Terry really fucked up with Daniel in KK3 like omg. He had this adorable cutie pie eating out of his hand and gazing at him with those doe eyes and he still decided to go Full Asshole and psychologically bully the sassy sweetheart so badly that Daniel never wanted to be near him ever again. Talk about self destruction to your own chance at true happiness! What the actual fuck Terry!!
As for Daniel, he was a baby bisexual who had such a negative experience with the aforementioned psycho that he never even truly realized or accepted that he was into guys as well and locked up that entire fall/winter in his heart like it never happened. The ultimate bad breakup for a relationship that never even got off the ground. Or the karate mat!
I’m KK3 was an actual good movie, this could have been a tragic coming of age film. Instead we get Cobra Kai 🤮 and the glorification of bullies who get their happy endings. (Not Terry though. He must suffer and die alone and totally unloved because…bad writing.)
The surreal quality of TKK 3 is, that the story beats are those of a cartoon. You have the young Everyman protagonist who has to be put in a fight because kids like fights like that. You need A Girl for The Hero, you need A Mentor and A Villain with some Henchmen. Preferably teenage henchmen because showing a child -avatar going up against an adult sends the wrong message. I mean if a ten year old tries to emulate that they are going to end up dead. They need to be somewhat his size. The bad guy needs to monologue, he gets defeated, Daniel wins the trophy (again), the end.
But they are not playing it like a cartoon. If you play it so that the Bad Guy needs an actual motivation other than "For the evulz, lol", all the other cartoon beats start getting really weird. Why is this man hanging out with a group of teenage boys? Because in a cartoon we don't want him surrounded with beautiful women because this isn't about sex, or shouldn't be. But irl a guy like that would surround himself with eye candy, which means that Mike Barnes, Snake and Dennis are in fact the eye candy. And a cartoon villain hanging out with a teenager because of a lost karate tournament is the same as Cruella de Vil trying to steal your puppies. It's childish and heightened because the message is about defeating every day bullies who feel larger than life. But if you play it straight with actors trying to find layers it becomes something else, something rather insane. So who knows what Terry was thinking. What was he even on? He's very lucid and very rational but what he does is completely unhinged and he is surrounded by people who enable that. And of course Daniel was completely shocked by this. I wouldn't want to be in the same room as the top executives at Palantir because there is something wrong with these people. They use your mobile phone data as target practice for drone strikes. And if you take him seriously, Terry Silver is that kind of person. Now, Terry really wants connection so he doesn't see everyone as disposable the same way other billionaire ceo's might but he is clearly unhinged regardless. Of course he shouldn't have turned on Daniel out of loyalty for Kreese. Hell, Kreese didn't even ask him to do that. So there is something about Terry's sense of loyalty that drowns out even his infatuation with Daniel. Something about him doesn't know where on when to stop; what's proportionate and what isn't.
What the actual fuck indeed! Maybe he doesn't know. Maybe science doesn't know. And poor Daniel has dealt with a lunatic groomer at 18, I don't blame him for shutting down. For probably convincing himself that whatever happened, it can't have been that. While internalising that, if this is what happens when I flirt with a man, no thank you. There is a limited amount of patience for being beaten to a pulp just because some guy wants to fuck you, especially since every time is worse than the next. First Johnny, who at least wasn't actively trying to kill him, then Chozen who was, then Mike and Terry... Better not, ok? Stick to women! (Which solves nothing but you can't blame him for thinking it!)
