@mechajutaro said:

Recall this entire series began by asking us to believe that the community at large would've remained passive whilst being terrorized by a group of delinquents "mentored" by a dude in his 40s who has the psychologically maturity of a twelve year old who's sat through way too many Chuck Norris flicks. Although it may have just been omitted in the script, not once do see or hear mention of the local news shows up at the Cobra Kai dojo and grilling Fearless Leader as to what sort of example he's setting. The bar for realism wasn't exactly rivaling Mount Olympus to begin with

The community would have been passive. All those kids were trust fund baby's and their parents ran Encino via their Country Club memberships. I'm sure there were many lawyers and judges among them. And it wasn't like they terrorized the community. Just a goofy Italian kid from Jersey. If anything, they probably welcomed the presence of John Kreese to instill the fear and discipline needed to keep immigrants from taking over the city. Daniels's mistake was crossing over from Reseda ( a real shytyhole) over to Encino. In fact, you can almost see traces of Donald Trumps immigration policy taking root from this film. If they had just built a wall between Encino and Reseda all would have stayed within the status quo.

The worst is Ali only using him to get Johnny out of her life and breaking up with Daniel at prom

@Strannger18 said:

The worst is Ali only using him to get Johnny out of her life and breaking up with Daniel at prom

exactly. and using the lame excuse of running into an old boyfriend that went to UCLA.....Daniel should have stayed home and banged her bitchy friends instead of heading to Okinawa with Mr. Miyagi

Yeah, Karate Kid III was bad, but not as bad as Karate Kid IV with Hillary Swank. It'll be a cold day in hell before I watch either of those movies again.

@mechajutaro said:

All those kids were trust fund baby's and their parents ran Encino via their Country Club memberships. I'm sure there were many lawyers and judges among them. And it wasn't like they terrorized the community.

Dude breaking Ali's radio at the beach seemed to imply that the miscreants didn't limit their torment to Daniel alone, and it's tough to believe that under Kreese's tutelage they weren't prone to preying upon vulnerability whenever they stumbled across it. Admittedly, it's been many moons since I've seen this one and I don't recall any mention of any villain's family of origin. Take it someone actually said as much during the movie.

If anything, they probably welcomed the presence of John Kreese to instill the fear and discipline needed to keep immigrants from taking over the city.

Refresh my memory; in what scene was this even implied?

In fact, you can almost see traces of Donald Trumps immigration policy taking root from this film. If they had just built a wall between Encino and Reseda all would have stayed within the status quo.

No implication needed, it would seem. Not when the contemporary filmgoer can't help but read political overtures into everything that's splashed across screens both large and small.

My comment was meant to be tongue in cheek. Not serious at all about the political discourse. I just like talking about the movie

Terry Silver must've been psychic, I always wondered how he knew Miyagi would refuse to train Daniel for the tournament. If that didn't happen a big part of his plan would've fallen through, since part of the revenge was to ruin their friendship.

@RCH2288 said:

It physically hurt to watch. What were the writers of this crap thinking? A rich billionaire decides to help his down on his luck Vietnam buddy destroy some high school kid because he made him look bad at the AVKT the previous year. Would have been more believable if they just had Daniel killed

It was bad, in an enjoyable way for me, but in terms of the writers, one thing to keep in mind is the fact that Robert Mark Kamen actually had a very different plan for the 3rd movie (which is a whole other story), but the studio wanted this story. Kamen wanted to leave the project, but the studio told him that if he left, it would mean someone else was writing Daniel and Miyagi, so he relented. Probably for the best, because we saw how bad it got when someone else wrote Miyagi in the next film...