Into The Badlands First Fight Scene

[Venice Sassone]

Mostaction on TV isn't all that great. Truly great action, be it a grand battle or intimate fight scene, simply takes a tremendous amount of time to pull off amidst all the other demands of making a TV show. Instead, we often get serviceable action that, at best, steers the plot in interesting directions. These scenes aren't too big on highlighting an actor or stunt professional's technique or exceptional choreography, instead relying on editing and camera placement to sell their shootouts or fisticuffs. Other shows go the blowout route and plan one big fight or battle per season, doing everything they can to make sure this scene is all you'll want to talk about the week after you see it. Think Game of Thrones' "Battle of the Bastards" or Daredevil's very first hallway fight. AMC's Into the Badlands, which just returned for its second season on Sunday after two years away, is one of the few shows to try and put show-stopping fight scenes on every week, and it does an astonishingly good job of it.

However, one of the episode's most drastic change-ups happened when Nix (Ella-Rae Smith) decided to officially defect from Pilgrim's (Babou Ceesay) cause, turning her back on her former leader and his plan to take over the Badlands in favor of aligning herself with Sunny.

SYFY FANGRRLS had the chance to chat with Smith ahead of tonight's episode, where she offered a behind-the-scenes look at some of her character's big moments, talked about her love for filming those epic fight sequences, and teased how Nix's choice is going to impact the growing conflict on the horizon.

In this crazy made-up world. I've always found it really useful to relate it to the real world in terms of making sure the performance feels really truthful. I look at that whole journey as the moment you realize that your parents aren't these perfect angels, when you've realized that your parents are real people. Nix realizes that Pilgrim, who she's viewed as a father, is actually kind of evil. Not just that he has flaws, but maybe everything he believes in and everything she's been taught to believe in is wrong and is a bad thing and is the evil thing in this world. It's like a coming of age story, but Badlands style.

Generally, with fight stuff, I'm not a trained martial artist so it was my first experience holding a sword, being on Badlands. The wider shots, with those crazy spins and jumps, aren't me. The close-up ones, most times you can see my face, are very clever editing. I love doing the fight scenes because they're so different. I've never done anything like that before, and it's a completely different way of working. It's amazing to see all of these highly skilled martial artists doing their work. It's really something I never thought I would be doing, such a cool experience. It made me learn a lot about myself and about something I otherwise wasn't interested in.

Exactly. They're like this climax of these emotional stories. The climax is the fight and the fight tells a story, always. That's what I love. I love the end of that fight as well, when Sunny comes in. I don't think Sunny would want to hurt M.K. When Sunny and M.K. have their first fight, Sunny's a bit hesitant. No one really wants to hurt M.K., but he's just being such a dick to everyone. Sorry, I probably shouldn't say that.

Seriously. Other than Pilgrim, he is pissing everyone off. He has good reason to be in this state he's in, though. Every character's the way they are for valid reasons. M.K.'s been through a lot. It does make sense, but I know what side Nix is on and I'm on Nix's side.

At the start of the season, I don't think Nix would have stood up to Cressida in any way. She wouldn't have had the bravery to do that, but [now] she's decided she's done and she doesn't care at that point.

M.K. teaching Nix that she can activate her gift without hurting herself makes her more powerful. That's a powerful tool for her to use. We see her do that when she stops Pilgrim punching that acolyte. We see her use it for good. Knowing that she can control it is pretty major. Obviously, we've had stories of other characters where the gift has always been known as a bad thing, but she's realizing that this dark chi could actually be used for good, and she feels like she can redeem herself from all the bad things she's done because of it. She's killed a lot of people without really thinking about it, just because that's what she was told to do. She was part of a community that celebrated her for this defect she had, which is the gift. She realizes how much bad she's done and she can change that. She can rewrite her story and be good. That's why she helps Sunny, and that's why she's been so brave and stepped away from her old life and everything she's known because she wants to help and not hurt people anymore.

She's definitely made an enemy in Pilgrim and in M.K. I don't want to give away too much... Let's just say that she's made enemies, and because she's betrayed Pilgrim so strongly, she will become one of his biggest enemies. Plus, she's got inside information. She's been part of that community, she knows how he works. She is probably one of the biggest threats against him.

In Mic's TV club, senior arts writer Kevin O'Keeffe and arts writer Miles Surrey will watch an episode of a TV show with no regard to how familiar they are with it. After it airs, they dissect it in a conversation with another Mic staffer. This week's show: AMC's Into the Badlands, with guest Brent McCluskey.

Kevin O'Keeffe (KO): Ordinarily here at Mic TV Club, we watch an episode of a show that at least one of us has some familiarity with. But this week, we watched AMC's Into the Badlands, now on episode four of its second season. It's a show none of us have watched before, and it really is something else.

After watching this installment, I'm not sure I could tell you what happened? There are barons, and they seem to have control of different segments of the Badlands. One of them, the Widow, tries to make a power play but gets ousted by the others in a very dramatic vote involving lighting candles. She fights back with the help of her assassin daughter and an elderly man (her father?) in a wheelchair.

And yes, that's probably the best part of the episode we just watched, in part because I have no idea what was going on. It appears the Widow was sort of trying to broker peace with the other Barons, but on her own terms. However, once things went awry, she was more than happy to start slicing people up.

But my God, we need to talk about the elderly man in a wheelchair, none other than Stephen Lang, who people may recognize from Don't Breathe and Avatar. He killed so many people while sitting in his wheelchair, it's easily the most impressive part of that episode. That, and the guy who shouted "Chaos!" when a soldier asked what was for dinner.

Brent McCluskey (BM): Yeah. Jumping into episode four of the second season blind was interesting to say the least. But after seeing some of the recent trailers and a compilation of fight scenes from the show AMC had thrown together, I knew it was something I wanted to check out, and I wasn't disappointed.

And to add to what Miles said about Waldo: Yes, he is indeed completely badass. Not only does he have a well of woke wisdom, he can more than hold his own in battle. I never knew a simple chain could be so deadly, or that it could cause so much blood for that matter.

That said, I kind of can't get what this show wants to be. Does it aim for that cheesiness, or just walk into it by accident? Does it want to be Game of Thrones? It feels like it wants to be Game of Thrones, which is a lofty goal. I admire a lot about it, and think the fight scene, plus the "Chaos!" moment Miles mentioned, were close to brilliant in their own, lowbrow way. (And anyone who's read my appreciation of Vanderpump Rules knows I love lowbrow.) But I think, were AMC going to try to sell this to me as a prestige series, I would ask for a refund.

BM: What did you guys think of that final hedge chase scene with Quinn and his treacherous son? Was it me, or was it totally reminiscent of The Shining? The Shining with a hint of The Young Pope. I kept waiting for a kangaroo to pop around the corner.

BM: Sure. That hedge garden scene, or at least the essence of the conflict between Quinn and his son could have easily been a standalone episode. Again, I've only seen episode four, but that father-son reunion/murder felt a little rushed.

KO: Would you guys go back Into the Badlands? I think I'd rather keep up with the show by watching clips of its fight scenes than anything else. The story seems pretty shallow, not to mention tremendously difficult to follow. I'm not even sure watching the whole series so far would make the plot more sensical to me.

MS: I do think I'd probably stick to clips. AMC does release a clip or two of the show once a week (usually, the big fight scene) and that's usually been enough to hold me over. But really, I do want to commend Into the Badlands for clearly putting in a lot of effort into its sprawling fight scenes.

The series is set somewhere in the Midwest, years from now, after a war has devastated the nation. The territory has been divided up and conquered by seven feuding overlords, and because guns are banned, sword-wielding fighters called "clippers" enforce their rule. Sunny, one of the most dangerous clippers in all of the Badlands, serves as a mercenary to Baron Quinn (Marton Csokas), and he's training a young boy named M.K. (Aramis Knight) to become a fighter like himself. Yes, he's a deadly yet noble warrior, but halfway through the AMC limited series, there's not much else to Sunny's character.

Even Sunny's origin story is vague in a way that makes it seem like the writers failed to develop him beyond the silent, seemingly cool and collected fighter. "This man standing here is a far cry from the miserable whelp I laid eyes on all those years ago," Quinn says in the first episode, noting that he found Sunny as an abandoned child with "no parents, no name, no past." Impressed that Sunny managed to survive on his own, Quinn took him in and forged him into a warrior. Maybe there's more backstory to come in future episodes. But for now, it feels like a cop-out. Why doesn't Sunny have an epic origin story like his white action hero predecessors? He's reduced to a mental shortcut.

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