Cobra Kai asks us to rethink labels in rebuking the common hero/villain binary

Salon.com

With their new YouTube Red series, Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg -- who co-created The Karate Kid sequel with Josh Heald -- employ the same subversive tactics they used in making their three Harold & Kumar films. "That is, they’ve taken an appealing conceptual kernel and cooked it into something heartier, expanding upon a Reagan-era underdog tale in a way that speaks to America in 2018," says Melanie McFarland. Unlike Karate Kid, Cobra Kai fully fleshes out William Zabka's Johnny Lawrence character. "Positioning one of ‘80s cinema’s best known bullies as an anti-hero is a fierce hook, but what keeps Cobra Kai interesting is its conscientiously-rendered contrast of the kind of men Daniel and Johnny symbolize, separately and together," says McFarland. "Clearly Johnny is stand-in for guys mired in a retrograde view of masculinity, the kind of loathsome dude-bro many falsely hoped was on his way toward extinction. Daniel represents the high example of the capitalist ideal, a man who pulled himself up by his bootstraps and did everything the right way."

ALSO:

• Cobra Kai succeeds by turning antagonist Johnny Lawrence into an unlikely protagonist without selling out the character
• If you're a Karate Kid superfan, Cobra Kai is everything you could've wanted and more
• Cobra Kai manages to be even more "orientalist" than the original film
• Cobra Kai is much more consistently entertaining than it has any right to be
• Where Cobra Kai really shines is its ability to tap into the complexities of humanity
• Ralph Macchio on Cobra Kai creators being more knowledgeable than him: "The Karate Kid was Star Wars to them"
• William Zabka: "My biggest concern was that I wasn’t going to double down on being mean"