When reading stories, watching, tv, or playing video games, I find myself looking at the “good guys” and the “bad guys” and seeing a clear line in the sand. I usually always find myself asking well why are these people the good guys? Would we still consider them good if the story took place outside of their point of view? Why are the bad guys bad? Fortunately, The Dragon Prince sets up the story so that you never have to even ask these questions.

In the Dragon Prince, there’s two halves of a continent. The magical elf and mythology side, and the normal Europe themed human side. As a backstory leading up to episode one, the humans are starving. Viran, the mage, introduces an idea to use magic to make the crops more bountiful and to feed the people, but in order to use that magic they need a heart of a mountain giant, which are only in the Elf part. So, the humans go there, get the heart, and on their way back, they get attacked by a Dragon King protecting the border. The Queens of two of the human kingdoms are killed by the dragon. Months later, the King goes back to kill the Dragon King and destroy his egg as revenge. Already there’s no clear good vs evil. There’s you trespassed on my land, so I killed you, then you killed one of us so we are going to kill you.

The episode starts with a elf assassin, part of a group, sparing the life of human guard because he is innocent. Now the elf assassins are scared of the humans and think their mission for justice to kill the king for killing their dragon is lost. The humans on the other hand are terrified of the elves, whom they paint as barbaric and scary, and murderers, and unstoppable. Racism and tribalism definitely plays their part in this. In the show, the humans fear the elves and see them as murders, and vice versa. The teenager princes of the human kingdom end up joining the assassin that spared the life of that human guard, because they find the egg of the dragon unharmed in the mage’s secret vault. They make it their mission to protect the egg together and return it to the elf side, in order to try and broker peace between the two races. The whole time, the mage Viran, is using dark magic to try and protect the king from the assassins, feed the kingdom, and restore order, but at every turn his good intentions sour with bad results. He ends up becoming the villain of the story and tries to stop the princes from returning the egg, because he sees the egg as a potential monster of mass destruction and doesn’t want it to hatch or help the elves against the humans. The Aunt of the princes, who is also the general of the human army, is consistently hunting down the princes because she thinks their elf companion kidnapped them. Her soldiers aren’t the “bad” guys, but the princes still have to run away from them because they would kill their elf companion and take back the egg. This cycle of fear mongering, racism, tribalism, and sour results through good intentions paint that there is no good vs evil. Just people vs people, and the only evil is their own flaws and misunderstandings of one another.

Cobra Kai was what actually grabbed my interest and made me a fan of the Karate Kid storyline/ fictional universe, as I said during the Karate Kid blog post. In this post, I want to continue to explore these characters’ complex relationship with one another and how in this story, there’s really no villain or “good vs evil,” just people at odds with other people. I know you’re probably tired of me ranting on and on about the Karate Kid universe, so this is the last post, I promise. Maybe…

Let’s get started

• Johnny Lawrence – dynamic, round
• Miguel Diaz – dynamic, round
• Eli/Hawk – supporting/antagonist, dynamic, flat
• Aisha – supporting, dynamic, round
• Robbie Keene – dynamic, round
• Samantha LaRusso – supporting, dynamic, round
• Daniel LaRusso – dynamic, round
• Amanda LaRusso – supporting, static, round
• Kyler – antagonist, dynamic, flat
• Yasmine – antagonist, dynamic, flat

With Cobra Kai, the story line and character relationships are unique. You may have realized that I didn’t tell what type of characters Johnny, Miguel, Daniel, and Robbie were. This isn’t a typo, this is intentional, because I don’t really know how to label them. In the show, the point of view continuously shifts between these four characters. Usually, I would just label them all protagonist, then, but in this case it isn’t so simple. Depending on which character the POV is current at, and also depending on what episode in the season, the relationship of that character with those other four characters changes. Initially, Johnny Lawrence, the antagonist of the Karate Kid movie, is the protagonist here. When Johnny and Daniel meet again after 30 years, Daniel’s mistrust and past grudges get the better of him, and he continuously rekindles their old rivalry, making Daniel the antagonist. Later, the story shifts and Daniel takes the POV, showing in his eyes that Johnny is still the antagonist. Later, Johnny’s son takes the POV. Johnny has been such a crappy dad, that Robbie doesn’t even take his father’s last name. In Robbie’s POV, Johnny is the antagonist and Daniel takes the role of a father figure/ mentor to him in the same way Mr. Miyagi did to Daniel all those years ago. However, eventually Daniel and Johnny let go of their past rivalry, no longer seeing each other as their own antagonist, but when Daniel finds out that his student and son-figure is Johnny’s actual son, and when Johnny finds out that his son whom he has desperately been trying to make up for lost years has such a close bond with his old rival, they both lose it. Johnny again sees Daniel as his antagonist, and attacks him. Daniel, feeling betrayed, shuns Robbie temporarily. At no point in this story, are the character’s roles ever concrete.

Johnny, the former antagonist of the Karate Kid movie, realizes that his life has now become disgraceful. He has become an alcoholic, he has lost his job, and he hasn’t used his beloved karate in years. This all changes however when he meets Miguel, who is currently being bullied by a teen named Kyler. After the bulling escalates too far, Johnny intervenes, and ends up beating up Kyler and his bully friends who tried to fight him. Feeling good about finally using karate again, and after constant hounding by Miguel/ seeing Daniel’s karate car salesman ads all over the tv, he relents and decides to train Miguel in karate, reopening the Cobra Kai dojo. Eventually, after Miguel has learned enough karate, he defends himself and Samantha from Kyler, humiliating Kyler in a public fight. This attention brings lots of bullied teens to Johnny’s doorstep, who want to learn karate to gain confidence and end the bulling. Two of which are named Eli, and Aisha. Aisha is bullied about her weight, Eli is bullied about a scar on his lip. Eventually, Aisha puts an end to her bulling by giving a wedgie and humiliating Yasmine, the mean popular girl at school who is the one that makes fun of her weight on social media. Eli, wanting to flip the script, changes his name to Hawk, and gets a Mohawk, excelling at his karate lessons and no longer allowing himself to be afraid.
Now, the high school bullies are the ones that are afraid, and Hawk and Aisha have become fierce, confident, and aggressive in their pursuit of payback.

This aggressive and sudden change in behavior of these students who are now in Cobra Kai paints Johnny’s dojo as aggressive and dangerous in Daniel’s eyes, who only sees the violence he experienced in the past. His daughter, Samantha, who sees Miguel as a good person is conflicted about her father’s point of view. She doesn’t see all of Cobra Kai as evil and bullies. Eventually Johnny’s son, Robbie, intentionally seeks out Daniel LaRusso after seeing Johnny and Miguel’s close relationship. He wants Johnny to be jealous when he finds out that his son has been spending time with his old rival. Overtime, though, Robbie changes as Daniel teaches him the same way Mr. Miyagi taught karate. Through these teachings, Robbie finds inner peace and learns the true meaning of karate, wanting to confess to Daniel about why he initially sought him out, but being too scared to do so. At one point, when Daniel and Johnny finally meet to talk their issues with each other out, they both nearly let go of their fued, Daniel almost seeing Cobra Kai as changed. When Daniel tries to introduce his own student, Robbie, to Johhny, the cat is let out of the bag and they both become at odds with each other again. Later, after Robbie starts to spend time with Samantha, Miguel gets jealous, and lashes out while he is drunk, trying to pick a fight with Robbie and end up hitting Samantha. This tilts her viewpoint of Cobra Kai from unsure to thinking that they are indeed all bad.

The tv show ends when the yearly tournament arrives, and Kobra Kai participates using the aggressive training that Johnny taught them, which was taught to him by John Kreese. Robbie makes a surprise entrance in the tournament, trying to win back the trust of Daniel, and prove to his father that the Cobra Kai training is not the true way of karate. After some time of silently cheering Robbie on from the audience stands, Daniel finally lets go of his feeling of betrayal and decides to officially become Robbie’s mentor after Hawk attacked Robbie between matches, hurting his shoulder. Hawk of course was disqualified, but the damage had been done, Robbie was injuried and would now have to face a still brooding Miguel. During the fight, Johnny is torn between his prized student and son-figure, Miguel, and his actual son Robbie, was on the opposite team. When Miguel tells Johnny not to worry, that he’ll win at any cost, even to take advantage of Robbie’s injury, Johnny is finally made aware just how violent and wrong his teachings were. In the last round of the final match, Miguel crushes Robbie by aiming for his injured shoulder, and winning the tournament. Miguel and the other Cobra Kai members dance and cheer, hugging Johnny who is now holding the trophy, his life dream of wining the tournament having now come true, but all he can think about his guilt.

This kind of character depth and character arches is the level of writing I aspire to achieve. Johnny is shown to be a good person, that just has a flawed mentality. Miguel, who arguably my favorite character in the entire season, is such a sweetheart and a nice guy, but jealousy and the aggressive teachings of Cobra Kai turned him into a bully. I now no longer see a bully as simply a “evil, waste of space character,” because I still love and root for Miguel, despite his flaws and poor decisions/ attitude at times. I still see Daniel as my favorite character from the original movie, despite his continued belief that Johnny and Cobra Kai is pure evil, even though that I know as the audience that Johnny is legitimately trying to change and make these kids’ lives better by teaching them to stand up for themselves. This complex character writing and sense that the world isn’t just black and white, but blurry at times is amazing. This is why I deem Johnny, Daniel, Miguel, Samantha, and Robbie as all “Good” characters!

Since the original Karate Kid was my first post, and now one of my favorite movies, I took the time to watch the 2010 remake. My very first observation was that this is a completely different setting, China, completely different characters, and they even use Kong Fu instead of Karate throughout the movie. I don’t understand why this was a called a remake with only vague references and ties to the original movie and plot, but that isn’t why I’m here. I’m here to discuss the characters, and how they differ from the original characters. Let’s get started:

• Dre Parker (Daniel LaRusso) – Protagonist, dynamic, round
• Mr. Han (Mr. Miyagi) – Supporting, static ,round
• Sherry Parker(Lucille LaRusso) – Supporting, dynamic, round
• Meiying (Ali) – Supporting, static, round
• Cheng (Johnny Lawrence) – Antagonist, dynamic, flat
• Master Li (John Kreese) – Villain, static, flat

Personally, I liked Daniel LaRusso better than Dre Parker, but as characters they are both great. Dre turns from this kid with a punk attitude to someone with integrity and good sense. With both Daniel and Dre, we get a good sense of who they are, their personality, their likes and interests, their dislikes and pet-peeves, as well as their aspirations and goals. They are both believable and if I saw them in real life, I’d never question it. They wouldn’t stand out or feel out of place. Daniel’s equivalent in the remake, Dre, is still a “Good” character.

Again, I still liked Mr. Miyagi better and thought he was a bit more profound in his wisdom/advice, more explicit in his teachings that karate was a way of live and not just fighting compared to Mr. Han. Although I found Mr. Han to be less of a mentor, he was still a great character. He still formed a father figure bond with Dre, he still portrayed his likes, interests, hobbies, and personality. He still conveyed emotional resonance through his breakdown on the anniversary of the car crash, and he was just as believable as a person. I still think Mr. Han, just like Mr. Miyagi, is a “Good” character.

Here is where the 2010 movie took a positive turn. Sherry, Dre’s mom, and Meiying, Dre’s love interest, seemed much more believable and realistic than their original counterparts. Both characters showed plenty of personality, background, interests, and disinterests, making them mirror reality rather than being obviously fake. In the original we never get much out of Daniel’s mom, or Ali, which is why I’m exited to deem both Sherry and Meiying, “Good,” believable characters.

The bully, Cheng, and Master Li, were more or less exactly like Jonny Lawrence and John Kreese. Both Cheng and Johnny bullied Daniel, but had clear limits and a sense of right and wrong. Both wanted to disobey their sensei’s order to fight dishonorably, and both were proud of the protagonist when he won the tournament, personally giving him the trophy and ceasing the bullying. Neither of these characters were “Good” or “Bad.”

Overall, even though I preferred Daniel and Mr. Miyagi, I believe the remake did a bit better of a job creating the characters, going from two “Good” to four. I still feel like the creators should have spent a bit more time and developed their own plot, then called this the Kong Fu Kid, being heavily inspired by Karate Kid, rather than trying to label it a remake. Again, this is besides the point.

In Karate Kid, the first one, I went through the characters and listed a couple that I would deem “Good” characters. This time however, I want to go over what I consider to be a “Bad” character. Again, when I say good and bad, I mean badly written or “goodly” written. 🙂

Lets take a role call of the characters, see what I did there? Haha…sorry.

• Daniel LaRusso – Protagonist, Dynamic, Round
• Mr. Miyagi – Supporting, Dynamic, Round
• Jessica Andrews – Supporting, Static, Round
• John Kreese – Antagonist, static, flat
• Terry Silver – Villain, static, flat
• Mike Barnes -Antagonist, static, flat

With Daniel and Mr. Miyagi, not much has changed about them role wise. Since the first movie, they have formed a bit more of a father-son bond, and Daniel is living with Mr. Miyagi while his Mom is away. Daniel has graduated high school, and decided to use his college tuition money to start up a business selling bonsai trees, co owning the business with Mr. Miyagi. As luck would have it, a pottery shop is right across the street, perfect for ordering pots to put the bonsai trees in. The shop owner, or at least only worker we are shown, is a young girl Daniel’s age, Jessica. The two immediately mirror the romantic vibe Daniel had with Ali, except in this case the two don’t actually end up together because Jessica is engaged. Anyway, the former Cobra Kai sensei from the first movie is still brooding over his humiliating defeat at Daniel’s hands. Kreese asks an old karate friend of his, also a former Cobra Kai member named Terry Silver, to help him get revenge and disrupt Daniel’s life.

Terry Silver, aka Mr. Silver, starts off by hiring an adept, young karate student, Mike Barnes, to enter the All Valley Tournament, the one Daniel had previously won. He wants Mike to humiliate Daniel, beat him badly, and shred his champion status. Right now, Daniel does not plan on participating in the tournament,because he and Mr. Miyagi only used it in the first place to get the bulling to stop back in the first movie. In order to get Daniel to participate in order to humiliate him, Mike continuously harasses, fights, threatens, and Daniel, as well as sabotages the bonsai tree business until Daniel relents and enrolls in the tournament to get the harassment to stop. Unfortunately, by this time Daniel is already scared of Mike and doesn’t believe he can beat him. Mr. Miyagi refuses to help Daniel train for the tournament, since he claims it goes against his values. Cleverly, Mr. Silver comes to the “rescue,” beats Mike in a fight and telling him to leave Daniel alone, and offers to train Daniel for the tournament. Now, throught training, he consistently gives Daniel bad advice, caused Daniel to have to lie and sneak around Mr. Miyagi, and is giving him false confidence for the tournament. Eventually, Mr. Miyagi gets a sense of what is happening and tells Daniel to stop training with Mr. Silver, that it is turning him into an aggressive and overconfident person. He tells Daniel that he will train him. Together, they figure out Mr. Silver is up to no good, thawrt his plans, and win the tournament. Now, the overall plot is very interesting and I love the conflict this introduces, the audience knowing Mr. Silver is bad and sabotaging Daniel, while having to watch it anyway. What I don’t like is Mr. Silver’s character himself.

Mr. Silver and his actions have glaring and fundamental flaws that make him unbelievable to me, essentially ruining the story. Mr. Silver is too over the top for this serious of a plot, storyline. This isn’t a comedy, and this isn’t a parody. When Mr. Silver acts completely ridiculous when he is in “villain mode,” he loses all credibility as a realistic and believable character. Here are a view instances where he acts to over the top to be believable.

• When he is first introduced and agrees to help John Kreese. During this scene he discusses what all he’ll do to Daniel, rubbing his hands together, laughing manically, over expressing by smiling literally as wide as he physically could. He looked ridiculous.
• Secondly, every time he would successfully manipulate Daniel, he would again over express his smile to the extent that we the audience questioned his actual sanity.
• Thirdly, when Daniel came to him to break off the training, he seemed to expect this and had Mike and John Kreese there to ambush, scare, and potentially attack Daniel. Now, since his master plan was to earn Daniel’s trust, give him false advice that would lead to him losing the fight, and losing it badly, why would he suddenly reveal to Daniel that he is “evil” and ambush him so? The logic is nonexistent.
• Lastly, during this same ambush scene, Mr. Miyagi shows up to save Daniel. During the fight, Miyagi makes short work of Mike and John Kreese, but during the fight with Mr. Silver, Silver acts completely bizarre. He again, does the grin, laughs manically, makes weird sound effects, and forgoes any sort of actual fighting stances to waves his arms and hands around, trying to simply convey that he is the “bad guy.”

Mr. Silver makes zero sense as a character and is extremely unbelievable. The plot itself is good, and I know it isn’t the actor because his moments pretending to be Daniel’s friend is really well acted and believable. The unbelievable moments for me that ruin the movie is the false logic and weird behavior when Mr. Silver is his true self, the villain. Now that my rant is over, I hereby decree that Terry Silver, is a “Bad” character.