Sunday, May 6, 2018

Cobra Kai Review – Karate Kid Youtube Red Series

Karate Kid is one of those iconic movies everyone should see. I remember watching it many times back in the 80's so when I saw they were continuing the story with a Youtube Red series, of course I had to check it out.  



The series is called Cobra Kai, named after the dojo from the original film and it takes place in modern time where we see what former rivals Daniel Larusso and Johnny Lawrence are up to now. While both had tried to put their karate past behind them, it manages to resurface again.

Johnny gets inspired to start up the Cobra Kai dojo again. Daniel is not happy about this as it brings back all the old memories and goes against what he stands for. There are a lot of new intertwining story lines that continue the rivalry between these two as well as the new generation of karate kids that are introduced in this series.

The Cobra Kai series features 10 episodes, about a half hour each in length. It is on Youtube Red which is a paid subscription version of Youtube, but you can watch the first couple episodes for free. Also you can get a free 1 month trial of Youtube Red in case you want to watch the full series.

After watching the first 2 episodes, it was surprisingly better than expected! It has a good amount of nostalgia with callbacks to the original. They even mix in some never before seen clips from the original movie when they do flashbacks which is a great touch! I was convinced to sign up for the free trial of Youtube Red in order to watch the full season.

After watching the full season, I would say it was pretty good! The series does have a fair amount of cliches and it is somewhat predictable, but that is ok. They do a great job at showing Daniel and Johnny in modern day with new struggles as they run into each other again.

Overall the series is pretty lighthearted and has a good mix of humor, drama, and action. I think most fans of the original film will enjoy it and even those who are not familiar with the original can still enjoy this series.

I figured this series would wrap up at the end of the last episode, but the way they left it, there is plenty of opportunity for the series to continue of they choose. You could say it was risky trying to make a reboot of a classic movie like Karate Kid, but I think in this case it was a success!

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