Cobra Kai Season 4, review: you've got another thing coming
Cobra Kai Season 4, review
Cobra Kai Season 4 will officially arrive on Netflix on December 31st, in time for a binge watch between New Year's Eve and the beginning of 2022. After the events of last season (find our review) Daniel LaRusso's Miyagi-Do dojos and Johnny Lawrence's Eagle Fang are forced to join forces to beat Cobra Kai whose control is now firmly in the hands of John Kreese. >Cobra Kai Season 4 review
Cobra Kai Season 4: dojo against dojo… against dojo
Cobra Kai Season 4 sees Daniel LaRusso and Johnny Lawrence, in spite of themselves, join forces against the hated Cobra Kai . The two dojos in fact try hard to work together in anticipation of the next All Valley tournament. The pact between the sensei is clear: if Cobra Kai loses, the dojo will be dismantled. While Daniel and Johnny try to bring the two different styles of karate together, John Kreese recovers an old ally: Terry Silver.Cobra Kai Season 4 review if (jQuery ("# crm_srl-th_culturapop_d_mh2_1"). is (": visible")) {console.log ("Edinet ADV adding zone: tag crm_srl-th_culturapop_d_mh2_1 slot id: th_culturapop_d_mh2 "); } The man, who originally founded the Cobra Kai with him, is initially reluctant to return to the mat but once he wears the gi again he seems to have big plans and goals for the dojo, goals that are not always the same as Kreese's. The growing tension between the sensei inevitably spills over to the pupils. Samantha and Miguel try to defend the alliance between the dojos but find themselves sympathizing with each other's sensei attracting jealousies and worries while Robbi seems to have found a stable home with Cobra Kai and a sparring partner, or maybe something more. , in Tori.
When the sensei then agree to ban any clash before the tournament the situation worsens. The collaboration between Miyagi-Do and Eagle Fang collapses with a lot of physical clash between Daniel and Johnny and with the tournament itself that surprisingly changes formula, introducing among other things a female category, the dojos are forced to run for cover by drawing on unthinkable resources like Hawk's return for Miyagi-Do. The finale of the All Valley Tournament will be full of surprises and future ramifications for all participants.
Cobra Kai Season 4: you've got another thing coming
We actually have to wait for the last two episodes of Cobra Kai Season 4 to find those narrative cues that had made the first two seasons especially appreciable and fresh, cues that inevitably make this fourth season of the series a passing season that has the merit of reworking and remixing characters already known through that well-known formula. tested in which the characters grow and develop by changing alliances and therefore inevitably "point of view" on the conflicts they experience.Cobra Kai Season 4 review if (jQuery ("# crm_srl-th_culturapop_d_mh3_1"). is (": visible")) {console.log ("Edinet ADV adding zone: tag crm_srl-th_culturapop_d_mh3_1 slot id: th_culturapop_d_mh3 "); } In this sense, it should immediately be emphasized that, from the very first episodes, Cobra Kai Season 4 is less fresh and punctual but no less effective. A decline of this type is also physiological for a series that was born with less bombastic claims, fortunately, than many other projects designed precisely to ride the wave of nostalgia and revival. It is evident how the series in fact elbows to make the most quotational and nostalgic soul coexist (in this series there are also references to Back to the Future, Top Gun, Rocky, Footloose and Without Exclusion of Blows in this series) with themes more current as bullying and inclusiveness which, it should be emphasized albeit in a radically different form, were already present in the first film.
From this point of view Cobra Kai Season 4 is even less "false" than other series that tend to "stumble" on these issues. The secret lies in the formula: with the introduction of the new character Kenny, Anthony LaRusso (Daniel's other son) is also brought to the fore, once again overturning the roles and ideally reviving the scenes of the first film.
Cobra Kai Season 4 review if (jQuery ("# crm_srl-th_culturapop_d_mh4_1"). is (": visible")) {console.log ("Edinet ADV adding zone: tag crm_srl-th_culturapop_d_mh4_1 slot id: th_culturapop" )_d_mh } Cobra Kai Season 4 has a deliberately nervous rhythm that very well balances the tension between Daniel and Johnny with the teen drama component of the series, this season relegated much more to the background but not without some surprises. Instead of building the season in anticipation of the much anticipated final clash in the All Valley tournament, screenwriters and showrunners opt for a series of small conflicts and disagreements between the factions that make the narrative less obvious and less set on the tracks of the shonen manga style formula or " training-strengthening-final fight ”.
Everything is more urgent, although there are some empty passages. If the teen drama component is, as mentioned above, relegated to the background, it is the humorous one that is perhaps a bit too accentuated and in some situations a p0 ′ too cloying and bordering on slapstick to be credible.
It should also be noted that once again the great alchemy between Ralph Macchio and William Zabka has dragged the series on more than one occasion. Their frenemies relationship works very well when it takes their differences inside and outside the mat so to speak to the extreme but also surprisingly when it approaches them bringing them "out" of the sensei they must play.
Cobra Kai Season 4 review There is no doubt, however, that the real breath of fresh air within the series is the entry, or the return if you like, of Terry Silver. The mythical villain of Karate Kid III (recovered the complete quadrilogy in Blu-Ray on Amazon) returns in similar ways to what other characters have done in the course of the series but his physicality, his decidedly Luciferian appearance and a less "balanced" characterization compared to John Kreese, credible but easily decipherable villain, make Terry Silver and the interpretation of Thomas Ian Griffith an addition full of ideas and narrative evolutions for the next season, net of the final twist that concerns him.
Speaking of final twists, what concerns Miguel opens up as many unpublished narrative strands for the series that has capitalized on the film franchise as never before this season while not exhausting it, see final scene with Daniel on the grave of the master Miyagi. Returning to the young performers of the series, Miguel and Samantha are the ones who evolve more slowly, remaining more firmly anchored to what we saw in the previous season while it goes better for Robby and above all for Tori who actually becomes, from mid-season onwards, the narrative flywheel. throughout the season. Honorable mention for the character of Hawk whose story arc of redemption is certainly one of the most interesting so far.
Cobra Kai Season 4 review From a technical point of view, Cobra Kai Season 4 does not differ from the solutions already previously adopted. The photography is dry, the shots are all focused on the characters and their proxemics while the sequences in prolixes with clips taken directly from the films are always present. From the point of view of the action sequences, there is no equivalent of the great sequence at LaRusso's house from last season but a series of small action scenes that are fairly simple in terms of choreography and camera movements (the best without another one in the library) while ample space is left for the All Valley tournament in which the use of slow-motion of eighty-year memory abounds.
