Into The Badlands is an AMC original show set sometime in the near future where guns are a thing of the past and people in the world survive on brutality, loyalty and martial arts. Season 1 of the show is only 6 episodes long but each one packs a punch with plenty of action and story development. The Into The Badlands Blu-ray was given excellent packaging and bonus content collected onto a two-disc set.
Into The Badlands bonus content highlights:
Inside Into The Badlands features sit down interviews with the cast and filmmakers detailing season one storyline and character development mixed with clips from the show. These segments are short and feel like something that would play out as promo clips on the AMC TV station.
Anatomy of a Fight segments break down each episode’s fighting scenes with candid interviews and behind the scenes martial arts choreography.
Building The Worlds of Into The Badlands is a featurette on conceptualizing the look and feel of the show. It also shows production designers building sets and talking about their experiences on set. This segment features tons of behind the scenes footage and the art directors discuss how the show is ‘steampunk’ but we didn’t see that translated onto screen visually.
Some additional bonus content have an introduction to each character from the show for those who aren’t already familiar but doesn’t add much if you are purchasing this after watching the first season of Into The Badlands. Another bunch of segments contain ‘fight camp’ which showed a training facility in New Orleans and was extremely compelling to see the Martial Artists from Honk Kong working with the show’s cast. These segments showcased much of the hard work the stunt men (and women) go through behind the scenes.
Into The Badlands is an entertaining show and reminds us a bit of Mad Max Fury Road but with less extreme circumstances. It’s always refreshing to see stylized martial arts done well on TV or in movies and a bonus to have Asian talent in front of the camera as well as behind. If we had any complaints about Into The Badlands it would be that the dialogue scenes don’t hold the same energy and excitement as the fighting moments.