The Karate Kid

Quick thoughts on the Karate Kid trilogy before the NyQuil kicks in, which could be any minute.

1) The girl in the third movie gets kicked in the stomach by a bunch of psychos who break into "Mr. Miyagi's Little Trees" shop and attack Michael. Though it's awful enough that she gets kicked at all, things are made worse/more non-sensical when she keeps hanging out with Daniel! Later in the movie she is almost left in a canyon to drown, almost tossed off a rock face into said canyon onto rocks, accosted by a sleezy dude in a club, and probably several other things I'm forgetting.

2) And while we're talking about the female supporting characters in the series, Elizabeth Shue fails to make an appearance past the first movie! Sure, that's fine, but the way the writers get rid of her is just so sudden and strange that it completely undermines her role in the first movie. Apparently she borrows Daniel's car, wrecks it, then tells him she's fallen in love with a football player... what? Wow, strong conviction of character. Another thing I think is fascinating about Elizabeth Shue is that she's gotten more and more beautiful as she'd gotten older. Seriously, I get that the 80s style is probably unconsciously dissuading me, but still, Shue is so much better looking 20 years later in Leaving Las Vegas and Hamlet 2.

3) Starting to get drowsy, so I'll wrap up here. The endings of the movies are so sudden. At the end of the third (the TRILOGY ending, mind you), Daniel wins the karate championship and the screen goes to black. What happened to the rich bad guy with the nuclear waste dumping business (really, that character really exists). I expected, with all his obvious law-breaking, he would have been arrested at the end. I guess if you add cops to the plot of the Karate Kid movies nothing really makes sense anymore. Shoot, seriously though, give me some Afterward!