Please, stop it with that stupid theory. Johnny deserved everything that happened to him. He had all of those things coming. This show continued to prove that Johnny is still a loser and a piece of crap.
shareIn this show, Johnny is portrayed as the protagonist. The audience identifies, feels attachment to, Johnny in this show. Accordingly, Daniel does feel like the villain.
In the movies, itโs the opposite
Accurate. In this show if anything, Daniel is too self-righteous to be in touch with his own immaturity and his knee jerk tendency to overreact and assume the worst in people.
shareThe movies sort of force you to think Daniel is somehow a protagonist, and the 'ageless wisdom' of the mystical Japanese spiritual master clouds the audience's judgment on who's what, and what actually goes on and takes place.
If you watch Daniel's actions purely from the perspective of 'who is instigating and assaulting who', it becomes clear that Daniel isn't some kind of angelic figure, pure and glorious, to root for. Just LOOK at the things he does in the first movie - he's clearly asking for it.
Think about it; would anything violent ever have happened to Daniel, if he had minded his own business and not assaulted, instigated, etc.? The beach scene clearly shows Daniel being the jerk, Johnny is merely hot-tempered and even shows some restraint under the circumstances.
The whole shower thing - Daniel absolutely do NOT have or need to instigate, but he does anyway. I don't think the other people's response is wise or proportional, but still - if he had not instigated, it's very likely that nothing bad would've happened to him.
He instigates, assaults, and then whines about being beaten up. Miyagi should not be an enabler, but he is. So realistically thinking, they're basically both bad guys, no matter how the movies try to push an alternative explanation to you.
The show reveals it all very well, so I can't believe there are still people taking Daniel's side. What good things has Daniel ever really done in the movies? Has he helped people, has he tried to understand Johnny's side?
Daniel got innocent people's rent doubled just to spite Johnny, yeah he's the villain all right.
share"Daniel got innocent people's rent doubled just to spite Johnny"
That's not the core of the issue.
The core is that he:
a) Manipulated people to make that happen (manipulating people to get what you want is snake-oil salesman behaviour)
b) Did not consider or think of consequences or the chain of events he set in motion
c) Did not feel remorse or guilt about screwing with other people's livelihoods - innocent strangers just got horrible surprise, and Daniel DOES NOT CARE or even consider those people until his wife points out some things (though he must have known)
d) Utilizes his fame, influence, power and wealth to screw up a 'little guy', while also messing with many other people's livelihoods, instead of using all that power to actually help the community
What good guy does these things?
It all started out as a joke from a youtube video and How I met your mother segment. They incorporated the different POV Into the show. Its is pretty funny actually. I mean daniel did kinda ask for some of the shit that happened to him. At the halloween party for instance.
shareNo it didn't. Those type of posts dominated the imdb boards for years. There was always a faction of Cobra Kai fans posting the crimes of Miyagi and Daniel. It doesn't look like the movie chat archives go back far enough, but if you poke around you can find plenty of references to it. This joke youtube video is only 4 years old.
shareGoes back as 9 years on youtube.
shareIf you are referring this video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szUHIM-jgls&t=1s it was made by one of the Cobra Kai fans from the boards that I was referring to. In the description he even calls out Genesim2010, who was one of the biggest Daniel/Miyagi defenders. The points made in that video were cut and pasted in to nearly every topic back in the day.
This the video that all of the articles seem to reference, probably because it has 11 million views, but it's not nearly as old. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_Gz_iTuRMM&t=3s
That video is funny! I've never seen KK in its entirety. Why did Daniel pour water on Johnny? Does the video recount the truth of the movie in this aspect?
shareHe poured water on him because Johnny beat him up, although it does happen months after the fact. The vid glosses over things like Johnny and his friends running Daniel down on their dirt bikes, nearly killing him, though. It's all for laughs.
shareYes. The fight on the beach happened before school started, and they pushed him down the hill within the first few days of school, maybe even the first day. When Daniel poured water on Johnny it was a Halloween party, which would make it nearly 2 months later where nothing had really happened. Daniel had been doing his best to avoid everyone, including Alli, but he escalated the hell out of a situation that appeared to be dying down.
As for why, there is scene right before that where he says what goes around comes around. So he wanted to get them back for getting his ass kicked, getting kicked off the soccer team, which he seemed to be really in to, and living in general fear.
So itโs accurate. Daniel instigated a fight and cause a multi car crash and conned the child beating Miyagi that he was innocent. ๐๐๐
shareWhat you don't see in the movie (simply because the movie makers felt they'd got the bullying message across) are the removed scenes where the bullying continued.
1) Johnny placing a pie on a chair as Daniel went to sit down making him a laughing stock in front of everyone in the cafeteria area at school.
2) Filling Daniels locker at school with bags of dogshit.
3) Daniel telling Johnny his instructors teachings are wrong and Johnny grabbing Daniel and threatening him.
So yeah, it does look like nothing has happened between them for some time, but the scenes were sacrificed to show more of Miyagi training Daniel.
Ok well whatever. But the producers incorporated the idea because of all the videos and jokes over the last several years. It's a fun idea and even when i watched it as a kid in the 80's I kinda thought daniel was being a bit of a dick with the hose.
shareExcept this show actually shows that someone who is rich and powerful (Larusso) can be just as much of a-hole when they can't take someone doing something to better themselves.
shareIt's just a silly oversimplification that's been popularized/memed on the internet of the fact that Daniel isn't always a clear cut victim/good guy is his on going rivalry with Johnny. This applies to the original karate kid movie but is deliberately made more apparent on the show. Johnny is still in the wrong plenty though.
The original Karate Kid movie had a surprisingly nuanced portrayal of bullying in the eighties which was an era of many over the top bully caricatures. Johnny isn't a villain who bullies Daniel simply because he can & Daniel isn't a completely innocent victim who never asked for any trouble. Daniel wasn't humble & initially seemed to be under the impression that was some sort of badass when he challenged Johnny at the beach party. If the shoe were on the other foot and Daniel proved the more skilled fighter, I honestly don't see him behaving much differently than Johnny
Itโs been well documented by film scholars that Daniel is the franchise villain. Johnny is almost universally accepted as a misunderstood hero while Cobra Kai membership continues to grow around the world. Very few people still support Larusso, who has been exposed as a reprobate.
shareOnly idiots say that.
share