The upcoming YouTube Red series “Cobra Kai” will feature previously unseen footage from the original “Karate Kid” movie, according to a new teaser released on Tuesday.
Set 30 years after the events of the 1984 movie, the streaming series takes on the perspective of the movie’s antagonist, Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka), whose life has taken a rocky turn as he seeks redemption by reopening the infamous Cobra Kai karate dojo.
In the clip (above), “Cobra Kai” executive producers Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg talk about shooting the series from that point-of-view.
In order to make viewers more sympathetic to the character, producers went back to the footage recorded for the movie’s climactic fight scene and cut together a version focusing on Zabka’s character, including a brutal close-up of the crane kick that ended the fight.
“Nobody had ever seen [that shot],” Schlossberg said. “The cool thing about that shot is that it changes the perspective of the scene … with that close-up, now you’re feeling the pain of that kick. And it suddenly twists it from triumph to defeat.”