When I gotta tell y'all I need to yap my indigenous ass off about one particular scene in Predator Badlands that fucking BROKE ME and CONTINUES TO BREAK ME the more I remember it. (and I ain't putting this under a break cause the movies have been out for a month sorry y'all) Holy fuck, the actual pain I feel when Dek returns to his brothers' crashed ship and finds it RANSACKED. That was his HOME, probably more so than any domicile that Njohrr allowed him to stay in. Seeing items from his home, his culture, what connected him to his brother either gone or scattered on the floor like they didn't matter. The deep breaths he takes? The building anxiety as he tries to recognize the ship and everything that's been tossed over??? Tessa, an entity of a corporate takeover, STEALING from his culture and his family, modifying it for herself, practically colonizing what is rightfully his and his brothers. Dek coming in at the very end after stabbing her to take back what WAS Kwei's plasmacaster to go: "That doesn't belong to you." The Yautja to me have always been indigenous coded, but holy FUCK was this both such a real, painful, but blissful experience. You have to watch Dek go through the same struggle so many of us have, your home, your culture, sacred items ripped away for someone else's profit and advancement, but seeing him GET TO TAKE IT ALL BACK??? FUCK YES BABY BOY.
And don’t forget about the crumbling Amengi statues seen at the beginning of the film. Both Dan Trachtenberg and Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi interpret the Yautja as a colonised people, or an allegory for victims of colonialism, and characterise the Yautja accordingly. Colonialism is clearly a subtextual theme of Badlands, as well as the importance of community in the face of adversity. The Predators were oppressed before and they’ll die before they let it happen again.
