Even though TheKarate Kid remains a beloved franchise, it had shortcomings. For instance, Elizabeth Shue’s character, Ali, was written off with one line in Part II. During an interview with Collider’s own Perri Nemiroff for his newly released biography, Waxing On: The Karate Kid and Me, Ralph Macchio commented on that line,m and how he was too young and busy to realize what it meant for Shue.
In the first The Karate Kid, Ali plays a romantic interest for both Danny LaRusso (Macchio) and Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka). Danny and Ali become an item at the movie's end, but the star is nowhere to be seen in the sequel. In fact, in Part II, Macchio delivers a single line to explain how Ali crashed his car, broke up with him, and started dating a football player. It’s pretty shallow and somewhat disrespectful of the character. Fortunately, Cobra Kai brought Shue back for Season 3, allowing the three characters some closure almost four decades after the write-off. The whole event weighed upon Macchio when writing his autobiography, a task that made him realize how he wasn’t so considerate in the past. In Macchio’s words:
“Looking at what it must have been like for her to be written out of the original film in one line of dialogue in the ‘Karate Kid Part II’, I was always so wrapped up at that point in my life. I was heading out to do a movie called ‘Teachers’ right after ‘Karate Kid’. I had ‘Crossroads’ in development that I was going to shoot. I was then following up with the De Niro play on Broadway. I was wrapped up into my own thing, and as I was writing that chapter, because we got to deal with that narratively in Season 3 of Cobra Kai, what happened to Ali with an I and what was the truth, and it was emotional to shoot that stuff and the three of us together, which made all you fans very, very happy. And she was so, so great coming back to do that. So there’s an example of me for the first time saying, you know what? Ralph today would’ve picked up the phone. Ralph today probably would’ve had maybe an understanding of what she went through instead of just being so, I would not call myself self-absorbed. I was busy. I was busy and I was young.”
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Writing an autobiography also allowed Macchio to rethink some of his other relationships on set, such as the one he had with Pat Morita, who played the role of Mr. Miyagi. According to Macchio, Morita was essential for The Karate Kid’s success, his career, and the franchise’s afterlife in Cobra Kai. As Macchio explains it:
“Without that partnership, there is no ‘Cobra Kai’ because there is no ‘Karate Kid’ without Mr. Miyagi, honestly. We could have as many body bags and legs swept as we want, but if you didn’t have that heart and soul in that movie, that movie doesn’t work, right? So diving into some of those areas and having those moments on set with ‘Cobra Kai’ after writing about Pat and I and John Avildsen, and making some of those iconic scenes from the film, and then stepping on the ‘Cobra Kai’ set and seeing Tanner Buchanan as Robby or Xolo Maridueña as Miguel, and looking at those — Miguel is essentially the millennial Daniel LaRusso, at least in the upfront of ‘Cobra Kai’. And in playing those scenes with them from the perspective of the sensei or teacher, life has moved on. I’m now not the 17-year-old kid or even the make-believe 16-year-old kid I was. That was emotional to write about where it all began and how it’s still living and breathing, and without John Avildsen and Pat Morita, so it was emotional.”
All five seasons of Cobra Kai are currently available on Netflix. To learn more about the series, check out our interview with Xolo Maridueña, Peyton List, Mary Mouser, Jacob Bertrand, and Gianni DeCenzo.
