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Cobra Kai star Ralph Macchio has always been open about his feelings for The Karate Kid Part III. He was contractually obligated to make the sequel but didn’t really want to. Nearly 30 years later, he returned to the role of Daniel LaRusso in Cobra Kai. Now, he says the recent Cobra Kai Season 5 taught him an important lesson about The Karate Kid Part III.

'Cobra Kai' Season 5: Ralph Macchio fights 'Karate Kid Part III' villain Thomas Ian Griffith
L-R: Thomas Ian Griffith and Ralph Macchio | Curtis Bonds Baker/Netflix

Macchio was a guest on the WTF with Marc Maron podcast on Oct. 17 to discuss his memoir, Waxing On: The Karate Kid and Me. He explained how his perspective on The Karate Kid Part III has changed over the years. 

‘Cobra Kai’ Season 5 showed Ralph Macchio the value of ‘Karate Kid Part III’

Macchio and Cobra Kai creators Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg and Josh Heald always disagreed about The Karate Kid Part III. To the creators, they were just fans of the next Daniel LaRusso adventure. The story they came up with for Cobra Kai Season 5 paid off so much of Daniel’s history with Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith) that Macchio gets it now. 

“I would be a little bitter about being tied into the second sequel that was a struggle to make a good script which never achieved itself,” Macchio said on WTF. “Footnote, season 5 of Cobra Kai is using that chapter of the original franchise and blowing up great stories. So the lesson here is even the shortcomings from the Karate Kid universe are bearing fruit and handing out gifts.”

‘The Karate Kid Part III’ kept Ralph Macchio out of an Oscar-nominated role 

It wasn’t just his dissatisfaction with The Karate Kid Part III itself. Making the movie also prohibited Macchio from taking another opportunity. 

I frame it as it had to happen because I’ve gained this much from it. I don’t look at it as God, if I only got that movie. There’s a really good story about a terrific movie made by Sidney Lumet, one of my favorite directors who I got to meet. I don’t want to say what it is but the actor was nominated and I know I was in contention for that but couldn’t do that movie based on the option pickup. That’s part of it and so when I was with someone else of high regard in the industry,I look back on that and say maybe I was a little bratty. Maybe I was a little negative.

Ralph Macchio, WTF podcast, 10/17/22
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Macchio doesn’t want to name names but it’s easy to narrow it down from Lumet’s filmography. Lumet made Running on Empty in 1988 and Family Business in 1989 while Macchio was making The Karate Kid Part III. Family Business got no Oscar nominations, but Running did, including one for River Phoenix, so that was probably the role for which Macchio was in contention.

‘Cobra Kai’ gives Ralph Macchio a do over

Reframing The Karate Kid Part III is one of the many ways Cobra Kai gives Macchio another shot at his past. 

“Even scenes that I get to do in Cobra Kai from a different perspective of a scene that’s in the original film that I wish I had another shot at, that’s a do over moment,” Macchio said. “Or maybe the way I reacted a certain way when I met a high profile movie director or actor because I was a little bitter that I had to be stuck in part III when I wanted to do another movie.”

Macchio said he hopes readers learn from his Karate Kid Part III story and don’t make the same mistake. 

“I like telling that story mainly because I learned something from it going forward,” Macchio said. “So if a young actor or young person reads this, one, it’s just information about me that someone didn’t know. This is not deep and dark. None of this is. But it’s just self-reflection on a time when youth might have been wasted on the young.”

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