The Karate Kid, part III (1989)

Just like Part II, The Karate Kid Part III begins with a 5-minute recap of Part I, also including the new bit in Part II where Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita) humiliates Kreese (Martin Kove) after the original fight. 

The film came out five years after the original, but in movie time, under a year has passed. Mr. Miyagi and Daniel (Ralph Mocchio) have just returned from Okinawa; neither of their ladies returned with them. Now, Mr. Miyagi is out of money, and it's time for Daniel to start college. Note: Daniel is supposedly somehow still until 18. I wondered how old he was supposed to be, because the adult bad guys keep pushing younger students against him, but the All-Valley Championship Tournament is for 18 and younger.

For most of the movie, the tension is this: Daniel wants to enter the tournament to defend his title, but Mr. Miyagi is against it. Terry (Thomas Ian Griffith), a rich bad guy and Vietnam Vet buddy of Kreese, has made it his mission to get Daniel into the tournament so that his handpicked student can humiliate Daniel. He wants to help Kreese develop a chain of Cobra Kai training locations, and I guess his plan is to use the tournament to promote just how bad-ass Kreese and Cobra Kai are. All of Kreese's former students quit on him after the first tournament; surprisingly, none of them are around to help Daniel, and none of them show up to the new tournament. It's the little details of "missing people" that make this franchise feel less real to me. At least some of those characters should still be around, and they probably should be helping Daniel -- or at least around... 

That said, at least Daniel's mom makes a cameo in Part III after being absent in Part II. You'd think she'd be at the tournament, but she's not. 

The film has to finish with the tournament, of course, and Daniel has to look defeated before his miraculous victory, of course. His final victory is inevitable, but Part III doesn't have the cool Crane Kick finish. So compared to the original, the ending is a little lackluster. Terry and Kreese look disappointed but are they really going away now after this setback to their plans? Will Terry just decide not to move forward with the chain of Cobra Kai locations?

And then there's that end shot. In Part I, it was the freeze frame on Mr. Miyagi smiling at Daniel. In Part II, it was Mr. Miyagi smiling at Daniel, no freeze frame. Part III goes back to the freeze frame finish, this time with Mr. Miyagi and Daniel hugging, but the focus is on Mr. Miyagi's face; Daniel's back is to the camera. So more or less the same ending in each part. 

This is the problem, of course, with bad sequels. They follow a formula, and each part is simply a copy of the original. Are Parts II and III watchable? Sure, they're watchable, but why bother watching either when you could simply watch the original? Or, for that matter, why watch any mediocre film when you could watch literally hundreds of better films? 

I guess we watch bad sequels because we like the characters. Mr. Miyagi is a great character. He makes watching the sequels bearable. Morita isn't the best karate practitioner, as far as I can tell, but where his stunt double was obvious in Part I, it looks like he's at least doing his own karate in Parts II and III. 

If this was somehow the first time telling the Karate Kid story, I might give the movie a slightly better rating, but since I've already seen this story before, a couple of times now, I really can't go higher than 2/5 stars.