TMC
03-29-2021, 04:02 AM
https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-reviews/mighty-ducks-game-changers-review-1144573/
"There are only so many stories to tell, especially in the picked-over underdog-sports genre," says Alan Sepinwall. "So it doesn’t feel egregious that the new Disney+ (https://www.primetimer.com/networks/disney) series The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers (https://www.primetimer.com/shows/the-mighty-ducks-game-changers) blatantly rips off the premise of Cobra Kai by making the heroes from the movies — a ragtag-turned-champion youth hockey team — into the bad guys. After all, the overarching plot of Cobra Kai — unhappy middle-aged man finds renewed purpose by teaching kids about the sport he loved in his youth — is more or less the same as the one that introduced Emilio Estevez (https://www.primetimer.com/people/emilio-estevez)’s Gordon Bombay in the first Mighty Ducks film. Not only that, Cobra Kai is largely remixing the stories from the Karate Kid films where William Zabka first played Johnny Lawrence, and the first Karate Kid movie was heavily influenced (down to hiring the same director, John G. Avildsen) by the original Rocky. And of course, the Rocky series owes a narrative debt to a host of boxing movies going back at least to 1931’s The Champ. Everything old is new again, and imitation is the sincerest form of entertainment. All is well. With Game Changers, though, it’s less interesting to recognize similarities to Cobra Kai than the series’ differences. Cobra Kai was, at least at the start, made primarily for Gen-Xers who grew up on the original adventures of Daniel LaRusso. Game Changers seems geared for an audience of actual kids, rather than kids-at-heart who remember being in the theater to watch Joshua Jackson’s Charlie Conway pull off the triple-deke maneuver against the Hawks."
"There are only so many stories to tell, especially in the picked-over underdog-sports genre," says Alan Sepinwall. "So it doesn’t feel egregious that the new Disney+ (https://www.primetimer.com/networks/disney) series The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers (https://www.primetimer.com/shows/the-mighty-ducks-game-changers) blatantly rips off the premise of Cobra Kai by making the heroes from the movies — a ragtag-turned-champion youth hockey team — into the bad guys. After all, the overarching plot of Cobra Kai — unhappy middle-aged man finds renewed purpose by teaching kids about the sport he loved in his youth — is more or less the same as the one that introduced Emilio Estevez (https://www.primetimer.com/people/emilio-estevez)’s Gordon Bombay in the first Mighty Ducks film. Not only that, Cobra Kai is largely remixing the stories from the Karate Kid films where William Zabka first played Johnny Lawrence, and the first Karate Kid movie was heavily influenced (down to hiring the same director, John G. Avildsen) by the original Rocky. And of course, the Rocky series owes a narrative debt to a host of boxing movies going back at least to 1931’s The Champ. Everything old is new again, and imitation is the sincerest form of entertainment. All is well. With Game Changers, though, it’s less interesting to recognize similarities to Cobra Kai than the series’ differences. Cobra Kai was, at least at the start, made primarily for Gen-Xers who grew up on the original adventures of Daniel LaRusso. Game Changers seems geared for an audience of actual kids, rather than kids-at-heart who remember being in the theater to watch Joshua Jackson’s Charlie Conway pull off the triple-deke maneuver against the Hawks."