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Daniel Wu's character will present a new image of Asian American males to America's TV viewers.
I'M KIND of excited to see the upcoming television series Into The Badlands starring Asian/American Daniel Wu.
Wu was born in Berkeley, California. His acting career took off in Hong Kong where he found plenty of work as an actor, director, producer and scholar in the Chinese martial arts discipline of wushu.
In the bustling Hong Kong movie industry, he has been featured in more than 60 films and won the Hong Kong prize as Best Director for his 2006 feature, The Heavenly Kings, his directorial debut.
Into The Badlands is loosely based on the Chinese tale Journey to the West: a warrior travels through a land ruled by feudal warlords except the story has been transferred to a dystopian landscape of a post-apocalypse America. The environment is similar to that period in feudal Japan when there were a host of masterless samurai, or ronin, selling their swords to local warlords or shoguns.
The trailer below generated a lot of buzz at the recent ComicCon held in San Diego earlier this summer.
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Like many new action-oriented shows, Badlands' trademark will be the fight scenes using the martial arts skills Wu developed in his Hong Kong career. Martial arts works because in the world of Badlands, guns are banned, hence swords, kicks and punches become the weapons of choice.
Because there is an emphasis on fight scenes, the producers have brought over Master Dee Dee as the show's martial arts coordinator. He is well known in the Hong Kong movie industry for his choreographed fights. Actors in Badlands must undergo rigorous training to survive the fight scenes and to make them look realistic. See the video above.
Wu was able to convince his friend, Vietnamese American Cung Le, into joining the cast of Badlands. Le, out of San Jose gained fame in the fighting circles using his martial arts skills. I'm not sure if Le will be a good guy or a bad guy.
Wu's debut on American television makes him the first Asian/American male to be the main lead in a TV action series since ... well ... Dean Cain as Superman in Lois and Clark. which had a five-season run, 1993-1997, on ABC. However, in that case, Cain, who was born Dean George Tanaka, wasn't portraying an Asian. He was playing an undocumented alien from the planet Krypton.
Apologies to all the other Asian/American actors who are currently on TV in comedic or secondary roles, your "representation" is much appreciated; but its been a long time since an Asian/American played a genuinely heroic lead character.
Into the Badlands was picked up by AMC but that network must be hedging its bets since they only contracted for six episodes. So, be sure to tell your friends to watch it when it debuts in November.
Based on the behind-the-scenes clip of the actors training for their fight scenes, the action is going to be spectacular - on par with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
I only hope that as much attention was spent on the writing as was given to the fight scenes. The question in my mind: will the hero get the girl; or will he be one of those one-dimensional fighting dudes that (mostly) white writers like to create for non-threatening Asian men?
On this front there is some hope. Wu said no matter how good the martial arts are, the key is to have a good, compelling story: “We wanted the storyline to be as good, if not better, than the action scenes.”
Because there is an emphasis on fight scenes, the producers have brought over Master Dee Dee as the show's martial arts coordinator. He is well known in the Hong Kong movie industry for his choreographed fights. Actors in Badlands must undergo rigorous training to survive the fight scenes and to make them look realistic. See the video above.
Wu was able to convince his friend, Vietnamese American Cung Le, into joining the cast of Badlands. Le, out of San Jose gained fame in the fighting circles using his martial arts skills. I'm not sure if Le will be a good guy or a bad guy.
Wu's debut on American television makes him the first Asian/American male to be the main lead in a TV action series since ... well ... Dean Cain as Superman in Lois and Clark. which had a five-season run, 1993-1997, on ABC. However, in that case, Cain, who was born Dean George Tanaka, wasn't portraying an Asian. He was playing an undocumented alien from the planet Krypton.
Apologies to all the other Asian/American actors who are currently on TV in comedic or secondary roles, your "representation" is much appreciated; but its been a long time since an Asian/American played a genuinely heroic lead character.
Into the Badlands was picked up by AMC but that network must be hedging its bets since they only contracted for six episodes. So, be sure to tell your friends to watch it when it debuts in November.
Based on the behind-the-scenes clip of the actors training for their fight scenes, the action is going to be spectacular - on par with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
I only hope that as much attention was spent on the writing as was given to the fight scenes. The question in my mind: will the hero get the girl; or will he be one of those one-dimensional fighting dudes that (mostly) white writers like to create for non-threatening Asian men?
On this front there is some hope. Wu said no matter how good the martial arts are, the key is to have a good, compelling story: “We wanted the storyline to be as good, if not better, than the action scenes.”
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