Badlands is a much slower film than Natural Born Killers, with longer, more luxuriant shots & calm music, which, when set upon the backdrop of udder, show disillusionment & the boredom felt by the main characters as they discover that the American Dream is not all it has cracked up to be. In Natural Born Killers, everything is more frenetic, showing that these kids are not bored & slowly spiralling into murder, instead they are truly alive & their murder coud not possibly look circumstantial.
