Click here for INTO THE BADLANDS Season 3: Arming the Badlands Part 1 – Octopus Nunchuks

 

In February 2019, AMC announced that the remainder of Season 3 of INTO THE BADLANDS would be the final eight episodes. Sadly, this banner martial arts TV show has been cancelled. A grassroots campaign has sprung up amongst the Badlands fanbase - #SaveTheBadlands. Fans hope that some other network like Netflix or Amazon Prime might pick up the series since this sort of redemption has happened with a few other cancelled shows in recent years. Fingers, and swords, crossed.

Whatever the fate of the Badlands might be, the scope of the show remains truly epic. I still have a few articles remaining from when AMC brought me to Dublin Ireland for a set visit. The production values of INTO THE BADLANDS were lavish and it shows in every episode. Here’s a small sample of the level of production that goes on behind-the-scenes for a show like this.

Season 3 of INTO THE BADLANDS heralded the return of Nathaniel Moon, the Clipper with a thousand kills. Sherman Augustus reprises his role from Season 2: Episode 3 "Red Sun, Silver Moon," in which Sunny [Daniel Wu] reluctantly faced Moon in a duel of Clipper honor, only to win by some sideline cheating from Bajie [Nick Frost]. The bout ends poorly for Moon, who loses his sword hand in the match. But amputation never keeps a good warrior down. Reminiscent of Mr. Han from ENTER THE DRAGON (1973), Moon gets a replacement prosthetic, one that's more lethal than before.

Creating Moon's new hand presented a special challenge to the prop and weapon makers for INTO THE BADLANDS. We had the opportunity to chat with Daniel O’Flaherty, the Weapon/Action Prop Coordinator and Mark Maher, the Lead Model Maker for INTO THE BADLANDS, who took us behind-the-scenes for a peek at this painstaking creative process.

"So Moon’s back and he becomes the Widow’s regent," explains O’Flaherty, to bring anyone up to speed who has yet to start binging Season 3. "Now when we first see him, after his hand had been cut off in Season 2, he has a crude arm, which is something he made himself. We call it the ‘crude arm’. This is what he had. [O'Flaherty presents a crude hook.] It attaches on to make it a weapon. There’s a really epic fight in the beginning of Season 3 [Episode 1 "Enter the Phoenix"] where the Widow [Emily Beecham] tries to enlist Moon as her regent and they end up fighting. There’s a big fight around a round tower. It’s going to look really good when it’s finished in the show. So that was what he had on at the time.

"When she enlists him as a regent, she got her own armorer to make him all the gear. This is what we’re going to see for the rest of the show. [O’Flaherty presents Moon's new hand.] That being the wearable part, because he wears it on his forearm. And this being the mechanical hand that he has. And this has various attachments so when he closes his fingers, there’s a sword that pops out and when he closes his fist, we have an extendable sword that comes out. And also got darts and a lot of hidden bits and pieces in the hand. This is going to be interesting for the audience in the next season."

According to O’Flaherty, the prop department made several versions of Moon's hand, not only for development but for close-up shots and, of course, for combat. "That one we’ll say is the one we’ll say is more photographed. And we’ve got versions that he can wear, that go onto his own hand because we weren’t allowed to actually cut off his right hand, unfortunately."

 

Hand Print

Modern technology brings digital 3D printing into prop creation. While this might seem quicker than sculpting pieces by hand, there's still a lot of fine programming and detailed craftsmanship behind digital media. Creating quality props remains a time-consuming meticulous process. "We make all the weapons and the set deck props," explains Maher. "So it did take us quite an amount of time to get that going – about 2 or 3 days total printing time. It went through a good bit of changes as well, that one. We were very tired by the end of it. But we have this piece here. [Maher displays another detailed hand prop.] There’s a lot of inner clockworks going on so that’s why we have the green screen here, so the visual effects would take over. So when we made it, we made it to fit his hand in three sections, this part here, here and here, so separate thumbs, fingers, and separate pieces here. And then the gauntlets would be separate from that as well. But yeah, we went through quite a bit of changes on this. It was all just hand-sculpted and then we digitally printed a lot and then we sculpted and touched it up and that kind of stuff and then did a nice prosthetic finish on it as well.

"These were used quite a bit. Just to save on visual effects, we had a sword inside [Maher triggers a switchblade-like extendible blade] come out like this – that cracks in and out. And then he had another sword here that would shoot out through his palm. And then the darts. So we had dart mines, here, here, here. So we were working really close with the visual effects people as well, just to make sure that everything was smooth for them as well, especially when we’re handing something over. So here, this section here was going to be green-screened as well and they can do all their changes there and here. So we do a huge amount of variations. We had soft gloves for the stunt guys. When it was made, we digitally scanned Sherman’s hand in L.A. That was sent over to us here and then we started the process, so it only ever really fits Sherman and we had to adapt it for the stunt guys."

"See, this gives the stuntman on set his frame and a safe hand for punching or anything when it comes to fights," adds O’Flaherty.

"We can’t have a super close-up on that because it’s rubber," continues Maher. "It has to move. A hard resin one are more like this, you know. [Shows yet another hand.] The hard resin ones have more of a finish but not much movement in them. Which is good because he doesn’t have a hand. He’s not meant to have a hand. So we went through a couple of things, and then that gauntlet there as well, moving forward as well. Any of the designs we did for this, we were also thinking of future things. Some bits and pieces maybe can pop out from different sections as well, in the future. When we were designing, we had that choice. That’s the gauntlet that goes over it. It goes over his hand but it probably won’t fit Danny [Wu]. Again, it’s just made for really Sherman. It fits around his arm."

As O’Flaherty points out, "The challenge was making the finished hand small enough. You didn’t want it to look like a glove." The prop had to be thin yet tough. Maher describes the issues. "We didn’t want that clunky look as well. Miles [Miller, one of the show's creators] was after that kind of sleek finish that you have in the hand there. He didn’t want chunky fingers. It’d be a real giveaway if this hand was really thick – you’d know it was a glove. So that was our challenge to make sure it was millimeter perfect for that, yeah? It’s only 2 mil. We had to make sure we had the right rubber because sometimes on set, even if you move like that, it’ll tear. So we did a lot of little scientist little things going on in the back room with all the different chemical mixing. It worked out in the end."

Augustus is delighted to return to the role of Moon and Moon's new hand adds more dimension to his character, as well as with what he can do in the fight scenes. "The hand has taken on a whole bunch of different variations," explains Augustus, clearly tickled with his new toy. "Right now, the hand shoots two darts. It has a short sword and a dagger. It's bananas. You'll love it. It has a gauntlet attached to it. So basically, I love what it can do. I use it a lot as a blocking tool. You know, block, strike, hit somebody. And it's something to behold. I like it. It looks beautiful. We have different variations of it. So the first couple of variations I was hiding the hand because they were saying, 'Listen, the hand was coming." The 3D printer that was making it wasn't finished yet. But I like it. It looks beautiful and it has a very regal slash King Arthur-y kind of like thing to it. With the show being a cross – I look at the show being a cross – a Kurosawa film slash a western, with a little steampunk. So I like everything that they're doing. It has a lot of stuff in there so it's cool. I like the hand."

 

Making More Weapons for Season 3

Just as Season 2 raised the bar on INTO THE BADLANDS, Season 3 leveled up too. This means a lot more work for O'Flaherty, Maher and their team. "So that was Moon, a big character, a lot of props between his swords, his hand, so the challenge of making that stuff," remarks O'Flaherty. "The first time we see Sunny, he’s walking with a papoose with Henry in the back. He’s carrying the bow, and we do see him hunting with the bow. [Season 3: Episode 1 “Enter the Phoenix”] So this is the first bow that we see him with. Later on in the show, after he loses this one, he carves his own bow for another episode. It’s just something we added this year because it’s very much so been about swords, so we added the bow. They don’t play an awful lot, and of course he’s got swords. He’s got staffs. We’ve made everything for him this year."

Earlier, Daniel Wu had commented on his new diverse arsenal for Season 3. "We’re trying to make it fun and exciting and different, you know, instead of just swords all the time. In fact, Sunny got rid of his swords this season so he’s got different kinds of weapons – staff, barehanded fighting, and all that kind of stuff."

"We have a studio here on site as well so we're just around the corner here," boasts O'Flaherty. "We have a massive studio ten times the size of here where we put the weapons up and this kind of crazy stuff. You know anything is fight safe as well. Yeah, there's a good team of us down there."

"Crazy kinds of weapons," adds Maher. "We do all the dummies, the dead bodies, and the baby, and the T-Rex. You’d have seen the T-Rex – we do all that kind of stuff as well, yeah."

O'Flaherty corroborates. "It’s definitely gone up for us for weapon-making this year. Last year was hard enough with a lot of weapons. Maybe we put out a hundred-and-twenty last year in total. This year it’s gone up to maybe six, seven hundred weapons and swords. It’s more than GAME OF THRONES that we put out. So it’s been a real challenge this year, but we’re getting a lot of stuff out, you know, designs are changing, introducing characters."

"We made a couple of hundred for the battle scene alone," says Maher.

"Yeah, yeah. Like even today alone, there’s thirty more weapons coming out of the workshop for tomorrow morning," says O'Flaherty with a grin.