The same director made both. John Avildsen directed Rocky in 1976 and The Karate Kid in 1984, and the second is the first rebuilt for a fourteen year old, carried across almost beat for beat:
- An outsider nobody rates, in a city that is not his
- An older mentor who is himself an exile or a failure, and who withholds the reason for the training
- A training sequence built from unglamorous physical work rather than from fighting
- A final bout the hero does not need to win outright, only to survive standing
Going the distance and the crane kick are the same gesture: the point is being upright at the end, not the title. Filed HIGH, because shared authorship makes it traceable rather than arguable.