By Published Apr 27, 2026, 6:31 PM EDT Cathal Gunning has been writing about movies, television, culture, and politics online and in print since 2017. He worked as a Senior Editor in Adbusters Media Foundation from 2018-2019 and wrote for WhatCulture in early 2026. He has been a Senior Features Writer for ScreenRant since 2026. Summary Generate a summary of this story follow Follow followed Followed Like Like Log in Here is a fact-based summary of the story contents: Try something different: Show me the facts Explain it like I’m 5 Give me a lighthearted recap
has helped to bring martial arts dramas back to the mainstream, and one of their most underrated shows was a big part of this. The martial arts movie has been through a lengthy history as various trends came and went throughout the decades in Hollywood. In the early ‘70s, the carved out a niche for cult fans, allowing stars like Jackie Chan and Jet Li to become major stars in the decades that followed.
Meanwhile, the success of The Karate Kid made martial arts movies a mainstream commodity in the American multiplex, and stars like Jean-Claude Van Damme, Chuck Norris, and Steven Seagal quickly filled this void with a string of thrillers that ranged from classics to forgettable direct-to-video efforts. Martial arts movies then waned in popularity during the ‘90s, before enjoying another boom after the success of The Matrix trilogy. Soon after, the wire-fu of Hero and House of a Thousand Daggers briefly captivated viewers, before a more brutal flavor of martial arts brought the genre back around a decade later.
Martial arts movies then went dormant again until Tony Jaa’s brutal brilliance in spawned The Raid series, which in turn influenced everything from the John Wick franchise to Bullet Train, to Atomic Blonde, the Nobody movies, and Pretty Lethal. On the small screen, , and the same streaming service’s later South Korean masterpiece went on to prove that this formula remains unstoppable, especially when applied in a fresh, exciting new way.
Weak Hero Is One of Netflix’s Best Martial Arts Shows
First debuting to stellar reviews in 2026, Weak Hero is based on the webtoon of the same name by Kim Jin-seok and Seopass. The show follows Park Ji-Hoon’s Yeon Si-eu, a studious young pupil who is intellectually adept but physically weak. Despite his limitations as a fighter, Yeon Si-eu manages to hold his own against his school’s brutally violent bullies with quick thinking, situational awareness, and canny manipulation.
A clever spin on the Sherlock Holmes archetype, is unlike any classic martial arts protagonist. Where the likes of The Karate Kid’s Daniel LaRusso learned martial arts to beat their bullies, Yeon Si-eu never magically becomes a black belt overnight through the help of a convenient training montage. This ironically makes Weak Hero a stronger martial arts show, as the series is thoroughly unpredictable. In almost every earlier entry into the genre, the main appeal is seeing the hero kicking some villain ass.
Weak Hero Proves Netflix Is Bringing Back The Martial Arts Genre
In Weak Hero, watching Yeon Si-eu talk and think his way out of fights, outwitting his enemies every time, proves more interesting. His burgeoning friendships with classmates Su-ho and Beom-seok make his story even more unpredictable, but viewers expecting a series like should modulate their hopes. In contrast, Weak Hero is thrilling precisely because the series refuses to abandon its original compelling premise, proving Yeon Si-eu is a truly enthralling hero thanks to his intellect instead of turning him into an unlikely action hero for the sake of narrative convenience.
To be fair, the show’s fight choreography is still impressive, and Weak Hero undoubtedly works as a traditional dark school drama. However, it is the show’s balance of an intense bullying story with an unlikely hero whose approach to conflict is thoroughly unconventional that makes the series sing. Viewers who go into Weak Hero expecting a standard martial arts drama will be disappointed, but anyone else will be thrilled to see a show that takes the building blocks of the classic genre and turns them into something authentically fresh and unpredictable for a new generation of viewers.
Cast
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Park Ji-hoon Gray Yeon - Choi Hyun-wook Ahn Soo-ho
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