‘Cobra Kai’: Ralph Macchio Crane Kick Was Originally a Different Move in ‘The Karate Kid’
Cobra Kai Season 5 brought back Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio)’s legendary crane kick from The Karate Kid. His final move to win the All-Valley Karate Tournament has been a sore spot for Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka), who considered it an illegal move. But, the Karate Kid crane kick was originally something else.
Macchio was a guest on the WTF with Marc Maron podcast on Oct. 17 to promote his memoir, Waxing On: The Karate Kid and Me. He explained the original idea for the crane kick and why it was changed to the now legendary move.
Why ‘The Karate Kid’ ended with Ralph Macchio doing the crane kick
During the All-Valley Karate Tournament, Daniel’s leg gets injured in his fights with Cobra Kai opponents. He doesn’t give up though, and figures out a way to fight on one leg. That ended up being the crane kick, but it didn’t start out that way.
“The crane kick was written as his leg is injured, so he’s got to not use that leg at all,” Macchio said on WTF. “This is the best of my memory. Any of this stuff, when you’re writing something from 35, 38 years ago, it’s really about this is what I’m remembering of these moments. But for me, it was written that he had the injured leg so he had to be able to throw the crane kick with one leg and land back on that leg. That’s not what it ended up being.”
The crane kick is not a real karate move
Macchio also acknowledged that The Karate Kid screenwriter Robert Mark Kamen was making up some karate moves. Kamen admitted it too. In the script, Daniel watches Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita) practice the crane kick earlier in the film.
I wrote his exact words: ‘It was cinematic. I made it up’ and he made up something beautiful that you can mention almost anywhere on the street. It’s universal. It was about how are we going to do it? Are you going to do it with wires? At one point I was like wow, this might not work. It wasn’t like the movie’s a disaster, we can’t make this movie. It was more in [director] John Avildsen’s hands, the director, and stunt coordinator Pat Johnson at the time of finding the best way to achieve. Because it is cinematic. The arms are out, on one leg…”
Ralph Maccio, WTF podcast, 10/17/22
Pat Morita’s double invented the signature ‘Karate Kid’ crane kick
Darryl Vidal did the crane kick Daniel watches from a distance earlier in the movie. Vidal worked with Johnson and Avildsen to execute what became the crane kick.
“He was able to execute the kick and switch his weight so quickly that you never thought that he landed on the bad leg at all,” Macchio said. “It’s not that brilliant a fix but it’s sort of what was done, so how could you fluidly execute seamless going up, throwing it and landing back. It was written that the base leg was the kick leg and the base leg which kind of was awkward when anyone tried it.”
Imagine if they had gone with what was written. Martial artists would be mimicking that instead of the crane kick.
“It’s still done,” Macchio said. “In MMA you’ll see someone do the pose and it’s on Twitter and Instagram the next day.”
