While the Cobra Kai junkies await concrete news about Season 6 from Netflix, Ralph Macchio’s preparing to release his memoir, aptly titled Waxing On. I’ve read the book, and it takes a deeper dive than one would ever expect into the inner workings of The Karate Kid franchise and comes up with a handful of great stories and revelations, along with filling in some (minor) regrets that Ralph has harbored over the years.
On the subject of repairing the past, Ralph spoke with US Weekly about a variety of subjects, including how his “never, ever my favorite” original The Karate Kid movie has now redeemed itself in a way. That’d be Part III, which introduced the franchise’s most masochistic sensei: the cackling and toxic-sludge dealing Terry Silver. He went full karate supervillain in Season 5, and here’s what Ralph said to US Weekly while also talking about how there’s more to explore with future seasons:
“There’s more meat on the bones there. But it’s gotta be entertaining and organic and I think there’s plenty of places to go every season. Whether you bring in Tamlyn Tomita as Kumiko [in season 5 or] Elizabeth Shue in season 3. You [also] have Thomas Ian Griffith — what a great job he’s doing. Karate Kid 3 was never, ever my favorite of those three movies. Now it’s bearing such great fruit and storytelling and refined versions of characters.”
For sure, the great Karate Kid III antagonist gave us a great bad guy for two seasons of Cobra Kai. Silver’s arc culminated with a cinematic, poolside sword fight with Karate Kid III antagonist Chozen, and in the end, all had flesh wounds. It sure looks like we’ve seen the end of Terry, but hopefully, we’ll get a lot more Chozen and several more seasons because those Miyagi-do “roots are strong.”
Macchio’s Waxing On arrives in book stores on October 18.
(Via US Weekly)