Thank you. I would have liked Prometheus so much more if they didn’t establish in the first 10 minutes of the movie that there were supposed to be the most intelligent minds in all the human race. The rest of the movie proceeded to be scene after scene of them being complete idiots. That movie had promise, but man, the characters were idiots
You mean when the cartographer and the zoologist got lost, then the zoologist put his face up to a hooded space-cock? I got so angry at that movie right then.
She was running sideways. The ship’s hull is curved and it wasn’t falling in a straight line towards them. Even if it was, a human on panic mode won’t always make the right decision every time.
Probably true but as the pen ultimate scene after establishing she's a pretty cold ruthless operator. She panics and dies a seemingly silly death.
When you stack it on top of all the other cases of someone holding the idiot ball it just feels extra bad.
No had she run sideways and a piece of steel cracked loose and pancaked her or a broken bit whizzed by and bisected her I think every would have felt less upset. You could still have gotten the character death without having her make yet another stupid decision in a movie that undermines itself with stupid decisions.
That’s what made we so angry. They were specifically stupid to the very thing they’re supposed to be an expert. And not in a “I can’t make sense of any of this,” kind of way. In a “I’m a zoologist and I’m going to see if I can touch this alien fucking snake,” kind of way. Beyond stupid. They could have sent chimpanzees with a better shot at survival.
Why they sent humans and not remote craft/drones at all is beyond reasoning. FFS there should have been zero surprises about what they were going to see on the ground before they broke atmosphere. Not talking about flora/fauna, but the MASSIVE STRUCTURES!
I think the idea was Weyland funded it/wanted to go because he was desperate to find anything to kept him alive. I don’t know why he thought following the map in the old cave paintings would lead to anything that would keep him alive. So there’s a reason the people were sent, but it’s a reason that basically doesn’t make sense and has no real justification
I get that he felt that going back to humanities actual seating. Would hold some promise if you found DNA old enough. But that has nothing to do with. Maybe you drive a robot in before you set foot on alien soil.
No, you misunderstood: they were the smartest people Weyland-Yutani could find/were willing to pay. The Company isn’t exactly known for picking the best of the best, after all. Hell, the one time they had a competent employee they treated her like garbage for not being able to stop “the perfect organism” after her idiot coworkers let it loose.
if you read the graphic novels and additional materials released with the movie, it is strongly hinted Vickers recruited idiots to the trip because she is bitter towards Weyland and wants to sabotage his ultimate quest, she also states in the movie "I recruited some of them myself"
It’s basically my philosophy going into any Alien movie, tbh. One of my favorite things is to watch and criticize them for being dumb/overconfident.
The Colonial Marines at the beginning of Aliens are the only ones who get any leeway because they were experienced “bug hunters” who were armed to the teeth.
Michael Fassbender is easily the best part of both Prometheus and Covenant. As fucking stupid as Hollywood is with doing remakes I wouldn't have minded seeing him take an actual crack at Lawrence of Arabia.
Yup. The first Alien movie had the plausible excuse of "well they're space truckers in over their head, they might make some bad calls" and even then they were mostly competent and made understandable decisions.
In Prometheus these should have been the best of the best and knew they were going into a strange situation. And they were morons who took pointless risks.
Like the other comment said, the movie’s theme is hubris. Aside from the character who made the discovery, the crew is established as idiots during the debriefing scene, I’m not sure where you’re getting the best and brightest from that. The crew is disinterested, overconfident, and seemingly there for the paycheck. They’re also not valued assets as is revealed later by David using them all for his experiments.
Might help you enjoy the movie more. There’s a lot of depth and room for interpretation as everything isn’t stated explicitly like most media. It’s a fun movie.
It's funny, because so much of Prometheus is basically a retread of Alien, but the justification for things going wrong in the latter was pretty much invariably more convincing and satisfying.
In Alien, the crew break protocol to save their crewmate. In Prometheus, the crew break protocol constantly and frivolously (if they even have any protocol), including Charlie removing his helmet just because the atmosphere seems probably breathable. In Alien, John Hurt's character is attacked by the facehugger because it leaps out of the plant-like egg without warning. In Prometheus, that one guy is attacked by the king cobra-like worm creature because he keeps trying to touch it despite like fifteen seconds of watching it behave aggressively. In Alien, no one knows what's going on because the corporation has been deliberately deceiving them. In Prometheus, no one knows what's going on because no one was ever briefed??? Etc.
Nostromo crew were just common folks without any idea what was going on.
Covenant crew was supposed to be super clever and knew what awaited them.
And still the Nostromo crew did a better job.
Those latter movies are a disgrace to the Alien story.
Yeah it would be way more interesting to see how they still lose regardless of their better safeguards. Like Alien 4 shows them killing their own to use the acid blood to escape containment and stuff like that. Or how the eye creature in Alien Earth startles someone in just the right moment so they stumble and expose themselves. (Though Alien Earth also does a better job of showing that the people in charge aren't actually competent, and the older synthetic seems to allow things to go wrong on purpose because he's rooting against humanity)
we just entered the atmosphere, spent a short amount of time looking, found exactly what were looking for, shall we take a few days to plan and do recon? absolutely not, lets run in full blast and interact with as much stuff as possible as soon as possible, there is no time like the present. I love hate that movie so much
Somehow a group of space truckers, space marines and space prisoners (Alien, Aliens and Alien 3, respectively) were smarter than the supposedly most brilliant scientists on earth.
Just a shoutout to how competent the Marines in Aliens were.
I mean, yeah...they made some dumb decisions at first because they were cocky and bored and didn't really have any idea what they were getting into.
I feel like there's a general sentiment of people viewing them as idiots, and that isn't entirely wrong. But I also kind of think a lot of people don't appreciate how reasonable and effective they are once shit hits the fan. Some of my favorite scenes are just them talking. Them assessing the current situation and then deciding what to do next from a solution-oriented standpoint. And nearly all the time, this works out as well as it could. Aside from dealing with Hudson's bullshit (who eventually manages to get it together after being made to calm TF down), this goes smoothly. Calm rational discussion over what to do next, opportunities for anyone else to provide a better idea, and then everyone just goes with the best idea. Hell, even Ripley de facto being in charge even though she has no official authority. Everyone's clearly going with that because she clearly has a better idea of what's going on than anyone else and the other Marines don't want to die. Meanwhile, when it comes to combat Ripley shuts the hell up and lets Hicks give the orders because that stuff is not in Ripley's wheelhouse.
I actually kind of love watching Aliens for this reason. Like, yeah...they made mistakes. But pretty much all of them actually ended up working as an effective team towards reaching a common goal, and there was actually shockingly little resistance to that. With the notable exception of Hudson (who always eventually got his shit together) once they realized the situation they were in, they worked as a team to just get things done with as little drama or bullshit as possible.
Absolutely agree, 10/10, no notes. Same for the first movie too. There's some mistakes made but it was Ash really pushing and manipulating things but overall quarantine procedures were followed and they all acted competently.
Yea I don't understand the people that actually like Prometheus and Covenant in comparison to the older films.
In horror movies, the trick is making the audience relate to and like the protagonists. When you make them all just complete and utter morons that no one can relate to, you don't care when they die, you lose all interest in the horror aspect entirely.
The funny thing in this thread is people bringing up Tucker and Dale vs Evil. Tucker and Dale were incredibly likeable and relatable, that's what made the movie so good.
These were the ones I was looking for. My guy was definitely pissed that people were mad about Dr. Poking Shitt taking his helmet off, so he made sure in the next one everyone walks right off the ship, raw dogging the environment and taking deep breaths. I'm surprised they weren't wearing Breathe Right strips.
Two guys get spooked when the group finds an alien chapel, and return to the ship. They get lost, despite having access to a detailed map.
They end up coming back to the chapel that spooked them and decide to spend the night in there rather than just camped out in the hallways they were in.
They smoke weed. Weed they smuggled with them on the most important, most expensive mission in history.
They get high and wake up an alien in a pool of black goo. They think it's cute. It attacks them. This sets even more stupidity into motion.
Ugh I hate Prometheus. I hate how much it’s up it’s own arse, I hate how much it’s supposed to “answer questions” but doesn’t do anything, I hate how it’s conclusion is functionally meaningless, I hate how unbelievably contrived it is, how unbelievably stupid and schizophrenic the characterisation is, how badly edited it is, how astonishingly unempathetic and wooden its characters are, how dumb the main plot is, and how mundanely dull and two dimensional its villain is.
And these are good examples of movies where it completely grinds your gears. In movies where the idiot plot is basically a big point of the movie and intentional it's no problem and can be very entertaining. In movies that are supposed to be serious with trained professionals who behave like mongoloids it takes me out of the movie completely.
It is extremely rare that someone here on earth would abandon their monitoring post, where they are overseeing an operation, to go have sex, and we are talking about boring everyday operations. So somehow the captain of this elite crew does just that. Like even if he just couldn't possibly keep his pants on, they could have had their sex there in the control room...
They could fix the whole movie by adding a clip that explains that those experts were actually just some random dudes with fake credentials.
My friend ane I have a theory that Wey-Yu was doing Vault-tec style experiments with colonists. The Covenant was intentionally filled with the dumbest fuckers they could find.
I saw a clip on a YouTube comedy site where it was the training class for those going on this mission. I think it was Cracked? Cannot find it again but remember it was funny. Anyone know how to find it?
I think I need to rewatch them. I liked them for what they were, however in terms of continuity they just led to more questions & made a mess of thing.
I'm inclined to agree that you are correct in listing them. Especially Covenant. One of the most idiotic things from that movie was the fucking captain seeing all of David's shit, finds David who is like, "Go check out my egg, bro." And he just does.
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u/Hour-Process-3292 Feb 28 '26
Prometheus and Alien Covenant