'Our Cobra Kai Experience Came In Handy’: Obliterated's Creators Have A Lot Of Experience With Action, But Also Had To 'Unlearn' A Bit For Their New Netflix Series
Riley Utley
Tue, November 28, 2023 at 4:33 PM PST·3 min read
A screenshot of C. Thomas Howell giving a thumbs up in Obliterated and Xolo Maridueña smiling in Cobra Kai.
Other than the creators being the same, Hayden Schlossberg, Jon Hurwitz and Josh Heald’s new show Obliterated couldn’t be more different from their hit series Cobra Kai. However, one thing these two shows do have in common is their intense and incredible action sequences. So, when CinemaBlend traveled to Las Vegas to speak with the co-creators of the aforementioned shows, we had to ask about their experience filming action on both, and it was revealed that while their experience on the Karate Kid spin-off “came in handy,” they also had to “unlearn” what they knew to make their latest series.
While we’ve been seeing the cast of Cobra Kai do incredible martial arts for five seasons, when Obliterated premieres on the 2023 TV schedule, we’ll get to see a special ops team attempt to disarm a nuclear bomb using their military training. Both groups are highly trained in combat, and when Schlossberg and his collaborators started working on their latest project, having the experience from their martial arts show really paid off. During our interview about Obliterated, Hayden Schlossberg said:
Definitely, there's a lot of, any hand-to-hand fighting our Cobra Kai experience came in handy. There's a lot of big action with explosions and shooting, and that for us was different with Obliterated than Cobra Kai. But you know, every now and then we'll have our characters just go at it and we know what it's like to stage those for Cobra Kai.
However, while all this was super helpful, especially when it came to shooting Obliterated’s hand-to-hand combat, the team also had to “unlearn” some of their action expertise. That’s because, unlike in Cobra Kai – which is a family-friendly show – Obliterated’s cast is totally, for lack of a better term, obliterated when they’re trying to take down the enemy. That means all the stunts are a lot sloppier, sillier and R-rated. With that in mind, Schlossberg told me:
The difference here is with Cobra Kai everything is martial arts, it's meant to feel crisp and clean, and our characters in Obliterated are wasted. So, you know, the fighting has to be a little messier and sloppier so you have to unlearn a little bit of what we know from Cobra Kai to do the action in Obliterated.
He makes such a great point. When you tune into Season 1 of Obliterated, you are going to get action that is totally different from Cobra Kai on so many levels. Yes, the hand-to-hand combat is comparable in some ways, but this show is not about kids and martial arts. It’s about a special ops military team who is highly trained, but also very drunk, high, and hungry. The weapons are different, the tactics are different, and the state of mind is very different in a super fun way.
So, while we know what to expect action-wise for the upcoming sixth season of Cobra Kai, when it comes to Obliterated, you’re guaranteed stunts at the same level of excellence, but it will 100% be very different. If you want to compare the action of both shows, you can stream both Cobra Kai (which is one of Netflix’s best series) and Obliterated (which premieres on November 30) with a Netflix subscription.
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