“Never put passion before principle. Even if win, you lose.”

To say the least, The Karate Kid Part II is quite a bit different from its predecessor. Obviously there are similarities - there’s a romance for example, but overall the tone is a lot different. It’s much more serious and dramatic, with not nearly as much humor and charm as the first movie. This is definitely for better and for worse, so I’ll get into that in the more “mixed” section of my review. Even if this film wasn’t executed as well as the first, I still respect it for going for something different during a time where a lot of sequels had a “same-y” feel to them. Sure there were sequels during the 80s that were much different than their original, The Empire Strikes Back and Aliens for example, but most were going for more or less the same thing as the movie that came before them.

The biggest thing that separates this one from the first though is that Mr. Miyagi really does end up feeling like the main character by the end. He kind of ends up stealing the show from Daniel, who really doesn’t get much character development at all. Mr. Miyagi’s the main focus when it comes to a character arc, and he gets all the most emotional and interesting scenes. This could definitely be a negative for a lot of people, but I honestly like this. I know it has The Karate Kid in its title, so it’s definitely a bit odd to do this, but I’m glad they did. It was well done, especially in the first half, and he has some surprisingly emotional scenes that were pretty powerful. Overall, Mr. Miyagi was easily what made the movie for me.

Miyagi’s arc centers around his past, which was a little mysterious before, so I’m glad they added onto it here. The whole premise of the movie is that Miyagi must go back to his homeland in Japan, due to learning of his dying father. There he must confront both a past lover and a friend-turned-enemy, which adds a nice bit of tension before he and Daniel actually leave. The romance between Miyagi and her and the tension between him and his former friend definitely is what makes him steal the show from Daniel a bit.

It’s also just really entertaining like the original too. The first had slower pacing, but I wouldn’t say it was ever boring. This one definitely gives you less time to take things in, but at that expense it also is pretty tight when it comes to pacing. Plenty of fun scenes here too that don’t take as long to get to. That would probably be the only thing though that this sequel does just a bit better overall unfortunately, but at least everything else is still pretty decent, if not as good as before.

When it comes to the “mixed” stuff, as I already said, Mr. Miyagi definitely takes the story away from Daniel quite a bit. Daniel, similar to Miyagi, also gets a romance and has tension between him and another character, but neither are nearly as well developed. There really isn’t much to care about when it comes to his relationship with Kumiko. The writers’ had to end his relationship with Ali, which isn’t really a spoiler because it’s at the very beginning of the movie. Kumiko is just a much more flat and one-dimensional character than Ali. She wants to be a dancer, but the story doesn’t really go anywhere with that. I think Ali’s relationship (or former relationship I guess) with the main antagonist, Johnny, was what made her super interesting and added tension between him and Daniel.

This also translates to the conflict between Daniel and the main villain of this sequel, Chozen. Chozen just hates Daniel due to someone else’s problems with Miyagi, and this ends up making both him and his conflict with Daniel very uninteresting, especially compared to Miyagi and his former friend. All the acts of violence he commits are just due to someone else’s issues, which makes him feel like more of a “puppet” the entire film, rather than a central villain with his own motives.

I said previously that this film is a lot more serious than the first, but I have to say that for the most part it’s not very well written due to the lack of story development. Everything with Miyagi and his father at the beginning is great and as previously said, surprisingly emotional, and the conflict between him and his former friend is definitely interesting for at least the first half of the movie. However, once things really start to get into motion, everything just starts to feel a bit hollow and overly melodramatic, almost comedically so. The score definitely plays a part in this too. It sounds good, sure, but it’s extremely emotionally manipulative and doesn’t end up making any of the scenes that were intended to be impactful in the latter half work really at all.

I’ll just get straight to it, the second half is really what makes The Karate Kid Part II much weaker as a sequel. Miyagi and his former friend’s conflict ends pretty abruptly and in a very underwhelming way, and so does the climax of the film. Daniel and Kumiko’s relationship also feels completely unnecessary by the end, and it kind of ends up hurting the first movie a little bit because they really didn’t need to end that relationship between him and Ali. I definitely think the writers made a mistake with feeling that they had to end that relationship to start a new one here.

To sum things up, The Karate Kid Part II ends up being a very entertaining but slightly disappointing follow up.