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The Film

  • Accidental Aesop: According to Chuck Norris, dreams come true if you want them bad enough. They don't come true if you earn them, deserve them or really need them to come true. In this case, Barry dreams of fighting alongside Chuck Norris, and because he wanted it so bad, Chuck Norris just happened to drop by at the karate tournament he was competing in and agreed to help him out.
    • An Alternate Aesop Interpretation is that Barry wanted to be badass more than anything and failed miserably because he just dreamed about. When he stopped daydreaming and became badass through hard work and training— his dreams came true. It's an argument about stopping wishing for things and going out to do them.
      • Mind you, Chuck Norris joining Barry's team is unlikely but not impossible as he was still a major figure in American karate at the time of the film and the villain's attitude clearly bugged the hell out of him.
  • Alternative Character Interpretation: Its very easy to see Barry as being not just a very imaginative teenager who daydreams a lot but as a schizophrenic who has hallucinations.
  • Anti-Climax: Randy was such an unlikable character that you'd hope he'd get some kind of comeuppance. Yet when he and Barry do confront each other in the Karate Tournament their conflict was settled in a brick breaking competition. All that build up to a rather mediocre payoff and what's to stop Randy from picking on Barry after that? The film seems to treat the defeat and Barry's rise into being able to take care of himself as the bully's comeuppance, but it's honestly not very satisfying, especially since this movie seems to be going out of its way to copy The Karate Kid.
  • Ham and Cheese: Mako and Joe Piscopo are clearly having a ball with their performances. Not content to merely chew the scenery, both instead bite down on it like a pit bull and shake until it comes apart.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: This movie was pretty much Chuck Norris Facts twenty years before Chuck Norris Facts.
    • In Barry's Wild West fantasy in the gym, Chuck portrays a Texas Ranger.
  • Moment of Awesome: When Chuck Norris kicks the teacher's ass.
    • Barry's weapons demonstration also counts.
  • Narm Charm: The whole movie is incredibly corny, but that's precisely what makes it so entertaining.
  • Retroactive Recognition: Dennis Burkley plays one of the bikers that crashes Lee's restaurant. He is better known as the voice of Principal Moss on King of the Hill.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The film would have a much better pay-off if Barry somehow competed in the Martial Arts competition without the assistance of Chuck Norris, which would send a profound message that Barry has learned to manage without his idol in his life.
  • Values Dissonance: The fistfight between Barry and Randy in the school gym definitely would result in their suspension nowadays in the post-Columbine school environment.
    • And the zero tolerance on bullying. There is a strong chance Randy would have been expelled for provoking the fight (although some districts punish fighting back just as harshly).
    • The "mean gym teacher" trope is also very prominent in fiction, but in real life if any parents or other teachers (assuming they're normal and not jerks like he is) overheard him bullying his students the way he bullies Barry, he'd be out of a job in a heartbeat.
  • Vanity Project: This film could be considered a vanity project, if not necessarily for Chuck Norris, then perhaps for his brother. The film stars Chuck Norris as himself and Jonathan Brandis who plays a kid who is obsessed with him. The film was also directed by Chuck's younger brother, Aaron Norris.


The Webcomic

  • Complete Monster:
    • Metheos, once the hero Dunkelheit, succumbed to greed and lust for power. Using one of the Pranas, the three items that govern superpowers, Metheos stole the body of his partner Guardian and began to recruit budding supervillains to his side by stealing superpowers and distributing them. Not even loyal minions were safe, as Metheos would happily steal from them and "redistribute", leaving loyal followers to die if a more convenient recruit arose. After stealing the body of Guardian's son, Metheos backstabs Guardian's former sidekick Camilla when she tries to protect him and attempts to annihilate multiple helpless sidekicks to force Metheos's own former sidekick to sacrifice his life. Awakening from a four-year coma, Metheos recharges his powers by draining the lives from thousands upon thousands of innocent people and initiates what he terms Project M.A.S.S.A.C.R.E: herding people from a city so he can drain their lives, filling up dozens of enormous mass graves, before having his men slaughter any survivors for laughs. Not satisfied with simply restoring his powers, Metheos intends to reach a level of power greater than any other by draining the life from hundreds of millions of innocent people, consumed with his hunger for power and believing all that exists should bow before him.
    • Iblis is Metheos's most powerful and evil servant. Once a sadistic sidekick-in-training as Olivia, she snaps upon failing her final exam, developing a seething hatred for successful sidekick Lamia and releasing the psychopathic Pluton to kill as many students as possible, hoping only she will be left as a potential sidekick. When this plan fails, Iblis joins forces with Metheos, testing her new powers by murdering innocents and happily assisting with her master's plans to kill every superhero in the world. As Metheos falls into a coma, Iblis works to revive him, murdering her own minions and innocents without a second thought along the way and plays a key role in Project M.A.S.S.A.C.R.E., using thousands of people as sacrifices to restore Metheos to power. Joining her restored master in the slaughter of millions to steal their life force, Iblis delights in having her minions hunt down survivors for sport. Using her powers while dueling with a hero, Iblis tries to force hundreds to kill themselves. A petty, sadistic, monstrous excuse for a human being, Iblis was all too willing to allow her jealousy to corrupt her into a villain every bit as sickening as her master.
    • Dr. Max is a sociopathic robotics expert obsessed with creating the ultimate machine. To this end, Max manipulates a powerful businessman, Mr. Ellison, to fund his creations, whom he regularly uses to murder weak superheroes and sidekicks, and brutally murders Ellison in front of the man's daughter when he outlives his usefulness. Using his powerful robots for various purposes, from massacring his entire lab staff, to ordering them to lay waste to a highly-populated city as a test run, Max eventually implants his mind in a robot body, and uses his new strength to sadistically duel with numerous heroes, drawing out their pain for his own entertainment. After trying to murder an innocent woman, Max plans to absorb the comatose superhero Darkslug's cells into his own body, hoping to make himself the most powerful being in existence and finish his research. Though a minor villain when compared to the likes of Metheos or Iblis, Dr. Max stands out as a truly depraved lunatic who is willing to wipe out hundreds of people and kill any of his partners for minor reasons, all to quench his obsession with perfecting his research.
    • Pluton is a psychopathic brute who stands out as a particularly vile Starter Villain. A mass murderer who slaughtered close to 5,000 people in a cheerful rampage, notably strangling a little girl to death after brutally murdering her father, all with a sick grin on his face, Pluton earned his reputation when he killed off 4 superheroes and 5 sidekicks sent to detain him. After being freed from his later imprisonment, Pluton carves through everything in his way, including the person who rescued him, and giddily brutalizes a group of sidekicks who attempt to stop him, speaking for the first time solely to reveal how much pleasure he's getting from hurting them. Even when nearly beaten, Pluton tries to sadistically murder a sidekick in front of Darkslug just to torture him. Utterly demented with no reason for his crimes beyond twisted enjoyment, Pluton set the standard for all later villains to measure up to in sheer, unadulterated wickedness.

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