The Message of Cobra Kai is One All Men Need to Hear
The TV series Cobra Kai, which revived the long-dormant Karate Kid franchise, speaks directly to men who are adrift in life and provides them with a path to self-discipline, self-reliance, and, if necessary, redemption.
We live in a world of broken men who grew up in dysfunctional homes, were bullied, had very little, if any, religious instruction, and certainly have no self-confidence or coping skills in life.
I addressed this topic three years ago. As I said at the time, for these men, “life seems bleak, and these young men have no faith their lives can ever improve. Modern society has taught them to feel comfortable labeling themselves as victims.” They don’t know how to turn adversity into an opportunity to develop their characters.
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Cobra Kai just ended its seven-year run, first on YouTube, and, later, Netflix.
The Cliff Notes version of Karate Kid, if you never saw it, was about a bullied teenager named Daniel LaRusso who learned karate and, by extension, confidence and honor from a wise old Okinawan-born sensei named Mr. Miyagi. Miyagi instructs Daniel to never initiate fights and to always stay on defense. Daniel defeats his primary bully Johnny Lawrence at a karate tournament, changing the course of Daniel’s life for the better.
Johnny practices at the Cobra Kai dojo under a tormented man named Kreese who instructs his students to always stay on offense and to never show mercy.
Daniel and Johnny have no fathers in their lives.
When the series Cobra Kai begins, almost 35 years have passed. Mr. Miyagi is deceased. Daniel is a successful businessman. As for Johnny, his loss at the tournament changed his life for the worse. Kreese, his only real father figure, abandoned him after the tournament. Johnny is now an alcoholic with a bad temper.
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Many people believe that the Cobra Kai series was inspired by a now-10-year-old YouTube video that argued that Daniel, in the original Karate Kid movie, was the villain and Johnny was the hero. The narrator made a good argument. As Cobra Kai begins, Johnny holds the same point of view.
For more than 30 years, the movie-going public regarded Kreese and Johnny as one-dimensional movie villains, but as we get deeper into the Cobra Kai series, we learn more about Johnny’s childhood and why he is the way he is. We learn that Kreese was once a good man who was corrupted by the “strike first, no mercy” philosophy.
The show offers plenty of moral ambiguity. We even see Daniel is not above a few corrupt acts himself in order to stop Johnny from resurrecting the Cobra Kai dojo.
The show is too great to spoil, but I will say that at the end, as is the case with most traditional character arcs, Johnny and Kresse are redeemed, but not without the influence of Daniel and Mr. Miyagi.
And that gets me to how this show carries a message that many lost men need to hear.
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Johnny, now married and stable and no longer an alcoholic with a bad temper, is a man at peace and learns that staying on offense at all times can only turn people “into an a**hole.”
Johnny then recites Cobra Kai’s three primary rules.
“Strike first. It means be aggressive. Strike hard. It means give it your all,” Johnny said.
“No mercy. It’s not being Mr. Nice guy. It’s the hardest one to understand. The fact is, if you’re too nice, the world’s going to walk all over you.”
But, “aggression isn’t always the answer” and, to conquer life’s obstacles, Johnny tells his students that they need to learn more than one discipline. His students will spend half their time learning offense under him and the other half with Daniel, learning defense.
That’s balance.
“All that matters is that you stop being weak little crybabies and start being the strongest versions of yourselves,” Johnny says, in conclusion.
And that’s a philosophy that we ought to instill in everyone, young and old.
Special thanks to Warhammer’s Wife for proofreading this story before publication to make certain there were no misspellings, grammatical errors or other embarrassing mistakes and/or typos. Follow Warhammer on X @Real_Warhammer. Read Warhammer’s stories on The Hayride by clicking here.
