noth­ing’s ever gonna keep it down.

Care for some arti­cles with more info about these shows?

• “The Untold Truth Of The Karate Kid” by Nolan Moore
• “The Crane Kick Is Bogus: A Karate Kid Oral His­to­ry” by Alex Pre­witt
• “At Net­flix, ‘Cobra Kai’ Broke Out. Now its White­ness Is Under a New Spot­light” by Jen Yam­a­to
• “‘Karate Kid’: Ralph Mac­chio Wax­es On About “Soul­ful Mag­ic” Of 1984 (And ‘Cobra Kai’ Reunion)” by Geoff Bouch­er
• “ ‘The Karate Kid’ stars explain why fans just can’t get enough of ‘Cobra Kai’ ” by Drew Weisholtz
• “The Karate Kid Screen­writer to Adapt Film as a Stage Musi­cal” by Nick Romano
• “The ‘Dark’ Side of Mr. Miya­gi: ‘Karate Kid’ Star Ralph Mac­chio Shares Pat Mori­ta Sto­ries in ‘More Than Miya­gi’ Doc­u­men­tary” by Elis­a­bet­ta Bian­chi­ni
• “Cobra Kai Sea­son 4 Release Date, Cast and Every­thing You Need to Know” by Alia Waheed

If you haven’t seen the noto­ri­ous Karate Kid III, watch this.

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.