Into the Badlands is a very cool-looking show that nonetheless begs the question: if a program bills itself as a “martial arts show,” just how seriously are we supposed to take it? The answer – hopefully – is “not very,” because brilliant aesthetic choices aside, Into the Badlands gets off to a rough start with its first episode “The Fort.” To be fair, the deck was stacked against the show, which would probably get a better reception if it aired on, say, USA. No shit, now that Mr. Robot is gone until 2016, Into the Badlands would be hands-down the best show on USA. But it has the dubious fortune of being on AMC, which has produced four of the best pilot episodes I’ve ever seen: Breaking Bad‘s “Pilot,” The Walking Dead‘s “Days Gone By,” Mad Men‘s “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” and Better Call Saul‘s “Uno.” At the end of the day, I don’t see “The Fort” joining that rarefied company, but if Halt and Catch Fire‘s stellar second season taught me anything, it’s that sometimes AMC shows need time to grow.
Into the Badlands – great title, gotta give em that – takes place at some unspecified time in the future, where technology has backslid to the point that people carry swords and are chaffeured around in what looked to be an old Packard. The Badlands are ruled by six barons, who employ ruthless killers called Clippers. The best of these is our hero, Sunny (Daniel Wu, who fights better than he emotes). The mythology is cool, if not very well-explained thus far, but this show has been on the air for all of forty-three minutes, so I’m not going to ding “The Fort” for that.
Sunny saves the life of a young boy named M.K. (Aramis Knight) and takes him back to the titular fort, which is ruled by Quinn, Sunny’s Baron. Quinn gets a good introduction, and is ably played by Martin Csokas, a solid character actor who is unfortunately best known, even now, for being the bad guy in xXx. Quinn’s strange regional accent is a nice contrast to everyone around him, and it helps remove Into the Badlands from any particular geographic location. Unfortunately, it’s upon M.K.’s arrival at the fort that the episode veers into well-trod YA territory.
Maybe it’s me, but when I see a bunch of boys living in a grassy area surrounded by high walls, I immediately think The Maze Runner. The comparisons don’t stop there. Sunny becomes a version of The Hunger Games’ Haymitch to M.K. – he’s gruff but he has a good heart. Another boy, Ajax, is your standard issue YA sociopath, in the vein of Ender’s Game‘s Bonzo Madrid. Not to mention, M.K. has a special power activated by bleeding, which is firmly of a piece with “supposedly unassuming boy/girl ends up having special powers and being the chosen one” trope that fuels the entire YA industry. Anytime M.K. is on screen, Into the Badlands feels like a young adult story told from a supporting character’s point of view, like rewriting Harry Potter but having Hagrid as a narrator.
At the end of the day, the supernatural element was introduced way too early, which is kind of a problem that “The Fort” has in spades. Things move too quickly for them to be effective; we don’t know these characters, and thus have no emotional investment in any revelations. For instance, Sunny’s paramour Veil is pregnant – yawn. We’ve known her for five minutes. Her teaching Sunny to read was a much more powerful scene than was Sunny demanding she abort the child because, I surmise, Clippers can’t be parents. Ditto for Quinn’s polygamous relationship: we barely know his wife, so we don’t know or care how this affects her.
But this is a martial arts show, so let’s talk about the fights, which ultimately will make or break Into the Badlands. The fights are pretty damn good, thankfully. Director David Dobkin (who directed similar action vehicles like Wedding Crashers and Fred Claus) handles the fight scenes well, and it’s during combat that Into the Badlands takes on a more cinematic quality. But even the fights fall apart under scrutiny – compare the heavily choreographed fights here to the combat on Daredevil, where everything was visceral and bloody. There’s very little sense of peril watching Sunny fight; the show got around that early on, by establishing him as the deadliest Clipper in the Badlands, but that doesn’t change the fact.
A Few Thoughts
- Those tally marks on Sunny’s back were kind of a cliche, no? You know who else keeps marks himself every time he kills someone? Victor Zsasz on Gotham. You know what’s not a good show? Gotham. Be careful of the company you keep, Into the Badlands
- Speaking of cliche: in case we needed more sociopaths with daddy issues on TV, everybody welcome Ryder Quinn!
- I dig the Widow. Looking forward to seeing more of her as a villain
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