If a month ago someone had told me that I would end up loving Johnny Lawrence from the original Karate Kid movie, I would have laughed. He was the epitome of everything I loathed. Back in the 80s I had been a kid on the receiving end of verbal bullying and there was no way I could ever like anything about a character who took pleasure in making others miserable for seemingly no reason at all.
I had enjoyed the Karate Kid movies and when I learned that the new Cobra Kai series focused on the now grown-up teen villain and provided a backstory for him, I thought I’d give it a try. In fiction, I generally prefer villains — but only ones I can connect with or at least understand on some level. In the original Karate Kid, the story was told from Daniel LaRusso’s point of view. In that movie, Johnny seemed like a rich, obnoxious brat who had everything, but wasn’t satisfied with his own good fortune. In short, there was nothing to make him sympathetic in any way. Don’t get me wrong. Adult Johnny is still obnoxious. He’s a jerk, but like Daniel says in the new series, he’s not a monster.
Cobra Kai has turned Johnny Lawrence from a cookie cutter bad boy into a real person with weaknesses that were practically invisible in the Karate Kid. I say practically invisible because I suppose if back then if you could stop hating Johnny for a moment or two, you might have seen signs that he was a victim as well. This bully didn’t have the glowing life that one assumed he had in the movie, and that makes perfect sense. To take pleasure in making others miserable, you can’t be very happy yourself, no matter how rich you are or how amazing your life appears to be. Thinking back to some things I later learned about the lives of a few who bullied me, this deeper portrayal of Johnny is accurate. They had serious issues and so does Johnny.
In Cobra Kai, Johnny is still living in the past and it’s dragging him down. You can practically feel his depression and hopelessness, but you can also see that he has changed–not much, but enough to give the viewer hope that he can turn his life around.
This Johnny is as rounded as the Johnny from the Karate Kid was flat. He has no real relationship with his son, but he connects with the bullied Miguel, possibly because Miguel is even more persistent than Johnny.
Johnny is a great antihero. He’s nasty, drinks too much, and while he preaches to his students that they should never give up, he backs off way too fast when dealing with his son. He wants and needs more students, but when he gets them, he ridicules them while claiming that it’s to benefit them. His attitude is that life is harsh and they need to face that fact. Sounds like good advice, but his bad attitude is more about his frustration regarding his own failures and less about helping his students. Yes, the Cobra Kai philosphy creates good fighters, but so does Miyagi-Do, and that karate has always been about compassion and inner peace as well as self-defense.
Speaking of inner peace, that’s what Johnny Lawrence has always lacked. No matter how well he can kick and strike, inside he is still a young boy emotionally stunted by the cruel father figures of his past. Season one of Cobra Kai has given us hope that he can become far more than that. I’m looking forward to see if in season two he becomes the kind of sensei and father we know he can be.
If you’re looking for a great new antihero, watch Cobra Kai. I’m glad I did.
Links courtesy of IMDb.