![]() Beyond the imported niches of Hong Kong Kung Fu and Japanese samurai movies, there just weren’t that many other martial arts films available. This comprised the bulk of martial arts for western audiences. Many B-movies coat-tailed on Enter the Dragon‘s success, especially in the subgenres of Bruceploitation and Blaxploitation. There just weren’t that many martial arts movies in western pop culture back then.īruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon came out over a decade before The Karate Kid, and tragically, Lee didn’t live to see it succeed. When we reflect upon the original, we must remind ourselves that the landscape of martial arts films in the west was vastly different in 1984. ![]() “This means that we need to concede that fascinating viewers by something pretty, amazing, or spectacular to look at is more important than authenticity.” The Year That The Karate Kid Premiered “First and foremost, we have to bear in mind that we are talking about a movie, not about a documentation or a piece of research,” says Bayer. But as a martial scholar, he’s pragmatic about his opinions. Bayer remembers firsthand how The Karate Kid stimulated the Karate boom in the mid-eighties because he was a practicing Karateka then. ![]() Hermann Bayer, an expert authority on Okinawan Karate and the author of the upcoming book Analysis of Genuine Karate―Misconceptions, Origin, Development, and True Purpose. ![]() But was it a genuine representation of Karate?ĭen of Geek consulted Dr. Its lasting cultural impact was a landmark advancement for the western understanding of the martial arts. When it comes to martial arts films, The Karate Kid was a game changer when it came out in 1984. ![]()
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