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{{short description|Fictional character from the Karate Kid franchise}} |
{{short description|Fictional character from the Karate Kid franchise}} |
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{{Bare URLs|date=January 2021}} |
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{{Infobox character |
{{Infobox character |
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| name = John Kreese |
| name = John Kreese |
Revision as of 19:58, 27 January 2021
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John Kreese | |
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The Karate Kid, Cobra Kai character | |
![]() Martin Kove as John Kreese in The Karate Kid III (left) and Cobra Kai (right) | |
First appearance | The Karate Kid |
Created by | Robert Mark Kamen |
Portrayed by | Martin Kove[1] Barrett Carnahan (young, Cobra Kai) |
Voiced by | Brent Mukai (Cobra Kai: The Karate Kid Saga Continues) |
In-universe information | |
Gender | Male |
Titel | Captain, Sensei |
Occupation | Karate instructor, Vietnam War veteran, United States Army Special Forces |
Affiliation | Cobra Kai Karate |
Fighting style | Tang Soo Do[2] |
Family | Unnamed mother (deceased by suicide) |
Significant other | Betsy (deceased) |
Nationality | American |
John Kreese is a fictional character who appears in The Karate Kid series of films created by Robert Mark Kamen.[3] He serves as the main antagonist in The Karate Kid and as the secondary antagonist in The Karate Kid Part III. He also appears in the opening scenes of The Karate Kid Part II. He has returned as an antagonist in the Cobra Kai web television series.[4] He is played by Martin Kove in most appearances.
Fictional Biography
Kreese was born on October 2, 1946 and worked as a diner employee as a teen. His mother committed suicide during his youth and thus he was troubled and picked on by other kids.
In 1965, while dating a girl named Betsy, he enlisted in the Army and was shipped out to Vietnam. He and later Cobra Kai partner Terry Silver subsequently joined a covert operations unit in 1968 under Captain George Turner where they were trained in Tang Soo Do. Betsy died in a car crash while Kreese was in Vietnam. One year later, Kreese and his unit were captured during a mission and made to fight to the death as POWs. Silver was originally selected to fight Turner but Kreese volunteered in order to spare Silver’s life, and in so doing earned his extreme loyalty and friendship. Kreese fought and killed Turner, citing his “no mercy” training as rationale.
After escaping the Vietnamese prison camp, Kreese went on to join the Green Berets of the Army Special Forces and earned a field commission. He would be discharged from the army at the rank of Captain, having held the title of Army Karate Champion from 1970-1972.
After his military career, sometime prior to 1979, Kreese founded the Cobra Kai dojo in California, with Silver’s financial backing, to train local kids in Tang Soo Do under the more marketable label of “Karate.”
The Karate Kid
Sensei John Kreese (b. 1946) is a Vietnam War veteran, United States Army Special Forces captain and the sensei of the Cobra Kai dojo. He instructs his students to have no mercy towards their opponents.
In the first film, Kreese's best student, Johnny Lawrence, has a conflict with Daniel LaRusso. In response, Mr. Miyagi teaches Daniel karate. When Daniel and Miyagi go to the Cobra Kai dojo, Miyagi proposes that Daniel should enter the All Valley Under-18 Karate Championships tournament, where he will face the Cobra Kai students and demands that the conflict will cease while Daniel trains. Kreese agrees to the idea, but threatens to allow his students to continue their harassment if neither show up at the tournament. At the tournament, Daniel reaches the semi-finals while Johnny advances to the finals after defeating a highly skilled opponent. Kreese instructs Bobby Brown, one of his more compassionate students and the least vicious of Daniel's tormentors, to disable Daniel with an illegal attack on the knee. Bobby reluctantly does so, getting disqualified in the process. However, Daniel recovers and ultimately defeats Johnny, becoming the new champion.[5]
The Karate Kid Part II
Shortly after Daniel's victory in the tournament, Kreese attacks Johnny for losing the tournament, but is approached by Miyagi, who humiliates Kreese by making him punch car windows, leaving the latter with bloody fists. Miyagi subdues Kreese and the Cobra Kai students eventually abandon him.
The Karate Kid Part III
Six months after the tournament, Kreese is now broke and destitute as he returns to the Cobra Kai dojo, which has been closed since Kreese lost all of his students. Desperate to resurrect his career, Kreese visits his Vietnam War comrade, Terry Silver, who has become a wealthy owner of a toxic waste disposal business and offers to help Kreese gain revenge on Daniel and Miyagi and re-establish Cobra Kai. Silver sends Kreese to Tahiti on vacation to regain while he hires Mike Barnes, the current under-18 national karate tournament champion, to harass Daniel and beat him in the next upcoming tournament. As Silver trains an unknowing Daniel, both of them are at the dojo one night, where Kreese make his way back in the fray with Barnes by his side to attack Daniel. Miyagi intervenes and escorts Daniel out of the dojo before any further chaos can occur. During the tournament, Daniel defeats Barnes, prompting Kreese and Silver to leave the scene. This implies that Cobra Kai is finished for good due to Barnes's, Kreese's, and Silver's behavior getting the dojo banned from sports.
Cobra Kai
Season 1 and 2
Kreese returns in the first-season finale of Cobra Kai and faces his former pupil Johnny Lawrence, who reopened Cobra Kai and went on to win the recent All-Valley Karate Championship.[6][7][8] In Season 2, Kreese ostensibly asks Johnny for forgiveness for attacking him after the 1984 All-Valley Under 18 Karate tournament, in which Johnny placed second. He states that after the original dojo closed down, he re-enlisted in the Army to train Special Forces soldiers and run strikes during the Gulf War and the War in Afghanistan, though he now feels lost as the world has changed around him. Though Johnny rebuffs him for this apology, Kreese maintains that he never tried to kill Johnny and has repaired his second-place trophy to make amends which cools down the animosity between them; Johnny allows Kreese to attend Cobra Kai classes as an observer. Johnny and Kreese encounter Daniel, who realizes that Kreese has faked his death once again.
Later, when the Cobra Kai's students become concerned about Kreese's attitude and his war stories that do not add up, Johnny follows his former sensei to a homeless shelter. Kreese admits that he flunked a psychological test when he attempted to re-enlist in the Army, and that his stories about wars after his Vietnam experience were lies. Feeling bad for Kreese, Johnny decides to put his full trust in Kreese, believing that he wants to change for the better. However, Kreese quickly becomes a negative influence on Johnny's students, seeking out the most resentful and angry students to drive a wedge between the group under the guise of individual tutoring and advanced classes. He later abuses his influence, going so far as to encourage some of them to vandalize the Miyagi-do Dojo. After seeing the tactics used by his students during a training exercise at Coyote Creek, Johnny discovers that Kreese has been teaching the old ways of Cobra Kai behind his back and expels him from the dojo. After Miguel is severely injured in his fight with Robby at school, most of the students lose faith in Johnny and side with Kreese, who reveals to Johnny that he convinced strip-mall landlord Armand Zakarian to take the dojo away from him. Now being its sole sensei, Kreese hopes to return Cobra Kai to the ruthless organization it once was, using the remnants of Johnny's most disaffected students as his core.[9]
Season 3
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/e/e1/Barrett_Carnahan_Young_Kreese.jpg/220px-Barrett_Carnahan_Young_Kreese.jpg)
In season 3, Kreese's backstory is explored. It is revealed that his mother committed suicide and he was an outcast as a teenager, getting called names such as "freak" and "loser". One day in 1965, when Kreese is working at a diner, David, a college football star, his girlfriend Betsy, and another friend of David's show up. After making eye contact with Betsy, Kreese gets chastised by her boyfriend and apologizes. Later, when Kreese is taking out some trash, he witnesses David hitting his girlfriend. Kreese intervenes, causing a brawl to ensue between him, David, and the football player's friend. Kreese ends up winning not only the brawl but also the heart of Betsy.
After arriving in Vietnam in 1968, Kreese and Terry "Twig" Silver get selected by a cruel captain, George Turner, to form a special forces team that conducts direct action missions in North Vietnam. However, during a mission to blow up a North Vietnamese stronghold, things go south when Silver's radio crackles loudly. Kreese has a choice to detonate the explosives and consequently kill Ponytail, another soldier who has volunteered to lay the explosives, and then escape, but the former refuses out of compassion. Consequently, every soldier in Kreese's squad gets captured by North Vietnamese soldiers. Captain Turner rebukes Kreese for hesitating, and continues to chastise him even right after the North Vietnamese captors execute Ponytail. The remaining American soldiers are held captive until 1969, when they are forced to participate in one-on-one death matches on top of a snake pit arena for survival. At one point, Silver is chosen by the Vietnamese to fight Captain Turner. Feeling sorry for Silver, Kreese volunteers himself to fight Turner instead. Before participating in the match, Turner tries to demoralize Kreese and thus score an easy victory by revealing that Betsy died in a car accident not long after he arrived in Vietnam and hid the truth from him to maintain his focus. When the fight begins, the captain, who is well-trained in martial arts, easily knocks Kreese to the floor of the bridge that is suspended over the snake pit. Turner verbally abuses Kreese for his inability to "shed his humanity" and is about to throw him into the pit, but the latter avoids his impending death by stabbing Turner in the leg with a broken piece of bamboo. Kreese punches Turner off the bridge, but the latter manages to hold on. After a U.S. airstrike neutralizes the spectating North Vietnamese soldiers, Turner orders Kreese to lift him up, but Kreese finally learns to follow Turner's advice of "kill or be killed" by kicking him off the bridge. Kreese’s experience with Turner has earned him Silver’s undying loyalty and adopted his Cobra Kai philosophy around Turner’s program.
In the present day, Kreese continues to teach Turner’s No Mercy philosophy. His management of Cobra Kai sowed seeds of division within his students’ ranks, which included recruiting Kyler, Robby Keene, and Brucks much to the chagrin of Hawk, and the removal of any student who objected to feeding a hamster to a snake. As a result, Hawk’s loyalty to Cobra Kai is put to question, while Kreese view Tory and Robby as his star pupils. Kreese’s machinations land him squarely in the sights of the LaRusso family and Johnny, leading to a confrontation when Tory leads fellow Cobra Kai students (except Robby) in an all-out brawl against Daniel and Johnny’s students at the LaRussos' home.
Blaming Kreese for what happens to his and Daniel's students during the fight at the LaRusso house, especially Miguel, and turning his own son against him, an enraged Johnny viciously beats Kreese and at one point grabs a sai, but is interrupted by when Robby intervenes. Though initially refusing to fight, Johnny eventually shoves Robby and accidentally knocks him out. While Johnny is concerned with his son's well-being, Kreese uses it as the opportunity to strangle him. Kreese’s attempted murder is interrupted by Daniel, who has an even match with him. Even with Kreese using glass shards as an improvised weapon, Daniel defeats Kreese using pressure point techniques against him, and barely spares him after being interrupted by his daughter. Kreese agrees to cease hostilities with Daniel and Johnny until the upcoming All-Valley tournament before giving Silver a phone call.
Commentary
The character was based on Robert Mark Kamen's friend Ed McGrath.[10] Martin Kove got the role by being verbally abusive towards the director.[11] An often recited rumor is that the character of John Kreese was originally written for Chuck Norris, but he turned down the role because he thought it would give karate a negative image. Norris along with director John G. Avildsen have refuted this, but Norris has said if he had been offered the role, he would have turned it down for those very reasons.[12]
The character has had a mostly positive reception from critics and is viewed as a quintessential 1980s villain.[13][14][15]
Martin Kove appeared as Kreese in at least 2 instances outside the main Karate Kid franchise. In 2011 Kove played Kreese on the Tosh.0 episode “Board Breaker.”[16] He also appears in an episode of The Goldbergs (2013 TV series) entitled “The Kara-te Kid” playing a character named Master John, a clear reference to the character John Kreese from the Karate Kid franchise.[17]
References
- ^ "Cobra Kai: Kove Explains Why John Kreese Had To Join the Karate Kid Sequel". CBR. 29 April 2019. Retrieved 11 May 2019.
- ^ https://screenrant.com/cobra-kai-dojo-name-no-mercy-origin-explained/amp/
- ^ "Behind the scenes of the original Karate Kid movie". SI.com. Retrieved 11 May 2019.
- ^ "Martin Kove Explains How John Kreese's Vietnam Backstory Led to 'Cobra Kai' [Interview]". /Film. 22 April 2019. Retrieved 11 May 2019.
- ^ Powell, Larry; Garrett, Tom (19 December 2013). The Films of John G. Avildsen: Rocky, The Karate Kid and Other Underdogs. McFarland. ISBN 9780786490479. Retrieved 11 May 2019 – via Google Books.
- ^ "Original 1980s 'Karate Kid' villain Martin Kove returns in YouTube's 'Cobra Kai'". USA TODAY. Retrieved 11 May 2019.
- ^ Andreeva, Nellie (25 May 2018). "'Cobra Kai': Martin Kove Becomes Series Regular For Season 2 Of YouTube Show". Retrieved 11 May 2019.
- ^ Husband, Andrew; Longo, Chris (April 8, 2019). "Cobra Kai Season 2: How Will Kreese Affect The Dojo?". Den of Geek. London, England: Dennis Publishing. Retrieved May 11, 2019.
- ^ Thompson, Simon. "Martin Kove Talks 'Cobra Kai' Season Three Plans And 'The Karate Kid' Legacy". Forbes. Retrieved 11 May 2019.
- ^ "Black Belt". Active Interest Media, Inc. 1 May 1994. Retrieved 11 May 2019 – via Google Books.
- ^ "5 Things You Never Knew About 'Karate Kid' 30 Years Later". ABC News. Retrieved 11 May 2019.
- ^ "Movie Legends Revealed - Did Chuck Norris Turn Down 'The Karate Kid'?". CBR. 14 January 2015. Retrieved 11 May 2019.
- ^ Ryan, Dennis. "Ten Movie Douchebags We Can't Help But Love". AskMen. Retrieved 11 May 2019.
- ^ Pockross, Adam (28 June 2018). "Exclusive: Martin Kove on Cobra Kai's far-off future and John Kreese possibly being 'human after all'". SYFY WIRE. Retrieved 11 May 2019.
- ^ Singh, Timon (11 July 2018). "Born To Be Bad: Talking to the Greatest villains in Action Cinema". BearManor Media. Retrieved 11 May 2019 – via Google Books.
- ^ "Board Breaker". IMDB.
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: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt6364878/fullcredits/cast?ref_=m_ttfc_3
- Articles with bare URLs for citations from January 2021
- Film characters introduced in 1984
- Fictional martial arts trainers
- Fictional male martial artists
- Fictional Vietnam War veterans
- The Karate Kid characters
- Fictional karateka
- Fictional Tang Soo Do practitioners
- Fictional United States Army Special Forces personnel
- Fictional military captains