Prometheus, Sci-Fi and Why You Can't Have Stupid Characters

Rating: 7/10 (6 June 2012)

I saw Prometheus last night. It was decent, but I have a few gripes which I will voice here.
Okay, so I can forgive characters for being unintelligent and doing stupid things that lead to their deaths in horror films, but in sci-fis, you generally expect the characters to have a few more smarts about them. For one thing, in a sci-fi, the characters will usually be something along the lines of scientists, doctors, biologists, academics, etc., because why would we send Mr Joe Blow into space? What I'm saying is that characters in sci-fi films need to act more intelligently than their horror movie counterparts, so when they do stupid things like take off their helmets in an alien environment or try and pat the alien cobra or open the doors to the ship when a dead crew member has mysteriously shown up again right outside, the audience will be very unimpressed. Why is it that these film-makers are afraid of having characters act rationally? I mean, why would the guy who just ran away from the scary alien corpse want to suddenly get all friendly with an alien snake? For a cool death? That can't be it, because he could have had a cool death anyway, if the writers had tried a little harder.
Another thing sci-fi characters need are good motives. No, you can't be on this ship just because you like flying ships. They could have just built more Davids, because he seemed to be able to fly the ship, go fearlessly exploring and do the biopsies all by himself. Good characters need convincing﻿ motives and reasons for why they are there. The Christian undertones in Prometheus are also a little disconcerting. Look what "choosing to believe" gets you. A ship full of dead people. I feel that Prometheus also promotes creation rather than evolution. In fact, human evolution is completely disregarded in the plot of this film, though we do see the very fast evolution of the alien species. Hmm.
Another thing I was bothered by are all the elements of the plot that don't quite make sense. It seems like there's an hour of missing footage out there that could explain all of this. Maybe we'll see a director's cut? First of all, why would the Engineers create or start human life on Earth, then give these early Earthlings a map, not of the home planet, but of what is basically the Engineers' military base with a biological weapon big enough to wipe out Earth? Did they want us to come and seek out our own demise? Seems pretty strange to me. If they're unhappy with what they created, then why create a more evil race of beings to wipe us out? It's like having a rat problem and then getting a bunch of cats to get rid of the rats, and ending up with a cat problem.
Also, why would Mr Weyland want to keep his identity secret on a mission that HE funded? Couldn't he have just made better choices about who he picked for his team so he wouldn't have to remain secretive? I don't know. Am I missing something here? I feel like this was maybe meant to be an "OH MY GOD HE WAS ON THE SHIP THE ENTIRE TIME" moment, but it wasn't.
I'm being pretty harsh, but I think that's fair. It's Ridley Scott. He made Alien. So why can't he give us another good sci-fi? Then again, maybe that's unfair. I'm sure it's hard to have everything you make be compared to one of your earlier and extremely successful projects. Also, who knows what really goes on behind the scenes, what directors are forced to do and forced to put their name to. Despite everything I've just said, this isn't a bad film. The first 40 minutes are excellent. It's just let down by poor plot and character writing.