In a world where kung fu beats all…
This is an advance review of Into the Badlands, which premieres Sunday, November 15 after The Walking Dead on AMC.
Created by Miles Millar and Alfred Gough (of Smallville fame), Into the Badlands presents AMC’s take on a mystic, dystopian future, where guns have been outlawed and martial arts and sword-fighting reign supreme. In the opening sequence we meet a great warrior named Sunny (Daniel Wu), whose motorcycle, sunglasses and leather duster all say, “Don’t mess with me. I’m a badass.” And badass he is. Within minutes, he confronts a group of violent bandits and makes quick work of them without even unsheathing his daishō. It’s a great way to start this series and show just how competent the action here will be. In addition to thrilling wire fu and stunts, Sunny’s fighting style is Tarantino levels of violent, with plenty of bone-snapping and bloodshed to go around.
We want to hear it.
Unfortunately, set pieces like this are few and far between. In fact, it’s about a half-hour later that Sunny finally pulls out his swords and goes to town on some real bad guys and proves what he’s really made of. So what goes on in between those two fights? Tedious world-building and exposition, mostly. It goes like this:
After a series of wars — which are conveniently “so long ago no one even remembers” — a group of feudal Barons restored order and offered protection in exchange for servitude. Now, they build armies of “Clippers” (the aforementioned badasses with dusters and motorcycles), who are taught from a very early age to obey their Baron masters. In Sunny’s case, the ruling Baron is Quinn (The Lord of the Rings’ Marton Csokas), a cartoonish patriarch who looks like he was transported from the antebellum South (and acts like it too). But Sunny’s convictions are tested when he meets a young boy named M.K. (Ender’s Game’s Aramis Knight), who is already on the run from another Baron called The Widow (Emily Beecham).
It’s all pretty basic stuff, complete with made-up factions, hierarchies and desensitized characters. Honestly, none of it is all that intriguing, even after we learn that M.K. is harboring mysterious “Chosen One” powers — because of course he is. Most of the other characters are bland and forgettable, save for Quinn, whose Amish cult leader guise borders on caricature. Daniel Wu brings some dimensionality to Sunny in the premiere, but even he remains stoic for most of the episode.
Marton Csokas as Quinn in Into the Badlands
The series also has some visual appeal, including colorful, large-scale sets and impressive visual effects work. That said, the overall style is a hodgepodge of different cultures and periods. Quinn’s estate looks like it was modeled after a Civil War-era plantation, while the cars and bikes look like they’re from the 1930s. Then there’s the Baron’s recruiting pit, which resembles a medieval training ground. That’s not to mention the clash between eastern and western styles, which feels like it’s going for the “Firefly/Serenity” aesthetic, but doesn’t quite pull it off — a phrase, I think, that applies to the rest of the show.
AMC’s Into the Badlands shows promise thanks to a handful of great set pieces and some general intrigue. Alas, its dystopian-future setting and typical world-building don’t really stand out from other genre fare, and the characterization is pretty weak. The series may still be worth checking out, however, if only for the impressive action scenes.
