“Wax on. Wax Off.”
“Sweep the leg.”
Attempting to capture a fly using chopsticks.
The Karate Kid, renowned for the rigorous training its protagonist Daniel LaRusso undertook, was the sixth most popular film in the United Kingdom in 1984.
It cost more than Romancing the Stone, Splash, and the Oscar winner for best film, Terms of Endearment. USA Today, The Bleacher Report, and Vulture have included it on their lists of the greatest sports movies of all time.
Ralph Macchio, who played Daniel, is speaking from his home on Long Island, only a couple of dojos from where he grew up, and explaining his view as to why the film is still so popular.
“The characters functioned on a human level that transcends location, time, and generations,” he explains.
“Bullying, desire fulfillment, mentorship, overcoming barriers, single parenting, and beginning a new life in a distant city are some of the themes of this book. These are all topics that continue to be relevant today.”
Indeed, they have echoed more than the sound of his crane kick to Johnny Lawrence’s face in The Karate Kid’s climactic scene.
The Miyagi-verse (called after Mr. Miyagi, the film’s Yoda-like mentor) has continued to grow.
There was the original film trilogy, a 1994 update that launched the career of Hilary Swank, a 2010 reboot starring Jaden Smith, and in 2018 the enormously successful streaming series Kobra Cai.
The episode analyses how the characters from the original movie have fared in life. In the first three days after the fifth season premiered on Netflix in September, 1.7 billion minutes were viewed.
Macchio is, thankfully, completely at ease when it comes to comprehending what people want from him.
Yes, he performed opposite Robert DeNiro on Broadway, was directed by Francis Ford Coppola in The Outsiders, and beat Will Smith to the role of Bill in the Oscar-winning My Cousin Vinny, but he is fully aware that The Karate Kid will always be his most famous performance.
Instead of a conventional autobiography, he chose to explore The Karate Kid’s legacy, its enduring place in popular culture, and the significant influence it has had in his own life.
“It’s a sort of anti-memoir,” he chuckles about the punny title of his book, Waxing On.
“This is not the typical crash and burn, fall to the depths, and rise again to redemption tale.
“It’s more of a celebration of that film, what it’s meant for nearly four decades, and what it’s been like to walk in those shoes through the ups and downs, the prosperous and lean times.”
And those dry times became as parched as one of Mr. Miyagi’s bonsai plants in the desert.
The entertainment industry struggled to view Macchio as anything other than Daniel LaRusso in the mid-1990s, preventing him from obtaining acting jobs.
His childhood was an additional difficulty. People find it hard to comprehend that he was only 22 years old when he directed The Karate Kid. He is currently 61 and looks amazingly youthful.
“I’ve had both a blessing and a curse my entire life. It is less of a curse now that I’m over 60,” he says.
“I am indebted to my parents for my good genes. Everyone believed my grandma was 10 to 15 years younger than they were.
In the mid-1990s, though, Macchio must have been the only Hollywood actor deliberately attempting to age themselves.
He also had a three-film Karate contract to fulfill, so he had to decline the role in Sidney Lumet’s Running on Empty, for which River Phoenix was nominated for an Academy Award.
“Once I graduated from that program, I was unable to enter the next class,” he explains without malice.
Macchio now views the lean years as a blessing and describes them as “beyond lovely” because he was able to raise his two children during that period.
He also possesses the rarity of a successful marriage in show business. He married his childhood sweetheart Phyllis in 1987 (between Karate Kids II and III), and they remain together to this day, even naming their son Daniel, but not totally after the Karate Kid.
“My wife’s best childhood buddy was named Daniel, so she always wanted to name a baby Daniel,” he explains.
“I was like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa,’ because it comes with some baggage. Now 27 years old, he is lovingly known as Dan, yet he takes tremendous pride in his name.
Even if he was dissatisfied with the trajectory of his career, Ralph Macchio decided to never disparage the Karate Kid flicks.
“I understood the significance of that position in people’s lives. People with nearly bursting eyes of tears have told me, “This movie gave me hope, it transformed my life, it was the film I watched every weekend with my grandfather, and it helped me get through my parents’ divorce.”
This understanding of how significant the Karate Kid was to so many people served him well.
In a 2009 episode of the American sitcom How I Met Your Mother, Barney Stinson, played by Neil Patrick Harris, said that he has always considered The Karate Kid as a tragedy.
As a child, he supported Johnny Lawrence since he perceived Daniel as a bully whose crane kick was illegal.
This eventually led to both Ralph Macchio and William Zabka (who played Johnny) appearing in an episode about Barney’s bachelor party.
The theory gained traction. Fans of Karate Kid began showing up at Comic-Cons wearing t-shirts showing their support for Johnny.
The writers of the 2016 American films Harold and Kumar and Hot Tub Time Machine contacted Macchio. They asked whether he would like to star in Cobra Kai, a series that would explore what Johnny’s redemption would look like.
Creed, the most recent installment in the Rocky film series, prompted the actor to accept the role.
It was like experiencing the Rocky Balboa cosmos through Apollo Creed’s son’s eyes.
John G. Avildsen, who directed both the original Rocky and the Karate Kid trilogies, has long held a connection between the two film franchises.
There was also a concept for a crossover picture portraying a fight between the sons of The Karate Kid and Rocky.
It was immediately, um, eliminated.
Cobra Kai was however appealing.
“Dreadful title”
Macchio notes that the show is about “the delight of tapping into the 1980s and carrying that nostalgia along, while simultaneously crafting contemporary stories.”
Before Netflix acquired it during the pandemic, two shows were created on YouTube.
The most current series gets a perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes and is described as “graduating to black belt expertise in passionate melodrama and clever humor.”
“It was difficult to portray a portrayal of Daniel that wasn’t exactly what I would have written,” adds Macchio. “He’s always had a certain amount of arrogance and an instantaneous temper. This was tenfold on Cobra Kai.”
Although he rarely expresses discontent, there is one thing he has never liked: the term The Karate Kid.
“I paraphrase Jerry Weintraub, the film’s producer, who said, ‘It’s a terrible title, which makes it a fantastic one.'”
“Young actors will aspire to be Olivier or De Niro. You wish for your works to have Shakespearean titles. And I possessed a script entitled The Karate Kid.”
After 38 years, he could not be happier with his decision.
