Movie Substrate · Film
The Bad Batch (2017)
★ 5.3 · 1,160 ratings on TMDB
Don’t play with your food.
After being exiled to a fenced-off wasteland, Arlen is kidnapped by a group of cannibals and goes on a journey to reunite a missing girl with her father.
DirectorAna Lily Amirpour
The emergence reading
The Bad Batch keeps every mind human — it fights its subject at zero distance. The story fights on E8/E9 of the E0–E14 reality ladder, compressing prejudice, survival, exploitation, community, law.
zero-distanceUSprejudicesurvivalexploitationcommunitylaw
⇄ Parameter shift — the dial this world turnsrigor: loose
E10lawno legal authority in the designated desert zone (lawlessness) (social · local)
Same rung, same subject
Films fighting at the same level of reality, about the same things.
An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991)E9 · community, exploitation
Cowboys & Aliens (2011)E8/E9 · exploitation, prejudice
Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)E8/E9 · community, exploitation
The Happytime Murders (2018)E8/E9 · exploitation, law
Open Season (2006)E8/E9 · community, prejudice
Babe: Pig in the City (1998)E8/E9 · community, prejudiceSame subject, different rung
The same preoccupations examined at another scale — one mind versus a nation.
Ultraviolet (2006)E4/E11 · rare rung · exploitation, prejudice
The Land Before Time V: The Mysterious Island (1997)E6/E7 · rare rung · community, survival
Species III (2005)E6/E10 · rare rung · exploitation, prejudice
King Kong Lives (1986)E6/E11 · rare rung · exploitation, survival
Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973)E11/E13 · rare rung · prejudice, survival
X-Men: The Mutant Watch (2000)E11/E12 · rare rung · law, prejudiceAlso bends a rule of reality
Other films that change a standing rule of their world — ranked first by those bending it at the same rung.
Manderlay (2005)alters at E10 · same rung · loose
I, Robot (2004)alters at E10 · same rung · loose
Incredibles 2 (2018)alters at E10 · same rung · loose
Ted 2 (2015)alters at E10 · same rung · loose
Circle (2015)alters at E10 · same rung · rigorous
The Forever Purge (2021)alters at E10 · same rung · loose
