Headscratchers / The Karate Kid (1984)

• The whole plot could have been easily avoided had Daniel told his mother about Johnny and his gang in the first place. Indeed, Daniel could have told Lucille about the bullying right after Johnny and his friends caused him to crash his bicycle. I understand that Johnny and his friends could have bullied Daniel worse if he informed anyone about their actions, but even in that case, Daniel and Lucille could have go to the police and request them to do something with Johnny and his gang, as their bullying went to a point it could easily be considered assault. If I had been in Daniel's shoes, that's exactly what I would have done...
  • Odds are that while she would take Daniel being bullied seriously she’s likely call him out for retaliations (his pulling pranks on him) something tells me Daniel would have wanted to avoid that. Also if he did tell his mom the school either might not get involved or wouldn’t make it a top priority, either way Daniel would have a target on his head. Same if they went to the police, they might be a little more likely to help but odds are it also wouldn’t be effective, or they could just not care at all. This did take place in the 80s and bullying wasn’t taken as seriously as it is now. Also eventually Daniel wanted to make the bully pay for what he did, so he entered a tournament to try and beat the top karate student at his own game.
  • It should also be noted that bullying is taken a lot more seriously today than it was back in the '80s (which is not to say it isn't still condoned to a large degree). Back then, the attitude that "kids will be kids" and that bullying was a normal part of growing up was nearly ubiquitous. Parents generally did not do much to combat it, and even when they wanted to do something about it, they had few resources at their disposal.
  • There's also the unwritten law of high school to consider, which was holding true even as late as the early 2010's: You don't snitch on other kids. Period. Doesn't matter how much you hate them, doesn't matter what they're up to, doesn't matter how much they bother you, you settle it between yourselves. Involving teachers/other adults makes you look weak. Is that dumb? Sure. But it's also very real.
  • Even if Daniel went to the cops, what evidence does he have? If he says "These four kids attacked me" and the kids all say "He's lying"...well, that's four against one. The cops haven't seen the movie like we have. They have no way of knowing who's telling the truth.
    • If the cops were to launch a full investigation, there would be plenty of evidence they could assess, including Daniel’s visible injuries, witnesses to his first fight with Johnny, and the gang’s overall bullying of Daniel at school and elsewhere. (Of course, if he went to the cops after Mr. Miyagi’s intervention, proving who did what could get more complicated.) If the cops cross-examined everyone involved, the gang’s attempt to present a consistent story denying Daniel’s charges would be hard to sustain. All that said, it’s doubtful the cops would take the matter seriously enough to conduct such a full-scale investigation. They’d most likely dismiss it as a teenage skirmish not worth their time.
  • Asking anybody for help would hurt Daniel's pride. He probably feels that a "real man" should deal with his own problems. Daniel's character development is all about developing a useful kind of pride focused on self-improvement, as opposed to his default style of pride where where he just kinda hides his problems and feels ashamed. (For a great example of how the shame is getting to him, watch the scene where he throws his bicycle in a dumpster.)

• How can Daniel deflect all of Miyagi's volley of blows after house-painting day, even if Miyagi is in Training Mode.
  • The film happens over a series of weeks, not days. The first few days of Daniel's training is chores but once that's done Miyagi does start earnestly training him in martial arts.
    • It takes place over the course of several months, although the timeframe of the chore part specifically is unclear. It really would take only a few days, though, for him to unknowingly get so much into the habit of performing those moves that they've become utterly second nature to him, which is the entire point of the scenes.
    • It takes place over at most two months. The All-Valley Under 18 Karate Championship took place in mid-December, and the confrontation at the Cobra Kai dojo took place after Halloween.
  • Daniel actually won because of three reasons: 1. The fact all the house work bulked him up a bit as taught him technique. 2. Cobra Kai's dishonorable tactics disqualified their second best guy and locked their best guy in a tactic that made him vulnerable to the Crane Kick. 3. Kreese over-focused on raw brutality versus technique, which isn't very good for a tournament or a disciplined martial artist in general. Daniel may have only started his training but Miyagi got him practicing every move with great repetition. Even so, had the Cobra Kai dojo fought fairly, Daniel probably wouldn't have made it past the semi-finals (he might have beaten Bobby or he might not have but Lawrence would have won without the Crane Kick "trick") but wouldn't have had the problems he had in the first place.
• Why is it that a rich man like Miyagi works as a maintenance man at a crappy apartment complex, I mean, aside from giving him the ability to meet young men?
  • I wondered that, too, especially after he seems to never return to the apartment complex after he lures Daniel to his home.
  • Because he enjoys the work? Miyagi's home and car collection is proof that he likes building and fixing things, working for the apartment means he gets paid to do something he likes. Also he hardly qualifies as "rich." True he has a nice Japanese-style house and car collection, but he built the house entirely by himself and the cars were probably junkers he got for next to nothing and then restored. The sale of the cars probably helps finance his various projects. As for not returning to the apartment to work after agreeing to train Daniel, maybe he just took some vacation time in anticipation of having to train Daniel in karate.
  • I think it's implied that he has enough money to be comfortable. He has the nice house and all those cars and oil wells on his property.
  • It's also possible that he bought the cars new, or when they were just used cars.
  • How about this explanation: He owns the complex. He's doing maintenance on it because, as noted, he likes working with his hands and it means he doesn't have to pay someone else to do it. Plus it's not that crappy.
  • It still doesn't explain why he would have to sell a car to invest on the "little tree" business in the third movie. Especially after the fourth movie gives a good idea on how rich he is.
  • Possibly it is an immediate liquidity problem, rather than a lack of wealth per se. If his money is tied up in investments and other non immediately accessible savings, then selling a truck might be easier than cracking open the piggy bank. He could always have restructured afterwards.
• Isn't it pointed out in the final tournament that it's against the rules to kick someone in the face? Then, Daniel uses a crane kick to kick Johnny in the face, which causes him to win the tournament rather than be disqualified.
  • You have it backwards. Ali explains the rules to Daniel before the tournament: "Everything above your waist is a point. You can hit the head, sternum, kidneys, ribs." Furthermore, throughout the tournament, several Cobra Kai members win points by kicking their opponents' faces; in fact, Johnny wins a point in this way. Thus, the crane kick was perfectly legal in the final match.
  • It is in the third movie that attacks to the head are specifically mentioned as being off limits. Perhaps someone on the All Valley Karate tournament committee was disturbed by the apparent graphicness of the crane kick in the first movie. Of course by the time Cobra Kai rolls around they are legal again, but that can be put down to Daniel being on the committee at that point.
  • And it should be noted attacks to the legs aren't illegal, they just offer no points. Several times the combatants strike at the legs to set their opponent up for a strike which will earn a point. Bobby is disqualified not for attacking Daniel's leg, but doing so in way blatantly aimed at injuring him in such a way that he can no longer compete effectively. "Sweep the leg" isn't an order to cheat per se. . . Johnny is only warned after the sweep when he again strikes Daniel's injured leg (after catching Daniel's kick and elbowing the injured knee). The sweep itself may be considered a cheap shot (since Johnny knows Daniel is injured there), but not an illegal or completely unsportsmanlike one.
• If Miyagi only knew about karate techniques that were applicable to life-and-death combat, and knew nothing about competition rules, why didn't Daniel foul out of the tournament early on? Miyagi's father would presumably have taught him the sort of potentially-crippling moves that would disqualify someone from an athletic event, not the safe ones of sport karate.
  • Mister Miyagi wasn't teaching Daniel how to be a killer or at least at that stage of their training. He was teaching Daniel how to defend himself and also strengthen his mind as well as well. The big difference between Mister Miyagi and Kreese is the former has a great deal of discipline as well as lethality while the latter has no discipline (which actually makes him less lethal).
  • Miyagi also probably had faith that Daniel wouldn't try anything crippling or illegal because of his own good nature.
  • He also probably simply didn't teach Daniel the more advanced (and thus dangerous) strikes before the tournament. Simple and effective blows would be enough to see him through, and once Daniel has gotten the Cobra Kai bullies off his back (and decides he wants to keep learning from Miyagi) then Miyagi knows Daniel can be trusted with the more advanced techniques.
• So Mr. Miyagi has lived in the US for about forty years, served in the army, and doesn't live in a Japanese-only community. So why is his English so God awful? It seems impossible that a man as brilliant as him wouldn't speak fluent English by now.
  • Getting rid of an accent is pretty hard. If Mr. Miyagi was born is Japan, spent his childhood there and moved to the US as an adult, it is very reasonable for him to have an accent. Also don't forget that Japanese is COMPLETELY different from English. They even use a different alphabet. For a Japanese to learn English would probably be harder than say, a Spanish speaker to learn English.
    • Actually, Japanese doesn't even have an alphabet.
    • I suspect Mister Miyagi isn't so much bad at speaking English as is a man of few words. He doesn't speak English like a native because he doesn't care to. He keeps his sentences short and to the point.
  • Mr. Miyagi is also a quiet man who keeps to himself. He doesn't interact with native English speakers routinely, so doesn't have much opportunity to practice his conversational English. Most of the conversational English he does know is from his time in the military, which would probably be inappropriate on a few different levels to use day-to-day.
  • Notice how he becomes perfectly intelligible when he's arguing with Sato? Possibly it's (at least in part) Obfuscating Stupidity.
  • If Miyagi is so steeped in his Japanese heritage that he still has an accent, why does he constantly misuse the "-san" suffix? The word "-san" is like "Mr."; it's something you attach to a surname. (So the translation of "Mr. Miyagi" is "Miyagi-san", except that "san" is gender-neutral.) Calling the kid "Daniel-san" makes no sense at all! If anything, he should be Laruso-san (or Raruso-san).
    • Part of this is the difference between Japanese and American culture. In Japan, you would almost never be addressed by your given name except by family or very close friends. It is considered rude. So you are addressed by your surname, often with the honorific "-san" in order to show respect. However in America, it's often considered rude to refer to someone with a surname if they have told you their given name. It denotes a measure of distance and impersonality rather than one of friendship and closeness.
  • On the other hand, in English it is customary if archaic to address boys as "Master" + first name. Alfred is talking to Batman like he's a child when he says "Master Bruce". So perhaps Miyagi was mixing and matching expressions? Don't know what the Japanese equivalent would be, but if there isn't a Japanese equivalent it might feel natural to translate it back that way?
• Why none of the students trying for soccer tell the coach that Daniel was tripped by one of the members of Johnny's gang? And why Daniel didn't think on telling the coach or some teacher that he had been provoked? They could have allowed him to try again and end his ban if he had told the truth of what really happened during the tryouts.
  • He did tell the coach that "he hooked me!" when first thrown out, but the coach isn't having it. This is understandable. . . if Daniel's reaction to another player pulling a dirty trick on him is to try and beat the tar out of him, he's not the kind of player you probably want on your team. Granted, the coach didn't know that this wasn't Daniel's first run-in with these guys, but from his perspective, he's just ditching a potential problem player before he becomes a problem.
    • But this isn't professional soccer or even a college team. It's expected that teenagers age 14-18 aren't fully developed adults. The job of a high school coach is to take the best players, and like any faculty member, his job is to also develop the kids to be more mature people.
• During the school Halloween party, why did Daniel, rather than using a hose to prank Johnny, not report a teacher about that Johnny and his friends were smoking in the bathroom? Daniel doesn't look like a tattletale, but he could have done so to ensure Johnny and his friends to get into trouble, as they are smoking while being underage. By doing so, Johnny and his friends would have been expelled and Daniel could have gotten rid of them at least in school...
  • Several reasons: 1) Pranks are generally conducted for fun. It would not be fun to simply report someone to the police 2) He's young and foolhardy, he didn't think it through 3) He didn't think he'd be caught 4) With all the things going on in a high school, under-age smoking is generally not considered a particularly strong offense 5) Daniel might have wanted Johnny to know he could go toe-to-toe with him so he'd leave him alone. Additionally, if Daniel reported Johnny anonymously, Johnny would have figured out it was Daniel anyway, so he might as well have the guts to face him
  • If he can walk into school after having obviously been assaulted and no one but his mom and his potential girlfriend cares, then he probably doesn't think the school officials would care about some smoking, even if they took Daniel's word over Johnny's (assuming Johnny is bright enough to ditch the evidence quick). And Daniel wanted some personal payback against Johnny, not letting the system solve his problem for him. Not a wise decision, but Daniel is a teenager. . .
• It's been a while since I saw the original movie, but... I swear, every time I see the final duel between Daniel and Johnny, it looks like Johnny hits Daniel enough times to win before the climax, like there's a blow that ends a round but doesn't get counted. Is there something I'm misinterpreting here?
  • All the strikes he makes wouldn't be considered scoring moves. Ali explains before his first match that only contact above the waist counts and neither do punches to the face. Johnny punched him in the face and kept attacking his legs.
• It's clear from Miyagi's first conversation with Kreese the day after Daniel gets beaten up by Johnny and his gang that they were trying to organize a fight between Johnny (the defending tournament champion) and Daniel, so why did Kreese and Miyagi agree to the tournament? If you think about it, the entire possibility of a tournament fight between Johnny and Daniel was all contingent upon them both making it to the final. Obviously given Johnny's status as defending champion it would be reasonable to assume HE would make it to the final, but how did Kreese and Miyagi know that Daniel was gonna make it too? In fact, given the general arrogance of the Cobra Kai, they could very well have assumed that Daniel was gonna go out after his first match, so what then? Wasn't the whole point of Daniel entering the tournament being a one-on-one with Johnny? Kreese literally pointed out during his first confrontation with Miyagi that he intended to have Daniel fight Johnny one-on-one, yet not only did he ignore the fact that Daniel was very likely not gonna make it to the final, he actively tried to AVOID having Daniel enter the finals by having Bobby break his leg in the semi, that doesn't make sense at all, why try to set up a 1 v 1 fight if you're gonna take active measures to avoid the fight being fought? And even ignoring Kreese's orders to Bobby, what would've happened if Daniel DID get knocked out in the early stages of the tournament, there would be no Johnny v Daniel fight as originally organized. What then?
  • Actually the arrangement was for Daniel to enter the tournament. It was assumed Daniel would make it to the finals. Miyagi knew he could get Daniel to the point where he could survive to the finals.
  • It's pretty clear from the way Dutch and by extension the rest of the Cobra Kai gang treated Daniel in the locker room before the tournament started that they thought he wasn't going to get anywhere near the finals. And that still doesn't explain why Kreese told Bobby to deliberately injure Daniel in the semis, which was something that was intentionally meant to STOP Johnny and Daniel from having a fight (which is what Kreese and Miyagi agreed upon in the first place)
  • Kreese viewed Daniel as a coward and a weakling, who deserved to be bullied, and was all about proving it. Can't fight back against five opponents? Let's have him fight Johnny one-on-one. Want a different place, because of home territory advantage? Okay, you'll get that too (and he'll get his ass kicked there). Kreese was half-expecting Daniel to wuss out and not come at all, which in his eyes would prove he was right. If Daniel did come and go out early, well, there was always an option of going outside the building and have Daniel fight Johnny (and probably Dutch and every other Cobra Kai, who wanted a piece) there. The arrangement was for the fight to happen at the tournament, not that it had to be on the judo mat. When Daniel actually made it to the finals, Kreese was pissed off that he was proven wrong (not to mention there was a chance of the prize trophy actually being won by someone he viewed as completely unworthy of it) and wanted to punish the boy for it.
• During the fight on the beach, why Daniel didn't think on grabbing sand and throw it to Johnny's face after punching him? By doing so, that could have given him advantage as Johnny would have been temporarily blinded by the sand, allowing Daniel to beat him up!
  • Because Daniel is the kind of Nice Guy who doesn't go for dirty pool.
  • It was a losing fight from the get-go. Johnny's friends would have very likely ganged up on him if he tried that.