This one is going right up there with "Contact" as more examples of how stupid screenwriters are about science. I can't tell if the portrayal was deliberate, accidental or incompetent (on the writers' part, I mean). Of course, Damon Lindelhoff, of Lost infamy was involved in this, and that show was no better with his pretentions of setting up Jack and Locke as counterparts in the "Man of Science, Man of Faith" contrast. Their "man of science" was only scientific in his blind & irrational clinging to the dogmas preached by Science, and thus rejecting any idea that the island was special, because according to Science, islands are not special. Jack ran around through the whole show always operating on his blind unshakable faith in one proposition or another, in complete defiance of any other evidence. First it was the need to get off the island, then the need to get back, and so on. He was a zealot for whichever notion he was addicted to at the time, and would do the most stupid things in order to service that short-term goal. Meanwhile, Locke was operating on evidence he had observed, even though it contradicted what he had been told or taught his whole life. He pursued it with dedication, and was all about trying to understand and gather information on the island and all the mysterious things. Yet the show REALLY seemed to believe that JACK was the "man of science" and Locke the "man of faith."

Now, in this movie, they are doing the same thing with all the so-called scientist characters. They simply place blind faith in something new and shiny and go to absurd lengths on the assumption that this is good and all will be well. An invitation HAS to be a benevolent guidance from exalted and special beings! THERE IS NO OTHER EXPLANATION!! LEAVE YOUR FLAMETHROWER HOME, HERETIC!!! Setting aside the issue of whether or not the Engineers made humanity or what (maybe they were simply people who advanced further and left the rest of us behind to go suicide bombing DNA around the galaxy), even if they did, what about that makes them good? What about that means we owe them anything, or that they matter at all, as far as we are concerned? Since absolutely none of the people or institutions that existed when those cave-paintings were made are still around, what could possibly have led anyone to assume that even if they found the Engineers, they'd have the slightest clue that the hell we were talking about?

It doesn't help that the two primary fanatics on the pilgrimmage are both rather creepy-looking. The woman looked as if someone was drawing a human being, but didn't quite finish. It was like Cate Blanchett's character in the last Indiana Jones movie - they looked so "off" that I was genuinely waiting for some sort of reveal that would expose them as related to the aliens somehow. The last major movie the guy was in was one where he was cast because his appearance would naturally misdirect the audience into believing he is Satan in human flesh.

Their idiotic decision-making processes and mindsets in the early part of the film undercut any sense of suspense, or attempts to make you believe they were right, simply by being so irrational and based on wishful-thinking that you spend most of the film prior to the first alien appearance waiting for the other shoe to drop. Even little details, like when they are in Vickers' quarters and she randomly starts punching buttons on a piece of machinery SHE HERSELF states is extremely rare!

They react to Vickers' choice to have her quarters as an independent, self-contained & self-sufficient part of the ship as either wrong or strange, when it would, even without the later events of the movie, seem to be the most obvious choice if that was an option! Then when you take into account the way the zealots and their henchmen go blundering around rousing two different inimical alien species to start killing them, you can hardly blame her for wanting the capability of getting away from the rest of this insane expedition if needed. The only odd thing about the whole setup, IMO, is why she couldn't just enter her quarters and eject with it, instead of having to bail out seperately and then get into her seperate ship on the planet. It's like having a life boat that, if the ship starts sinking, can only be put in the water empty, and passengers must swim out to it.

Because in Ridley Scott's Alien movies, only the Mary-Sue chick can survive. This is a rule. Though I felt the same, and thought she was among the more sympathetic characters, along with the captain. They should have made a fast-growing baby with the help of Predator blood, so it could have been the perfect foil to the monster thing that Shaw left in the medial doohickey (lovely scientific thoroughness and cleanliness procedings there): the child of the two best characters to face the spawn of the two worst.

The wierd thing was, though, that I got the impression we were supposed to automatically accept Vickers as a villain, something like Paul Reiser in Aliens, one of those amoral souless corporate types who always get their comeuppance in films like this, yet they never showed anything in the movie why she should be considered as such. Her death was a lot like the kind of death they usually get - she's all arrogant, superior and powerful, and gets her just desserts by being accidentally and indifferently crushed by something way more powerful than she. I guess we were supposed to be made indifferent to her character by the scene with her father, but she was pretty much right in what she told him: even if you're the big shot and the head honcho, it has to end at some point, and let the cycle go on.

Also, why just get up and walk away from it? You're so terrified of it that you make the split second decision to hastily run to the medical thing to make it operate on you, and immediately order it decontaminated without bothering to even examine it...but then you're just going to walk away and assume that this unknown alien species that develops overnight and can adapt to a host of another species, from another planet, is somehow vulnerable to a surgical sterilizing agent?

Lay the eggs that the Nostromo's crew find later on?