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There's a martial arts series on Netflix with a Stranger Things feel that makes a movie franchise like Mortal Kombat feel small in comparison. Stranger Things repopularized the 1980s style of Spielberg, but other shows, some even on Netflix, have helped to carry that torch forward.
The '80s staple series The Karate Kid was converted into a TV show in 2018 for YouTube Red, and Cobra Kai went on to become one of Netflix's most popular series once it moved to the streaming platform. Cobra Kai was a show no one asked for but one that audiences were delighted to have once they got into it.
A sequel to TheKarate Kid, set many years after the events of the films, Cobra Kai follows Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) and Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) as adults, who are both now coming to terms with how their lives panned out. Along with a compelling story, it has some of the best fight choreography you'll find on screen, including when compared to ostensibly fight-focused media like Mortal Kombat.
Cobra Kai Knows How To Do Fights On Screen Properly
Mortal Kombat II arrived in theaters in May 2026, and went out, leaving little in the way of a pop culture footprint. The reboot Mortal Kombat series was supposed to be a "prestige" redo of the original films from the 1990s, which are generally seen as campy, ridiculous movies that have aged very poorly.
Instead of being breaths of fresh air, like some other recent reboots like Masters of the Universe, Mortal Kombat II fails in key ways, particularly in regard to the actual combat. A show like Cobra Kai is illustrative of the problems "martial arts" films like Mortal Kombat II present.
The fight choreography in Mortal Kombat is small. It's tightly edited and filmed, so that we're brought in close to the action. That doesn't make the action more intimate; if anything, it takes us completely out of it. For a fight to resonate, you need to see everything that's happening.
In order to feel the weight of a fight, it's critical to see the participants in full. In Cobra Kai, when two people get in a fight, you can be sure the camera will have them both in frame for most of the action. When a punch lands, you see the attacker's face making the effort, and the receiver's face in pain. It's those two halves of the action that sell viewers on a fight.
Cobra Kai's Fights Have More Emotional Weight Than Those In Mortal Kombat
What's more, Cobra Kai's fights have more emotional weight than any fight in Mortal Kombat. The characters in Mortal Kombat are caricatures for the most part, and the film counts on the audience knowing these characters from the video games. When we see them fight, it then feels like we're watching avatars in a video game fight.
That's not fun, and as anyone who has played a fighting game will tell you, pretty meaningless emotionally. In Cobra Kai, every fight has a purpose within the story. Even if it's not a dramatic fight, or one with huge plot implications, it's a fight that helps explain who a character is.
That's what makes a great martial arts story. The action needs to support what's happening on screen. There needs to be a better reason for characters to fight than simply, "that's what they do". That's enough of a reason for a video game, but a show like Cobra Kai or a movie like Mortal Kombat II needs more.
