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Theme: Hostile Culture

I’ve talked before about how the Predator - or Yautja - culture is one of supremacy and treating all other lifeforms as expendable content farms. Their honor culture is inherently hypocritical as they go after less advanced species or innocent wildlife with their highly advanced technology, the equivalent of finding honor in hunting a lion with an armored jeep and minigun. And if you happen to be of the superhuman skill to kill or cripple a Yautja, their MO is to literally blow themselves up out of spite (with Jungle Hunter literally cackling and City Hunter doing so despite not even being close to death, just pissed at being foiled).

As the tagline of Prey said, the Comanche hunt to live, while the Yautja live to hunt. The sanctity of life means nothing to their culture beyond their personal glory in ending said life. Badlands even opens up with this charming quote from the Yautja Codex:

Yautja are prey to none. Friend to none. Predator to all.

Which makes Dek - the protagonist Predator - journey in Badland’s so fascinating.

Because he is a victim of the Yautja culture and the revelation that they practice eugenics: Dek, as being a malformed member of their species, is decried as worthless and not even honorable to hunt, his own father declaring that he deserved to be killed in his sleep. 

They cull the “genetically inferior” from their rank and file, in the name of preserving their “strength”.

And not just Dek, but Dek’s own elder brother is a victim of this culture; Kwei is passionate about Dek learning to be his own man, admonishing him for trying to fight like his father, and goes on a speech about how he will always respect Dek for saving his life as a child. When Dek chooses to hunt the Kalisk, Kwei almost refuses him because it would be a death sentence, before respecting Dek’s choice. 

And sadly, when ordered by his father to kill Dek - after failing to convince him that Dek deserves the chance to hunt - Kwei ultimately rejects part of his culture in favor of rescuing Dek and telling him to “Bring it home” while being killed by his own father. 

It’s a dark counterpart to Taabe telling Naru to “bring it home” before being killed by the Feral Predator (which can be its own post about how different the context of these deaths are from each other), but lets stick to the theme of Yautja culture.

Throughout his journey to hunt the Kallisk, much of Dek’s views are challenged not only by the environment (that quite literally EATS most of his Predator tech), but by the inclusion of Thia and Bud.

Thia is a damaged Weyland Yutani Synth, one specifically built to be more sensitive and curious to better engage with the hostile ecosystem of Genna. Where Dek is a stoic, arrogant, and cold fighter, Thia is jovial, curious, and more cautious about the risks they take. They soon meet Bud, an alien infant that marks them as one of its pack, and follows them on their journey.

Without going over the movie in too much detail, Dek eventually learns to appreciate Thia and Bud, particularly after Thia gets him to open up about his brothers death, how the Yautja culture has left him isolated, and when Thia risks her own life to rescue Dek by going against her own culture.

By the end of the film, Dek defeats his father and rejects his clan, instead choosing to start his own with Thia and Bud, focused more on having members that support each other rather than the eugenics and betrayal from before.

I would, however, note that Dek DOES NOT reject Yautja culture. He still believes in the hunt; not once in the entire movie does he ever have a moral issue with the idea of hunting other species for sport, sentient or not. He is still a Predator, someone who believes in the supremacy of the hunters and how all species are game for a trophy. Its just that he took a step forward in claiming that certain individuals are his peers; Thia and Bud in particular.

It’s a stark contrast to someone who wholeheartedly abandoned her culture: Thia.

As mentioned before, Thia is a Weyland-Yutani synth, built for the sole goal of understanding and manipulating the animal life on Genna for the purposes of biological weapons. Where the Yautja could be seen as rich supremacist fox hunters, Weyland-Yutani are full blown colonizers, taking ‘building better worlds’ to whole new extremes, and the addendum of “better worlds for WY” attached in the fine print.

While both cultures see everyone else as exposable and dehumanizes their victims - and both cultures have used humans as slaves for entertainment and labor - Badlands focuses much more heavily on the scale of how Weyland Yutani covets complete control over the universe, where the Yautja already assume they are the elite of the elite.

It is fitting that Weyland Yutani vulture esque craving to pick at dead alien ships, hostile planets, and scavenged yautja technology means that when we first meet Thia she is at the mercy of a Vulture on Genna. Said Vulture is not directly harming Thia, but it is keeping her isolated from the world she loves and the sister she wishes to protect, using her merely as a tool to create a larger nest.

Much like how Dek’s intervention allows Thia the power to free herself and kill that Vulture, so too does her interactions with Dek allow her to see what harm Weyland Yutani has done to Genna and the casual cruelty of its servants. Tessa, Thia’s twin synth sister, is the opposite of Kwei - where Kwei rejected his father and his culture in order to save his brother, Tessa rejects the familiarity of Thia in favor of remaining in power at Weyland Yutani, and proceeds to sentence Thia to being deprogrammed.

I’ve lambasted the supposed ‘honor’ that the Yautja culture has as being thin-skinned at best; you have the same amount of honor hunting whales with a submarine. But that facade of honor that they BELIEVE in? That allows for people like Kwei to rationalize doing “good” acts. Yes, he loved his brother, but it was his father acting dishonorably and ignoring the rites of their ritual hunt that galvanized Kwei into being able to act against him in the first place. And he still told Dek to complete his hunt for his honor, even in death.

Weyland Yutani has no honor amongst its ranks, facade or no. Yes, they try to paint a pretty corporate picture of professionalism and ‘building better worlds’ for the people of Earth, but it has and will always be about profit and control. They are vultures that want their nest to encompass the universe, and their agents like Tessa are fully aware of that. Even Thia was aware, hiding her true nature from Dek, out of shame for manipulating him.

In many ways, Thia’s break away from her culture was more powerful than Dek’s. She didn’t find a loophole in the code of WY, but rather grew as a person who experienced love for life itself, self-loathing at being a traitor to someone she saw as a friend, and the hurt at realizing her sister didn’t love her.

She doesn’t return to Weyland Yutani but cuts away completely for moral reasons, planning on living a life of total isolation, which makes that emotional moment of realizing that Dek came back to save her all the more powerful.

Theme: Corrupted Parenting

Parents play a massive role in this story and at least half of it is because they are pretty fucking evil. It’s how they are evil that is fascinating however!

Njohrr (EN-yor) and MUTHER play the parental roles for Dek & Kwei and Thia & Tessa respectively, and are both monstrous in entirely different ways. Mostly at least.

They broadly share an uncaring attitude towards the sanctity of life and of their own children, sure, but its the scale and methodology that makes the distinction.

Njohrr can best be described as Darth Vader without any positive qualities. He is a Clan Head and rules over the lesser Yautja, participates in eugenics, and has no problem murdering his eldest son for daring to go against his wishes. And it is not a quick death either; Njohrr takes great pleasure in slowly dismembering, impaling, and beheading Kwei all so that Dek can see his brother die agonizingly in front of him.

He is malicious, cruel, and downright evil.

MUTHER is none of that because MUTHER is not a person. She is a mere program, an answering machine with pretty aesthetics, serving as the interface for the wider Weyland Yutani corporation. She is cold, heartless, utterly inhuman. She is the hanging sword of damocles over Thia and Tessa’s necks, making it clear that their failure would mean the company is displeased, and when the company is displeased, then decommissioning and deprogramming will occur. 

While I talked about how Kwei and Tess differed before, this goes to show in another sense: Kwei stands his ground for Dek. Tessa - who is just as emotional and sensitive as Thia is - has her questions about Thia’s safety brushed aside until she states her mission success rate, and MUTHER makes it clear that both sisters will be disposed of if they do not excel.

Yes, Tessa chose to accept her role as an agent of colonization and corporate evil. But its with the shadow of that colonizing power hanging over her head. In her mind, its best to lick the boot in the hopes of one day wearing that boot over another person’s neck.

If Njohrr is Darth Vader, then MUTHER is the bureaucracy of the Imperium of Man given a fancy logo and smooth voice. Is it more evil for a parent to be inhumanly cruel or inhumanly disinterested?

They stand juxtaposed to the Kalisk mother, and Dek and Thia themselves, over the parenthood of Bud. The Kalisk mother is the purity of parenthood; her existence is for the protection, care, and nurturing of her child. She is tender and kind not just towards Bud, but toward Dek and Thia when they rescue her. She doesn’t care about honor or percentages; only doing her best for her child.

Dek and Thia adopting the orphaned Bud takes on a new light as well. Dek refuses to abandon Bud, once he realizes how alone Bud is and Thia finds an outlet for her desire to protect Genna wildlife and appreciate its growth through Bud. All of them find a means of respecting each other and appreciating what they have to offer as a clan, tossing away the pressures and punishments in favor of carrying on for a better life.

Of course, that better life is under the shadow of Yautja hunting culture. It may not be long before we have Dek, Thia, and Bud hunting the next protagonist trying to innocently exist.