Post by K-Box on Sept 13, 2008 22:28:33 GMT -8
The Karate Kid, Part II ...
... The ice-breaking scene.
The Karate Kid was always kind of a gravity-defying film, if you think about it, since the only truly inventive thing about it was the way in which it remixed cliches. If it had been more honest, its title would have been Rocky Junior Takes Up Martial Arts Instead Of Boxing. It was one of those films that I wound up seeing in grade school, when the teachers wanted to give us a "free day," because it didn't have any naughty words or sex, but it had just enough violence to keep the little boys in class from getting bored. Plus, it had an upbeat Underdog Hero Beats The Bullies And Gets The Girl thing going on, which tends to resonate as strongly with grade school kids as anyone else. All in all, it was a decent, entertaining, mostly inoffensive little film, but not an especially great one, and not one that I probably would have asked my parents to take me to, and yet, it somehow gained enough of a following to spawn three sequels, of which only one was any damn good.
But to be fair to The Karate Kid, Part II, not only was it good, it was one hell of a lot better than the original, which still stands up as an okay film, but which seems a bit cringe-worthy, in retrospect, in its somewhat one-note portrayal of Miyagi as The Inscrutable Asian Mentor To The White Hero. By contrast, while Part II retains much of the focus on Ralph Macchio's Daniel-San as the protagonist, it actually does a lot to develop the character of Miyagi, which allows the all-too-often criminally under-utilized Pat Morita to shine a lot more. I'm pretty sure I saw Part II with my Aunt Barb, again, when I was still a grade school kid (Barb was one of my favorite aunts growing up, because she always took me to movies and let me borrow her Time-Life books on The Enchanted World and Mysteries of the Unknown), and even as a little kid, I liked that Miyagi wasn't just a reactive cardboard cut-out adult, but that he had his own backstory, and his own drama during the course of the movie's plot. Looking back on it, it kind of reminds me of the parallel romance arcs of Marty McFly and Doc Brown in Back to the Future Part III.
True story: The first time I saw this film, I was so ignorant of the outside world that I honestly thought that Okinawa was a purely fictional place, that they'd made up just for these movies, like Gotham City was for Batman. In my defense, I was still in grade school.
I love Yuji Okumoto as Chozen in this scene. The dialogue that's written for his character is consistently terrible, and his acting is so bad that it is - dare I say it? - bordering on the Shatner-esque, and yet, he delivers his godawful lines with a courageous conviction, practically roaring his responses - even when they're only one word apiece, like "YES!!!" or "WRONG!!!" - as if valiantly attempting to compensate for how embarrassingly hackneyed each phrase is:Aryan youth Cobra Kai in the original film.
The real tragedy of watching this scene now is that the three best actors in it are dead. Pat Morita was a talented and versatile actor, but most American moviegoers never knew, because he was so restrictively typecast that even interviewers would occasionally assume that his command of the English language was no better than Miyagi's (he was born in motherfucking California, for Christ's sake). And if you want proof of how superior Part II was to the original film, consider this - the original film's arch-villain was played by Martin Kove, a.k.a. The Literate Man's Randall "Tex" Cobb, whereas Part II's arch-villain was played by Danny Kamekona, whose performance as Sato evoked the best of Erik Larsen's "dressed for success" portrayals of Doctor Octopus in the Spider-Man comics. Between the shades, the suits, the build and the voice, every time Sato stepped into a scene, he made it clear that somebody's shit was going to get fucked up, hardcore. In fact, fuck Rupert Everett - when they made the live-action Inspector Gadget film, why the hell didn't they cast Kamekona as Dr. Claw? I mean, aside from the fact that he was already dead by then? Not only did he LOOK the part, with a granite slab of a face that could betray surprisingly subtle nuances of emotion, but all you have to do is imagine his voice - "YOUUUUUU ARE COVERED" - growling, "NEEEEEEXT TIIIIIIME, GADGET ... NEEEEEEXT TIIIIIIME!!!"
And, oh, Nobu McCarthy. Now, granted, every short, skinny white boy who saw Part II, myself included, zeroed in on Tamlyn Tomita, as Daniel-San's cute girlfriend, because much like the rest of the film, there was more than a bit of pandering to Mighty Whitey fantasies of tapping some hot Asian ass. It's weird to realize that the giggling teenage girl from that film was (and obviously still is) nine years older than me, which means that she's now 42 years old, and which, in turn, gives me a whole new reason to lust after her all over again, because she now looks like this ...
... Which, in turn, means HOLY SHIT MILF.
But, oh, Nobu McCarthy. Remembering what I thought and felt the first time I saw this film, I realize now that my MILF love dates back even further than I'd been consciously aware of, because I was, what, 11 years old, when I saw this film? And she was already just past 50 YEARS OLD. AND YET, when I saw the scenes of McCarthy and Tomita, I remember myself, not even consciously thinking, but more feeling like, "Daniel-San's girlfriend is really pretty ... but Miyagi's old lady girlfriend is kind of cute, too."
She was only 67 years old when she died (which suddenly makes me worried about Elisabeth Sladen's mortality), and time seems to have remained kind to her, even in her later years:
Tell me you wouldn't have.
P.S. As far as I can recall, "Rock And Roll Over You" is the only Moody Blues song I've ever enjoyed, and I have to attribute that to its use as the background music in this scene alone.
... The ice-breaking scene.
The Karate Kid was always kind of a gravity-defying film, if you think about it, since the only truly inventive thing about it was the way in which it remixed cliches. If it had been more honest, its title would have been Rocky Junior Takes Up Martial Arts Instead Of Boxing. It was one of those films that I wound up seeing in grade school, when the teachers wanted to give us a "free day," because it didn't have any naughty words or sex, but it had just enough violence to keep the little boys in class from getting bored. Plus, it had an upbeat Underdog Hero Beats The Bullies And Gets The Girl thing going on, which tends to resonate as strongly with grade school kids as anyone else. All in all, it was a decent, entertaining, mostly inoffensive little film, but not an especially great one, and not one that I probably would have asked my parents to take me to, and yet, it somehow gained enough of a following to spawn three sequels, of which only one was any damn good.
But to be fair to The Karate Kid, Part II, not only was it good, it was one hell of a lot better than the original, which still stands up as an okay film, but which seems a bit cringe-worthy, in retrospect, in its somewhat one-note portrayal of Miyagi as The Inscrutable Asian Mentor To The White Hero. By contrast, while Part II retains much of the focus on Ralph Macchio's Daniel-San as the protagonist, it actually does a lot to develop the character of Miyagi, which allows the all-too-often criminally under-utilized Pat Morita to shine a lot more. I'm pretty sure I saw Part II with my Aunt Barb, again, when I was still a grade school kid (Barb was one of my favorite aunts growing up, because she always took me to movies and let me borrow her Time-Life books on The Enchanted World and Mysteries of the Unknown), and even as a little kid, I liked that Miyagi wasn't just a reactive cardboard cut-out adult, but that he had his own backstory, and his own drama during the course of the movie's plot. Looking back on it, it kind of reminds me of the parallel romance arcs of Marty McFly and Doc Brown in Back to the Future Part III.
True story: The first time I saw this film, I was so ignorant of the outside world that I honestly thought that Okinawa was a purely fictional place, that they'd made up just for these movies, like Gotham City was for Batman. In my defense, I was still in grade school.
I love Yuji Okumoto as Chozen in this scene. The dialogue that's written for his character is consistently terrible, and his acting is so bad that it is - dare I say it? - bordering on the Shatner-esque, and yet, he delivers his godawful lines with a courageous conviction, practically roaring his responses - even when they're only one word apiece, like "YES!!!" or "WRONG!!!" - as if valiantly attempting to compensate for how embarrassingly hackneyed each phrase is:
- "Let us FIND OUT, eh?"
- "There IS no other time!"
- "You go NOWHERE!"
- "You have a CHOICE - broken ICE, or broken NECK."
The real tragedy of watching this scene now is that the three best actors in it are dead. Pat Morita was a talented and versatile actor, but most American moviegoers never knew, because he was so restrictively typecast that even interviewers would occasionally assume that his command of the English language was no better than Miyagi's (he was born in motherfucking California, for Christ's sake). And if you want proof of how superior Part II was to the original film, consider this - the original film's arch-villain was played by Martin Kove, a.k.a. The Literate Man's Randall "Tex" Cobb, whereas Part II's arch-villain was played by Danny Kamekona, whose performance as Sato evoked the best of Erik Larsen's "dressed for success" portrayals of Doctor Octopus in the Spider-Man comics. Between the shades, the suits, the build and the voice, every time Sato stepped into a scene, he made it clear that somebody's shit was going to get fucked up, hardcore. In fact, fuck Rupert Everett - when they made the live-action Inspector Gadget film, why the hell didn't they cast Kamekona as Dr. Claw? I mean, aside from the fact that he was already dead by then? Not only did he LOOK the part, with a granite slab of a face that could betray surprisingly subtle nuances of emotion, but all you have to do is imagine his voice - "YOUUUUUU ARE COVERED" - growling, "NEEEEEEXT TIIIIIIME, GADGET ... NEEEEEEXT TIIIIIIME!!!"
And, oh, Nobu McCarthy. Now, granted, every short, skinny white boy who saw Part II, myself included, zeroed in on Tamlyn Tomita, as Daniel-San's cute girlfriend, because much like the rest of the film, there was more than a bit of pandering to Mighty Whitey fantasies of tapping some hot Asian ass. It's weird to realize that the giggling teenage girl from that film was (and obviously still is) nine years older than me, which means that she's now 42 years old, and which, in turn, gives me a whole new reason to lust after her all over again, because she now looks like this ...
... Which, in turn, means HOLY SHIT MILF.
But, oh, Nobu McCarthy. Remembering what I thought and felt the first time I saw this film, I realize now that my MILF love dates back even further than I'd been consciously aware of, because I was, what, 11 years old, when I saw this film? And she was already just past 50 YEARS OLD. AND YET, when I saw the scenes of McCarthy and Tomita, I remember myself, not even consciously thinking, but more feeling like, "Daniel-San's girlfriend is really pretty ... but Miyagi's old lady girlfriend is kind of cute, too."
She was only 67 years old when she died (which suddenly makes me worried about Elisabeth Sladen's mortality), and time seems to have remained kind to her, even in her later years:
Tell me you wouldn't have.
P.S. As far as I can recall, "Rock And Roll Over You" is the only Moody Blues song I've ever enjoyed, and I have to attribute that to its use as the background music in this scene alone.
.
