In Dublin, Ireland, I'm watching in admiration as a very impressive martial arts battle is underway. No, a martial arts fight isn't happening on the streets of Ireland, but rather inside a soundstage, where Into the Badlands: Season 2 is filming another standout action scene, this one involving the ever-intimidating The Widow (Emily Beecham) – one of several key figures in the post-apocalyptic drama.
Take after take, those of us visiting the set watched the Widow battle through her beautiful home, more often than not with Beecham doing the moves herself (the day before included wire work we're told) - with a double stepping in only for some especially complicated moments.
When it comes to jumping into these fight scenes, Beecham remarked, “You adapt to it. You become confident with it and try and make it your own and play with it more. During the first season it was completely new experience so I was just trying to learn it as I went along. That was a massive challenge. It was really exciting. I’ve always wanted to do some action and fighting because I did a lot in my drama school many years ago. But it was quite amazing working with the Hong Kong team. This is Hong Kong style apparently - guerilla style. They don’t really choreograph it before.”
Beecham elaborated on the process, noting, “We had fitness training pre-shoot, but I don’t actually know what I’m going to do next shot, ever. So I walk onto the set and go ‘What am I doing?” and they’ll show us the sequence, sometimes in Chinese, and I try and do my best and we’ll have a couple rehearsals - then go for it full speed and try not to hurt anyone and work out where in the story it is so you’re in continuity with the drama. It’s a lot to think about, especially if they re-edit it. You don’t want it to not make sense so you have to keep your head on.”
Season 1 of Into the Badlands had a short six-episode run back in December 2015, and the show’s star and executive producer, Daniel Wu (“Sunny”), explained, “I almost look at Season 1 as the backstory or the extended pilot, where it sets up the world and this season we start to see the outlying territories and inside the Badlands. A lot of questions were raised in the first season and we added some elements like Nick [Frost] that adds levity to the show that helps compliment the martial arts and all the other stuff that happens. But this season, things are much more broken up and all the characters are spread out. Everyone’s got different storylines going on and it’s kind of a way to set up the climax of the end of the season. We’re all trying to get there and there’s a real journey this season and a real quest to make this happen.”
Wu is aware they raised the bar pretty high with the fight scenes in Season 1, but when it came to once more delivering in Season 2, he remarked, “I think having the same team from last season helped because we know what we did last season and what we can keep going toward this season. We try to make each fight slightly different. We had a good fight in the junkyard where we used a lot of parkour guys and did parkour integrated with martial arts. Then we did a classic Jackie Chan style fight with me and [Nick Frost] chained together fighting this one guy."
Wu admitted that in Season 1, "Sunny was kind of invincible. This season he puts up with a lot of adversity. Like he gets stuck chained to [Frost’s] Baije in a fight and how do you get through that? There’s another fight earlier where he’s a slave and he’s fighting with wooden stocks on. There are things that make it much more difficult for Sunny to kick ass and not as easy as last season.”
Executive producer Alfred Gough said the show moving production from New Orleans to Dublin was one of many ways they were expanding and changing things, saying that with Season 1, “It was six episodes for people to understand the world and the tone and the characters. There was a lot for people to understand. This season, with the move and with more episodes has allowed us to really expand the show and make it more of a journey show, which was always our intention. It was never supposed to be “stuck on a plantation” show. But you need to understand the world and that’s why at the end of Season 1, we sent Sunny in one direction and MK in the other direction and left the Badlands in kind of a mess.”
Said Wu, of Sunny, “There’s a real journey for him too because now you see him, last season he was a noble assassin and he hit rock bottom at the beginning of this season. He’s a slave. He’s never been in this position. You’ve never seen him in this position and he’s going to try to climb out of the trenches to reunite his family.”
As for the Widow, Beecham said, “She’s still driven by that same rhetoric that she was in the first season but things are advancing for her and she’s gaining more power and traction with her forces becoming stronger. People are starting to take her more seriously. So she’s trying to break that division between herself and Barons and cogs and clippers and trying to help people recognize that there could be a different and alternative future and system. “
Gough explained that with the show’s signature action scenes, “I think what we’re doing this year is the fight sequences are more intertwined with the storytelling,” saying he felt in Season 1 early on, it was more like the story paused for a fight.
“This season, it’s a lot more intertwined in the action and the story," he added. "You get to see a lot more people fight and you get to see a lot of different types of fights. Some are more comedic. You have Nick Frost and Sunny chained together. That’s going to be a funny fight Then you have MK who is in the monastery dealing with things in the Crouching Tiger sort of mode. With the Widow and Sunny, it’s a combination of Kill Bill mixed with The Raid. It’s a little faster. You’ll get to see the different styles of Martial arts fighting that we’re using.”
Wu noted that Into the Badlands is, “really a multi-cultural production. We’ve got Americans, Hong Kong Chinese people, stunt fighters from all over Europe... Bulgaria, Germany... That was the cool part of being an EP and assembling this team of people to pull it off. Back when we did last season it was all American in the states, so it wasn’t as multicultural feeling. This time there are a lot of different people and different cultures coming together. Everyone is excited. Especially the stuntmen, because they never get a chance to work on a martial arts drama. They do superhero things in London where they do a fall or get hit but they don’t get to do martial arts. And that’s what they got to do stunts for. So they’re really excited about it and having a good time. It’s cool assembling this group of people and making this Badlands team.”
Into the Badlands: Season 2 premieres Sunday, March 19th on AMC.
Eric Goldman is Executive Editor of IGN TV. You can follow him on Twitter at @TheEricGoldman, IGN at ericgoldman-ign and Facebook at http://ift.tt/LQFqjj.
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire