I went to see Prometheus a few days ago and, unlike many it seems, I enjoyed it. Coming home and thinking about it, it is easy rip the film apart for how ridiculous it is, but while I was watching it I was in it, I was hooked, I was tense, and that’s more than I can say for a lot of films I see these days. But I do have one big gripe with the film, and that is how stupid the crew members were. And so here’s my list of the top ten stupid things they did. It should go without saying, but I’ll add the required warning anyway: SPOILERS.
1. Letting two archeologists run a space mission. Seriously, who put these guys in charge? I know Vickers is the actual leader but everyone is listening to Shaw and Holloway, even though they clearly have no health and safety training. And why were none of the others told what the mission was before they signed up? Is no one curious in the future, you just sign up for a 2+ year mission and not ask questions?
2. Not waiting to scan the area before going in to alien territory. I know you’re giddy and this is your life’s work, but you’ve been travelling for two years, another day won’t kill you, in fact it will probably save your lives if you do a bit of research about the environment first.
3. Taking off their helmets. Because the air is breathable they happily remove their helmets after two seconds of deliberation, not worrying about, you know, germs etc. There could be anything in that air that could react badly with humans. How about you took your helmet off and your face just melted or you inhaled bacteria, hmm? Call yourselves scientists.
4. Two missing crewmen. Two men leave to go back to ship, since everything got a bit weird. You’d think this would make them the smartest of the bunch, but nooo. They get lost but don’t bother to radio anyone for help, even though they’ve let off probes that map the structure and also track them, so someone could direct them to an exit/back to rest of the team. And no one checks up on them, even when there’s a terrible sand storm coming and the captain orders them all back to the ship. Is there radio silence? Are they on mute? Who knows, but no one else gives a shit and just leaves them, not realising they’re even lost til they get back to the ship.
5. Everyone leaving the Bridge when two men are left behind. They’re in an alien structure, alone, the probe keeps saying there’s a life form…oh well, they’ll be fine, let’s go have sex.
6. Man pokes unknown life form. A so-called scientist sees an alien life form for the first time, swimming about in weird black oozy stuff. How does he react? Not, as you might think, by getting the fuck away from it and trying to study it from afar at first and see if it’s safe. No, he sticks his face up to it and coos ‘ooh aren’t you lovely’ and pokes at it. And even when it lets its…face wings? open and hisses he still doesn’t back off. Has he not seen Jurassic Park? I’m assuming they still have films in the future and that this is a classic. But Dennis Nedry also thought that dinosaur was cute until it did the face wing thing and hissed. Learn from his mistakes people.
7. Dropping the head. Shaw had one job during the storm and that was to hold an alien head while sitting on the back of a speeding vehicle. You’d hold it tight, right? Nah, one bump and off it goes so you have to go after it and get caught in the storm and be rescued by an android.
8. Going outside. Gosh, there’s a crew member outside the ship that everyone else said was dead, how did he get there? I dunno man, but let’s open those cargo bay doors and go out and have a look. Surely that’s the sensible thing to do.
9. No quarantine facilities/rules. You are on an alien planet. I don’t know how many times you have to be reminded of this. Not only that, but at one point you know that one of you is infected with something but you don’t know where it’s come from or if anyone else has it. For Christ’s sake quarantine yourselves, for the sake of the rest of the crew, the ship, and the mission. Don’t just keep going back out to the structure and taking your helmets off willy nilly.
10. Running in a straight line. There’s a massive structure falling towards you that is longer than it is wide. Maybe if you ran to your right instead of forwards in a straight line you’d have a greater chance of not being crushed to death.
Everyone on this mission was so stupid it’s almost like they wanted to die. I’m starting to wonder if this isn’t some futuristic form of Dignitas. Thinking of assisted suicide? We can make it interesting for you. Join our mission now!
Amazing. I totally agree, I felt like screaming most of this at the screen! The only person I didn’t want to slap some sense into was Charlize Theron, mostly because of her general bad assery but that was before she though “Oh there’s a gigantic spaceship trying to crush me? I’ll run along with it instead of heading over there where IT ISN’T!”
Agreed with Charlize. At least she had the sense to have an escape pod! Even if she did think she could out run a falling space ship.