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Elster88 Jun 12 2006 10:51 AM

It seems that according to an article entitled "Blond and Bad; The Advent of the Preppie As Screen Villain" printed in The Washington Post (September 2, 1984), John Avildsen, who directed Karate Kid, deliberately chose the 'blue-eyed and blond' preppie look of the Cobras to be part of the new generation of anti-heroes where the "have's" are the bad guys and the "have not's" are the heroes. This reversal of the typical hero, according to the article, was a theme that was repeatedly used in the movies of the early 80's, with other movies like "Revenge of the Nerds" portraying the blond and beautiful as bad guys.

Elster88 Jun 12 2006 10:52 AM

Avildsen's characterizations, in fact, show how dramatically champions have changed. In Avildsen's "Rocky," the Italian Stallion took on the black champ Apollo Creed. And now, about a decade later, a heroic Italian boy fights off a WASP opponent in what Avildsen has called "The Ka-rocky Kid." BLOND and BAD; The Advent of the Preppie As Screen Villain By Rita Kempley, The Washington Post September 2, 1984 ONCE YOU COULD tell a bad guy by the color of his hat. Now it's the color of his hair. We should have seen it coming. In the early James Bond film "From Russia With Love," the SMERSH killer was the essence of Aryan. The American-made war movies of the 1940s celebrated diversity, but they didn't really prepare us for the heroes and antiheroes of the 1980s. In general, blonds used to have more fun: The late '50s to early '60s were halcyon for button-down types like Tab Hunter, Troy Donahue and Pat Boone. They were heroes suited to the prosperous, blase' "Happy Days." Back then the movies' answer to ethnic was Frankie Avalon. [KK Site Editors Trivia: His son played 'Chucky' --one of Daniel's 'friends' on the beach at the beginning of the film] "But then all of a sudden, everybody had had it with the back seat," says director John G. Avildsen ("Rocky", "The Karate Kid"). "The blacks said 'enough' in the late '50s, the students said 'enough' in the '60s, and the women said 'enough' in the '70s. The vibrations of the culture shake the screen. And nobody wants to be pointed at as a bigot." So new dark-haired heroes emerged, often banded together in multi-ethnic Mod Squads. And inevitably, blonds became the establishment villains. The trend represents more than the ancient rope-tug between haves and have-nots. "It's the reemergence of the American dream," says Richard Stephens, sociologist at George Washington University. "We've had such bad world press on our divisiveness. It's a calculated thing on the part of the producers to show the other faces of America." Now the Lacoste alligator is tormenting minorities. And the villain of the decade is a fair-haired boy. Former golden boys are up against everybody from gays to fatties in a surfeit of centrist films, most recently "The Karate Kid" and "Revenge of the Nerds." The "Nerds" creators wanted to be among the first to zing Oxford cloth. "Yeah, we hate preppies," says Steve Zacharias, who cowrote the film with Jeff Buhai. "We were trying to show that the empty-headed beautiful people who seem to be running the world aren't. It's the smart people who are persecuted because they're not as attractive. Henry Kissinger is probably the most famous nerd." Indeed, the writers say they used him as a heroic model. Buhai says that he and Zacharias were pro-establishment until "God took away our hair," and adds, "We tried to write almost an anti-Nazi movie." Naturally, the villain is Aryan. In "Nerds," Ted McGinley, blond with cheekbones like oar blades, is president of Alpha Beta fraternity (another member is Matt Salinger, J.D.'s son) and quarterback of the football team. He leads fraternity and team against the comedy's multi-minority nerd heroes. McGinley has more than a lot in common with William Zabka, with hair the color of Swiss cheese, the villain in "The Karate Kid." McGinley says he's "the all-American boy straight from the beach." And Zabka says he has been the boy-next-door in 20 commercials. "I have a, you know, real innocent California look." Zabka plays the leader of a pack of upper-class toughs, preppie Hell's Angels by day, country club members by night. They're all blonds, right down to Chad McQueen's peroxided roots. (Chad McQueen, ironically, is antihero Steve McQueen's son.) Avildsen wanted a contrast with "Karate Kid" hero Ralph Macchio's dark visage. "We bleached his hair just to continue the look." Avildsen's characterizations, in fact, show how dramatically champions have changed. In Avildsen's "Rocky," the Italian Stallion took on the black champ Apollo Creed. And now, about a decade later, a heroic Italian boy fights off a WASP opponent in what Avildsen has called "The Ka-rocky Kid." By the end of the 1970s, Hollywood was hunting for new heroes -- and on came Pacino, De Niro, Travolta, Hoffman and Stallone. Eventually, the dusky Jennifer Beals did what even Travolta couldn't -- turned her aspirations into a tour with the Pittsburgh Ballet Company. And who did she out-flash? A haughty chorus of WASP ballerinas. The blond, meanwhile, was earning his villainy. Indeed, by the middle 1970s, there were already signs of decay, hints that the torch would pass. In "Animal House," the heroes were bad fraternity boys and the villains were blond fraternity boys. By last summer, the poison of privilege oozed all over the screen in such sex farces as "Class," "Private Tutor" and "Private School." Even Tom Cruise, in "Risky Business," couldn't get into Princeton until he pimped for an Ivy League recruiter. Early this summer, "Up the Creek" chronicled the debauchery of the tow-headed Ivy University's raft team versus the brunets from Lepetomane College. And the brunets always seem to get the girl, usually a blond. Frequently this same beauty is the cause of the contest between the WASPs and the un-WASPs. McGinley sees red when nerd Anthony Edwards makes eyes at his cheerleader, and Zabka beats up the Karate Kid after his cheerleader makes eyes at Macchio. "Bachelor Party" villain Robert Prescott seems ready to do anything to get his girl back from hero Tom Hanks, a bus driver. The motif persists in Francis Ford Coppola's "The Outsiders," a story of haves and have-nots set in Tulsa, Okla. Writer S.E. Hinton called them socs (soshs) and greasers, and says, "The names change from year to year, from group to group, but it is always the privileged class that make others feel like outsiders." The privileged, she adds, are "aimless, riding around and looking for something besides comfort." In "Karate Kid," that's precisely the case. Zabka describes his character as "very rich, has a really nice cycle. He comes from a very chichi family in the Hills. They the gang aren't sleazy types, but they're really screwed up." He recalls how he and the other young actors got motivated by talking over their make-believe parents' neuroses, alcoholism and drug abuse. Mean streets no longer make mean kids -- brick colonials do. And it takes a street-wise hero to redeem a well-heeled bad boy. In "Karate Kid," Zabka sees the light thanks to a Japanese-American, an Italian-American and a wise young woman. Likewise in "Trading Places," Dan Aykroyd, as a rich WASP broker, is redeemed by poverty, humiliation and his friendships with hooker Jamie Lee Curtis and hustler Eddie Murphy. The trio join forces against Mainline Philadelphians played by Don Ameche and Ralph Bellamy, an older subcategory of preppie barbarian. Harvard Business School graduate Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association, thinks there ought to be an Ivy Anti-Defamation League. "Gangsters have Italian names. Blacks won't do. Nor Asians . . . Aleutians, even Eskimos are organized. Pickets make life difficult. You find some group in America that is politically inefficient and unorganized -- the WASPs and the businessmen -- and lay it on strong. "To me, it is one of the most oblique aspects of stories, novels, TV or movies, to see a businessman always portrayed as a duplicitous character. It is neither sound, nor reasonable. If the Chamber of Commerce or Harvard Business School got organized and raised hell, it would be a tragedy for storytelling. It would be a barren plain indeed, if the last bastion of villainy got organized." It would also be harder to tell a story without easily recognized symbols of good and evil, Valenti adds. Multi-ethnic camaraderie has been extolled at times of social crisis: during World War II, the Great Depression and now as America undergoes demographic upheaval. It's like the '40s now, says Valenti, citing the reemergence of the "war picture syndrome -- a black, a wise-cracking New Yorker, a Pole, an Italian kid -- a U.N. in a foxhole. Except there's probably a homosexual and a lesbian in there, too. And they're organized, for God's sake." In the 1980s, it's out of the foxhole and into centrist films like "Police Academy" and "Tank." Or "D.C. Cab," created by former Washingtonian Topper Carew, who sees the multi-ethnic phenomenon as part of the profit motive. "People of color in movies today is good business," he says. "Jesse's onto something." In other words, there's a melting pot of gold at the end of the rainbow coalition. Blacks and women joined by Asians, Latins and poor southern whites and/or disaffected Vietnam veterans have found in film what eluded Jackson in the primaries. "D.C. Cab" showed, Carew says, "how a multi-ethnic, ragtag group could be successful if they had a common goal. People have difficulty accepting that America is extremely multi-ethnic, so movies must accept that reality . . . tap the talents of and speak to those ethnic groups ." Paul Mazursky's "Moscow on the Hudson," with Robin Williams as a Russian immigrant, is a star-spangled celebration of heterogeneity -- Clevant Derricks as a black security guard, Alejandro Rey as a Cuban immigration lawyer, and Maria Chochita Alonso as an Italian cosmetic salesgirl. Mazursky's films tend to be sociological mirrors -- like "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice" (1969) on the sexual revolution and "An Unmarried Woman" (1978) on women's liberation. In its celebration of the immigrant-hero, "Moscow on the Hudson" and its ilk are new-wave Horatio Alger fables and more. It's probably equally significant that ethnic films glorify the new demographics instead of denouncing the old. About 10 percent of the population celebrates Simo'n Boli'var Day. Planes skywrite "Bienvenidos al Tiempo Miller" above California beaches. Things change. We get films like Robert Duvall's pseudo-documentary on gypsies, "Angelo, My Love," and "Chan Is Missing," a low-budget Chinese-American docu-mystery. We even get a remake of "Scarface," with a Cuban lead, and "El Norte," an American-made film in Spanish and English. "El Norte" director Gregory Nava, a Chicano, predicts, "The U.S. is not going to be recognizable in 20 years. The Americas are changing . . . becoming one system. Immigration from the south is reaching the levels of the eastern migration." "El Norte," a story of L.A.'s barrio of illegal aliens, is the nitty-gritty "Moscow on the Hudson." It bares the tragedy in the promise of America, and it parcels out blame. Says Nava, "It does not scapegoat whites, but it does present them as thoughtless as they really are. If you have a white American who's very racist, it does two things: It presents the situation a bit falsely, because the vast majority of Americans are not like that. And you present the belief that all you have to do is overcome those people and all's well." So where do we go for our villains now? There may be a faint trace of good news for the traditional American elite. "Oxford Blues," a new release, pits Oxford against Harvard in a two-man scull race. It's a grudge match that's been building for 25 years -- sort of a "Rocky" for the well-to-do -- and the Ivy Leaguers are the underdogs. There may also be a small change in audience reaction. Recently, a dad took his 13-year-old daughter to a "Nerds" matinee. They were wearing matching khakis and Lacoste shirts. On the way home, she was reported to have said this: "Daddy, I like the boys from Alpha Beta House non-Nerds better." Are we about to hear someone murmur, "Some of my best friends are preppies?"

Edgy DC Jun 12 2006 10:57 AM

Avildsen's characterizations, in fact, show how dramatically champions have changed. It wasn't so new as all that, as Bogart or Chaplin would demonstrate.

ScarletKnight41 Jun 12 2006 10:57 AM

I went to high school with Ralph Macchio, so The Karate Kid was always a favorite of mine.

MFS62 Jun 12 2006 11:06 AM

I was going to start a thread about audience vocal reactions to something on the screen. But since the article brought up "Rocky" this is a good place for it. And it is in keeping with your Aryan vs Others theme. In Rocky IV, the villain is not only the blond Russian boxer, but his handler, blond and smug Brigitte Nielsen as well. In one scene, Drago is pounding the crap out of Rocky. Brigitte glances over at Rocky's wife, dark haired Talia Shire, with a look of sheer contempt. At that point almost everyone in the theater either said aloud or muttered the same word - "Bitch". I was going to ask whether anyone else had a similar experience with that, or any other, movie. Later

RealityChuck Jun 12 2006 11:20 AM

Edgy DC wrote: Avildsen's characterizations, in fact, show how dramatically champions have changed. It wasn't so new as all that, as Bogart or Chaplin would demonstrate. You make a good point. Tab Hunter, Troy Donahue and Pat Boone were hardly major movie stars; the biggest name of their time was Marlon Brando, along with people like Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster. John Wayne was still huge, as were Cary Grant and James Stewart. Now, if you mean teen stars, I don't think any were bigger than James Dean or (though certainly not of the same acting stature) Frankie Avalon. Blond leading men were thought of a lightweights, and there are very few successful ones. And making the rich kids the bad guys goes back to "Our Gang." Or "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town." But the Karate Kid was a good film. John Avildson is a very underrated director.

Elster88 Jun 12 2006 12:22 PM

Edgy DC wrote: Avildsen's characterizations, in fact, show how dramatically champions have changed. It wasn't so new as all that, as Bogart or Chaplin would demonstrate. I'm not sure what you're saying. The article wasn't saying that Avildsen was the first to use such characterizations, just that he chose to use them. Neither was the article saying that the Aryan-colored-bad-guy had never been used before the eighties, but rather that it was widespread in the eighties. In the actual context of the article, the line you quote is correct. The article starts off by pointing out that Avildsen didn't create the mold.

Elster88 Jun 12 2006 12:30 PM

At this point in the discussion, I like to point out that only Johnny and Bullitt, Jr. actually were blond. 'Course, they were the two meanest.

Elster88 Jun 12 2006 12:32 PM

Never could figure out who the fifth bully was. Five guys beat up Daniel at the fence. Miyagi refers to it as a "5 to 1" problem. But in the first scene with the Cobra Kai after Miyagi meets Kreese (when Daniel-San is walking with Ali at the high school and talks a little smack), there are only the four of them. In the credits, after Johnny, Bobby, Tommy, and Dutch, there is a character named Jimmy. I think Jimmy is the brown-haired one who can be seen sitting on the other side of Bobby when Kreese is delivering his "Take him out of commission" order. But I've never been sure.

Edgy DC Jun 12 2006 12:47 PM Edited 2 time(s), most recently on Jun 13 2006 09:08 AM

I'm not sure what you're saying. It says that "now," all of a sudden-like, the treand was accelerating. The implication was that earlier precedents were exceptional. "In general, blonds used to have more fun." I'm not so sure. Kempley also mis-identifies Miyagi as Japanese, and not Okinawan. Hollywood was born at a time of upheaval in American society, with the establishment class feeling increasingly threatened by new cultures, but the newcomers --- Jews, Irish, eastern Europeans, etc. --- recognized the power of the screen faster and movie heroes have largely been dark and scruffy guys who take the hearts of the blonde women away from the swells, who often ended up being good sports about it in the end. Sure, DW Grifith got his reactionary call to arms Birth of a Nation blasted across America, but a generation later, Cecil B. DeMille lost while trying to rally the directors guild into a code defending the American way. Even Cary Grant, a lovely accented Anglo-Saxon who reached the A-List, did so by self-effacing performances, playing the straight man undone in screwball comedies or ripped from his contemptible comfortable existence in dramatic action moves. The nation was changing, and, as much as we may like him, the comfortable Country Club days for his kind are over, his movies often seemed to say. Lee Mazzilli, John Travolta, and Happy Days and Sly Stallone (at least for a bit), made East Coast Italian-ness the cool ethinic way to be for a while. Danny Terio did what he could to ruin that, but congratulations to Ralph Macchio for making a last stand.

Elster88 Jun 12 2006 12:49 PM

It says that now, all of a sudden, the treand was accelerating. The implication was that earlier precedents were exceptional. "In general, blonds used to have more fun." I'm not so sure. I don't know enough about film history to argue one way or the other. Kempley also mis-identifies Miyagi as Japanese, and not Okinawan. I can see how she might have missed this. A lot of the story behind Miyagi's heritage and family history wasn't fleshed out until KKII. I'm having trouble remebering exactly how the drinking scene went, but I think the only scene in KK where Miyagi makes a point that he was from Okinawa and not Japan was the first tree-cutting scene. Lee Mazzilli, John Travolta, Rocky, and Happy Days and Sly Stallone (at least for a bit), made East Coast Italian-ness the cool ethinic way to be for a while. I'm not old enough to remember it, but wasn't this much more true in the tri-state area than nationwide? I always thought Rocky's character is more thought of as a bumbling idiot who could punch hard....not "cool" so much as a "guy who's easy to make fun of". Tony Danza sure didn't help. All of that aside, I think the idea of the article was focusing more on how the movie was part of a strong trend of "blonds are villians" then "minorities/non-blonds are heroes."

Edgy DC Jun 12 2006 01:25 PM

Nah, it's both. Look at the Moscow on the Hudson stuff. We don't even have a villian noted there. Meanwhile, she spells Maria Conchita Alonso "Maria Chochita Alonso." Who was editing the Style section?

Elster88 Jun 12 2006 01:55 PM

Elster88 wrote: Never could figure out who the fifth bully was. Five guys beat up Daniel at the fence. Miyagi refers to it as a "5 to 1" problem. But in the first scene with the Cobra Kai after Miyagi meets Kreese (when Daniel-San is walking with Ali at the high school and talks a little smack), there are only the four of them. In the credits, after Johnny, Bobby, Tommy, and Dutch, there is a character named Jimmy. I think Jimmy is the brown-haired one who can be seen sitting on the other side of Bobby when Kreese is delivering his "Take him out of commission" order. But I've never been sure. Anyone?

Johnny Dickshot Jun 12 2006 02:29 PM

Don't recall. The kid I like is the one who makes that unbelieveably cruel, sadistic smile while Johnny sweeps the leg. I think he's the one who said "Get him a body bag!!" Was that Dutch? I think KK was/is a very good movie. The only issue I really have with it is the wardrobe department. No kid, no matter how dorky, poor or fishouttawatery, would wear that gay all-white outfit to the club. You KNEW he was gonna have a spaghetti-related incident when he wore that.

Elster88 Jun 12 2006 02:34 PM

Johnny Dickshot wrote: Don't recall. The kid I like is the one who makes that unbelieveably cruel, sadistic smile while Johnny sweeps the leg. I don't remember this smirk. The one who was jumping up and down and cheering when the camera shot back to Kreese after Johnny sweeps the leg (got the first point off Daniel-san) was Tommy. I'm not sure if that's what you mean by the smirk. Johnny Dickshot wrote: I think he's the one who said "Get him a body bag!!" Was that Dutch? That was Tommy. Dutch is (other) blond one (Chad McQueen).

Johnny Dickshot Jun 12 2006 03:16 PM

Well, been awhile, but I think he's down on his knees watching the match, to the veiwers right of the coach. He has thick, sandy/lt brown hair. I think the expression he gives might be him saying "YE_AHHH!" when Danny got hurt. I can't really see where the Cobra kids really differed from one another, except for what'shisname, the leader. I think him getting cast in so many movies as "the bad kid" was a s repsonsible for the proliferation of blonde villians as anything. Him and Stan Gable from Revenge of the Nerds. Has anyone seen THAT movie lately? Talk about sexist shit that couldn't smell a big-screen today ... the hero date-rapes a chick!

MFS62 Jun 13 2006 08:51 AM

Danny Terio did what he could to ruin that, Edgy, That line alone makes this thread an instant classic. Later

Vic Sage Jun 13 2006 01:51 PM

As Edgy notes, the studios realized early on that have-not heroes versus have-villains was a viable formula for success (hair color notwithstanding, since films were in black & white). I think the only thing worth noting about the 80s "phenomena" of the preppy blonde villain was that i think Valenti's historical point was accurate. Many different minority groups were sick of being stereotyped and villainized by Hollywood and, starting with the civil rights era of the 60s and 70s, activists were starting to make their feelings known. Filmmakers, especially those in the studio system, did not want to offend their audiences and so turned back to the basic "class conflict" model, and began using corporations (rather than specific countries or ethnic, racial, religious groups) as villains, and could use the "blonde preppie" villain with impugnity. John Hughes' whole ouevre (especially the films from that period) was based on class conflict.

Centerfield Jun 13 2006 03:14 PM

There was one Cobra Kai, who apologized to Daniel immediately after pulling a dirty move on him. On Edit: It was Bobby. Immediately preceding their fight, Kreese and Bobby have this exchange: Kreese: Bobby. I want him out of commission Bobby: But Sensei I can beat this guy. Kreese: I don't want him beaten. Bobby: But I'll be disqualified. Kreese: Out of commission. Bobby then proceeds to put Daniel out of commission (or so we think) by attacking his leg. As soon as he does it, he apologizes to Daniel as Daniel is being taken away. I forget if he's around during the last fight with Johnny, but you have to think Bobby was about done with Cobra Kai even before the crane showed up. Tommy is the insensitive one calling for a body bag. He, along with Dutch, are the biggest jerks of the group. Tommy is also memorable for delivering the worst insult in movie history. During the "hands-off" training period, a frustrated Tommy yells "Must be take a worm for a walk week" upon seeing Ali hanging with Daniel.

Centerfield Jun 13 2006 03:39 PM

Sports Guy's Take: http://espn.go.com/page2/movies/s/simmons/020830.html

Johnny Dickshot Jun 13 2006 03:51 PM

Some of my readers have been pining for a "Billy Zabka DVD Collection" -- "Karate Kid," "Just One of the Guys" and "Back to School," with director's commentary from Zabka and deleted scenes -- and frankly, there's still time. They could even call it "Zabka!" It's a no-brainer. Like you wouldn't buy this? lol

Edgy DC Jun 13 2006 04:03 PM

I think "Tommy" is also the name of the privileged abusive blonde karate-trained creep beating down on Nicholas Cage in Valley Girl. There must've been something of a sweet-little-boy-gone-so-wrong element in the name. His worst boast in film history: "Who else is there? No other Val dude can touch me." On edit: Good observations from Centerfield.

Edgy DC Jun 13 2006 04:35 PM

Simmons on The Karate Kid: Part II A quick plot recap: Miyagi's father in Okinawa dies, so Miyagi decides to fly to Japan. Since Ali dumped Daniel-San, he has no friends and nothing to do all summer ... this prompts a painful scene in which Daniel-San arrives at the airport just as Miyagi is boarding his plane, leading to some "Please, let me come with you" begging and this hair-raising quote: "Mr. Miyagi, you're more important than college, you're more important than anything to me." (Yup ... this was the point in the trilogy in which the Daniel-Miyagi relationship could officially be described as "a little uncomfortable.")

Edgy DC Jun 16 2006 02:42 PM

Awful corporate rock on the trailer.

Elster88 Jun 16 2006 02:48 PM

JC Penny 3.98

Elster88 Jun 19 2006 12:34 PM

Edgy DC wrote: Awful corporate rock on the trailer. That song played during the closing credits.

Elster88 Jun 19 2006 01:07 PM

This site identifies "Jimmy".

Elster88 Jun 20 2006 09:29 AM

Sports Guy's review moved: Link

Edgy DC Jun 23 2006 08:37 PM

You're letting me drive?! Hey! It's the eighties!

Elster88 Jun 24 2006 08:55 AM

"You want me to drive?!"

Edgy DC Jun 26 2006 04:20 PM

You're right, you script master, you. Now, here are some Karate Kid Kwestions: If you want to send Daniel-san to a Halloween dance as the invisible man, why not send him as mummy or the Phantom of the Opera or something. Why dress him in such a conspicuously inconspicuous costume as the guy behind a shower curtain? That's begging people to notice him. Or is that Miyagi's plan and Daniel is too stupid to pick up on it. And why doesn't he play the part, wearing a swimsuit or a shower cap behind the curtain, instead of that Wes Chandler (or was it Kellen Winslow?) Chargers jersey? And what's with the Chargers jersey? You hate SoCal, Daniel. Why not wear the New York Giants jersey of the best linebacker ever? Daniel seemed to register at the tournament. So how do they not only have his name in designer block letters for the giant bracket on the wall, but also have a reproduction of the presumably unique patch from the back of his karate robe, representing Mr. Miyagi's fake dojo. Back to Halloween. If you're going to dump water on the guy whose gang has beaten the snot out of you multiple times, why do it when (a) you know his gang is a-waiting outside in your escape route, and (b) when your costume precludes you having a chance to get away safely?

Elster88 Jun 27 2006 07:32 AM

Edgy DC wrote: script master The word you're looking for is "loser".

Johnny Dickshot Jun 27 2006 07:47 AM

I liked his Halloween outfit, and I think they did so to demonstrate Miyagi's creativity. The Cobra Kai Kids were smoking dope in the bathroom by the way but never acted like stoners. If they had a chance to do the flick all over again, they'd probably be doing steroids, as their effects were consistent with their behavior. The graphic question always got me too. As did the HUGE crowd for a karate tournament. And, as usual for a sports movie, the "announcer" provides exposition where he would hardly do live.

Edgy DC Jul 05 2006 10:52 AM

Yeah, good points. Two mroe things there. (1) The announcer pepares to award Johnny Lawrence with the trophy with a lame cliche like, "And now, the moment we've all been waiting for..." We've all been waiting for the defending champion to reclaim his trophy by default, without a championship fight, because his teammate intentionally incapacitated the upstart would-be co-finalist in the semis? (2) Why did Tommy get disqualified for trying to break Daniel's leg, but Johnny merely get a stern warning?