The Karate Kid, Part III

I hadn’t seen this since it was new. All I really remembered was Daniel had a brief heel turn, Mike Barnes is extra, and Terry Silver is extra extra. I remember it being not good. Usually being considered in competition for the worst of the series. And after 30 years … it’s not great. It’s not terrible, though. It mostly just settles for being an uninspired repeat of the better moments of 1 and 2. Daniel has shown no growth, and all the emotion and pathos from the first two for both Daniel and Miyagi is gone, replaced with a standard underdog story. Thomas Ian Griffith is a campy delight as an evil CEO of an international corporation (Dynatox … could you be more obvious you’re evil?!?) putting way too much effort into making an 18 year old’s life miserable, but he is having a lot of fun doing it. It’s him and Sean Kanan’s malicious and sociopathic Mike Barnes that make the movie enjoyable. Otherwise, it’s pretty paint by numbers wrap-up of the original trilogy. But it’s better than Next.