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Tournament Movie Tournament FINAL ROUND Bracket:

(If you're not into reading and you want to spoil the match-up, skip to the bottom to see a bracket image featuring the WINNER.)

This is Pete, back at the helm again (though Nick and I are still tag-teaming on the post (a big thanks to Nick for all his work on the bracket images for the entire tournament)), typing directly into the "Add New Post" box of the back-end of AudioShocker. I'm so grateful to Nick for his help during this tournament, in fact, that I'm even letting his alteration of my column numbering scheme stand. What a whirlwind tournament tournament it's been! Just a couple of weeks ago there was a pile of movies all out there, fighting in their particular styles, but now we're down to a veritable Thunderdome wherein two movies enter, but only one movie leaves. Let's take another look at our finalists:

Bloodsport

It should surprise no one that this movie made it to the finals. The clear number one seed, Bloodsport is the heir-apparent to its own throne. Stripping all the unnecessary plot away from it's father-film Enter the Dragon, Bloodsport in a way really defines what the tournament movie is all about. It's about humans fighting as if they were cocks. And its about aggrandizing the myth of the star. Bloodsport, along with Kickboxer, made Jean-Claude Van Damme's career. And resident JCVD-expert Nick will confirm that the Muscles from Brussels never did better than his first real vehicle, Bloodsport. Additionally, the information that appears on the screen at the end of the movie introduced America to the-man-the-myth-the-legend Frank Dux, kumite motherfucker (or pathological fight-liar), giving Bloodsport a claim to verisimilitude unlike that of any of the other tournament movies we watched.

The Karate Kid, Part III

No one should question The Karate Kid's appearance across the mat from Bloodsport here in the final. You can question whether Part III is really better than the original. In the end, it boils down to this: while the original movie is perhaps a better movie over all, and a truly great sports movie, the final chapter of the trilogy is the better tournament movie. And you might balk at even that, since the tournament figures more prominently in the original than in Part III. But look at two crucial aspects of Part III's tournament structure that make it unique:

-- Conflict between the student and the master. In all the other tournament movies, the protagonist is out to prove the validity of his or her fighting ability, and almost always to pay homage to the training of his master. There is typically some kind of fighting-centric lesson learned (embrace all styles, there's always an out, etc.), but in KKIII, the lesson that the master is trying to impart -- that you don't have to fight at all -- is ignored and railed against by the student. The master still turns out to be right in the end, but not before having to acquiesce to the student.

-- Training with the enemy. In no other tournament does the protagonist go out and train with the bad guy. Terry Silver is an absolutely fantastic villain (B-movie stock, for sure, but nonetheless) to train with. Terry's Quicksilver Method, pernicious as it is, has remained in my own memory ever since I first saw this movie back in 1989.

These points alone show the worthiness of Part III to be in the finals. But also, the fact that the movie features two grown men trying to terrorize an (ostensibly) 18-year-old kid's life is absolutely amazing. Their entire goal is to put Cobra Kai dojos all over California, and that's about it. Efficient, gripping, amazing.

THE FINAL FIGHT

Before finally declaring a winner here, the committedly culturological side of me also needs to point something else out: Bloodsport appeared in 1988, The Karate Kid, Part III in 1989. This is no coincidence. At the root of all the American-learns-Asian-martial-art (and I use "Asian" here fully aware of the ridiculousness of the notion that we can use a single word like that to describe the great variety of cultures in that part of the world; I use "Asian" here in line with the way it's actually used in movies like Bloodsport) plots is the cultural need to come to terms with the three consecutive wars that the US waged against various Eastern foes (Japan, Korea, Vietnam), ending with the ruination-machine that was the Vietnam War. I've discussed this before, in the JCVD roundtables, so I won't belabor the point, but these movies represent the end of the span of years that Hollywood spent trying to come to terms with the Vietnam War. Most people really see this work being done by movies like Rambo, and the even-more-archetypal Missing in Action, but the tournament movies (and movies like Kickboxer) are on the same arc, if perhaps in a slightly subtler way (that's right! who'd've guessed it, that anything about a tournament movie could be subtle).

And The Karate Kid, Part III, as a decade-ending, trilogy-concluding, B-movie cashgrab, represents, in many ways the end of the Vietnam vet as karate expert genre. John Kreese and Terry Silver, buddies from the same platoon in 'Nam, help each other out, though they've both clearly been heinously scarred by their military experience, having been driven to severe mania and psychopathy. And they're terrorizing a kid that could have been their own son, had they not been stuck in a jungle halfway across the globe. Daniel LaRusso represents everything they hate about America: a spoiled kid who didn't have to fear the draft, never had to fight for his country or watch his buddies die, and -gasp- has befriended an actual Asian. And, to my mind, all of this shines through the movie despite its melodrama.

In the same way, Frank Dux represents the military veteran that has found a better way to survive the US's war history. He not only convinces a master to train him in the ways of the East, but then goes there and wins (this arc being made even clearer with the chanting of "The White Warrior" in Kickboxer), and then beats the Asians at their own game.

So the winner is...

There really is very little at stake in the Karate Kid, Part III. Sure, it sucks for the baddies that their t-shirts all get thrown back at them, and sure, Daniel LaRussa has managed to stick up for himself yet again, and maybe all us viewers learned something along the way as well. But Frank Dux in Bloodsport is fighting on behalf of an entire nation. Even though the using-the-kata-to-win ending of KKPIII is awesome in its purity (and has better final fight music), nothing can top the final fight of Bloodsport, the quivering of Jean Claude Van-Damme's not-yet-ravaged-by-fame face, the mighty power of his punch. However, if it came down, out of all sixteen of these tournament movies, to which movie I'd be most likely willing to watch at any given time, I'd have to go with The Karate Kid, Part III, because it really is the most entertaining of all these movies, the most re-watchable, the most useful as a pop-cultural reference. Is that enough, though, to grant it victory? I don't know...

thus...

The grueling battle ends with victory for: Bloodsport!

Tournament Movie Tournament WINNER: