Departures: That Prometheus Script

I recently received an email from a reader asking me to be more specific about what I disliked so much about the script for Prometheus. Here is the brief email I sent in response. Note: Spoilers.

• Prometheus is supposed to be a scientific research vessel. So why is everyone onboard so impossibly stupid?

• The Captain has two of the afore-mentioned incredibly stupid crew members (who didn't know the difference between east and west – which even I do) left behind in the engineer's structure when the storm hits. So what does he do? Goes off and bones Charlize. I get it's probably an attractive idea – but really? It's not supposed to be a p*rno.

• The two archeologists share the fact that they have matched the engineer's DNA to human DNA and then have s*x. Great. (See p*orno comment.)

• Charlize's character is just a bitter, wound-up bitch. Nothing else going for character. One note.

• Logan's character gets infected by alien fluid by the android. Why?

• When he starts to replicate, Charlize torches him. Why? If it's a scientific expedition – why torch the results of the scientific experiment? It goes back to the whole quarantine thing that made Alien what it was. In Alien, the android specifically defies Ripley by letting them back in to the Nostromo. The Nostromo crew were not scientists. The Prometheus crew supposedly are. Scientists would have protected the result of the poisoned human to see what the fluid did.

• That camp Android! Really? Who cares? All that dream-invading stuff went nowhere – and it started off really promisingly.

• They find a star map. They want us to come and find them. How do you figure that out? I get that it's proof of their existence, but it might have been written more interestingly. Again, it goes back to that great moment in Alien when Ripley tells the crew (that are in the derelict spaceship) that the message is not a distress signal, but a warning. A great moment in Alien's script. There isn't anything even remotely similar in this one.

• There is obviously more than one structure on the planet. But the Android tells Noomi's character at the end that there is more than one spaceship. Well, der! Who didn't know that?!

• The caesarian section sequence was stupid. It only worked because Noomi gave it everything she had and the designers did too. But how was it possible that she was even capable of standing up afterwards? – let alone running around all over the place. Totally implausible. Ridiculous.

• The way the surviving engineer just flings everyone around. That was the killer for me. Wouldn't he have been curious? Fascinated about where the humans had come from? There was a great chunk of really interesting stuff that could have happened there. The amazing building of the universe (which was mainly just a big 3D show-off moment) certainly hinted that the engineers might have been more interesting as a species than they actually get to be in the script. Appalling.

• Ridley's still obviously not over his unhealthy obsession with vagina dentata. Grow up man! You're 70 something! See a shrink.

• The octupus creature design was pre-school quality.

• The final appearance of a xenomorph-like alien was just too much.

• Ridley's been going on about how awful the rest of the Alien movies were, and his biggest crime from my point of view, is that he has a made movie that certainly isn't as good as Alien, nor James Cameron's Aliens. That's wrong.