Introduction

I’ve never read fanfiction, nor had I ever written it before. So what changed?

To start, The Karate Kid (1984) has always been one of my favorite movies, if not my very favorite. My dad took me to see it in the theater when it came out. I was seven years old, and much to my mom’s chagrin I began doing crane kicks incessantly. Through the years the movie’s magic has never lessened for me. In fact it’s gotten stronger. I was also a big fan of The Karate Kid Part II (1986). I loved how it picked up immediately after the first movie. I loved Mr. Miyagi’s nose honk on Kreese (and how Daniel later used it on Chozen). I loved the shift in setting to Okinawa. For me, Part II did exactly what a sequel should do. It revealed new dimensions for its two main characters, it presented higher stakes, and it had a fantastic theme song (“Like a knight in shining armor, from a long time ago…”). The only thing I didn’t like about Part II was the way it so casually dismissed Ali; I still don’t believe she would leave Daniel for a football player, not after all they’d been through. But at least Kumiko was a great match for Daniel.

The Karate Kid Part III (1989), however, was an immediate and harsh letdown. As a kid I always tried to put a silver lining on a disappointing film, but Part III made that very difficult. Despite having the same writer, director, composer, actors, etc. as the first two films, everything about Part III just felt wrong. I hated the villains - Terry Silver and Mike Barnes - but not in a love-to-hate-them way; I found them gross. I hated how easily Daniel was manipulated away from the lessons he’d fought so hard to learn in the first two films. I hated that Daniel and Jessica decided on their first date to be platonic friends (which I’ve since learned was necessitated by the fact that actress Robyn Lively was only 16 years old). I hated the boring final match between Daniel and Barnes.

As I had with Rocky V and The Godfather Part III I decided to simply pretend The Karate Kid Part III didn’t exist. But in the early 2000s I bought a set of the movies on DVD and decided to give the movie another try. Maybe, I thought, my perspective had changed with over a decade of life experience. Maybe if I approached the movie free of the weight of expectations I'd find something redeeming. That wasn't the case. I hated it just as much, if not more. In addition to the underwhelming plot, I found the acting to be unsubtle, the dialogue clunky, and the pacing inconsistent. And I realized how much wasted potential there was in the film. They were free to do pretty much anything they wanted to close out the trilogy, and they chose this? Really?!

I went back to my feigned ignorance of Part III until the show Cobra Kai premiered in 2018. If you don’t know, Cobra Kai was a TV series that served as a longform sequel to the original film trilogy. I’ve had a love-hate relationship with the show from the start. As thrilling as it can be to see all to these old characters come back and to find out what they’ve been up to, as much as I enjoy the callbacks and easter eggs, and as intriguing as the premise was (Johnny and Daniel returning to one another’s lives and training a new generation of karate students), the show could be frustratingly dumb and over-the-top, and often completely ignored what made the first two films so appealing. To that end, the Cobra Kai writers' room apparently loved The Karate Kid Part III, because they included several elements from it as integral parts of the show. In a different world, maybe they could have made some storytelling choices that redeemed the original film for me. But instead they doubled down on many of its worst tendencies.

My son Theo has been watching Cobra Kai with my wife and I, and that in conjunction with the impending release of Karate Kid: Legends led him to want to watch the original movies. I happily agreed, even acquiescing to once again being subjected to The Karate Kid Part III. Not wanting to overly influence his 12-year-old perspective, I held my tongue as I watched the trainwreck pile up before me. Then, roughly halfway through, he turned to me and said, “I don’t like this movie.” God bless him.

That’s when I started thinking seriously about writing my own version of The Karate Kid Part III. Not only would it be fun, it would be a chance to right the storytelling wrongs from both the original version of the film and Cobra Kai. It would be my chance to right some wrongs, tie the three films together into a cohesive unit, and set Daniel, Johnny, etc. an alternate path to what we saw in Cobra Kai. I will say that out of respect for the creators of both the original trilogy and Cobra Kai, I have preserved some of their good ideas, including exploring Daniel's anger, the use of kata, Uncle Louie getting sick, and Ali getting some redemption.

 I decided to write it in the form of a novel rather than a screenplay because I have fond memories of reading B.B. Hiller’s adaptations of the original films, and because I’m infinitely more comfortable with writing prose over writing in screenplay format.

I hope you enjoy it.

-Paul V. Allen, July 2025

(www.paulvallen.com)