Crew wanted for space exploration: must be imbecile or have similar experience of abject idiocy.

Everybody has "go-to" movies they can just stick on in the background while they do more mundane tasks like the ironing, their tax returns, dialysis or what have you. For me Aliens is way up at the top of that list, somewhere sharing the rarefied air with Star Wars and Predator. Alien is a great movie too, in a much different way, but there's just something a bit special to me about the whole Colonial Marines vs Xenomorphs shit storm that puts it ahead of so many films in its genre. Hearing that Ridley Scott was planning to mitigate some of my disappointment over the last two movies in the Alien franchise with a prequel, I can't say I wasn't intrigued. I was. Intrigued was definitely a thing I was and a word I used. As more information started coming to the fore however, I began using other, shorter words until I finally watched the movie and all I could manage for about an hour afterwards was a series of puzzled monosyllabic grunts. Buh? Wuh? and Meh? were the most common.

Despite the tedium, angry gesticulation and threats of recriminations, I have somehow ended up re-watching it at least once just because it was on in the background. I tried to use the opportunity to get answers for the questions, contradictions and plot-holes that are so glaring and infuriating in equal measure, but it's like doing a crossword where the clues are for a completely different grid in a foreign language and once you've entered the one clue you thought was right it turns out you're actually doing a Sudoku and your pen has been replaced with a stick of liquorice. The most rage inducing moments are reserved for when the crew resort to complete and miserable stupidity purely to drive the plot, which is basically the entire movie; thanks for reading, next week I'll be assaulting my own face with a series of bricks until Prometheus makes a shred of sense. 

Let's attempt to apply logic and reason: if you're putting together an epic space exploration mission to potentially find God, you would likely want to crew said mission with a series of experts in a number of fields. So far so good; there's a geologist, a biologist, a couple of archaeologists/anthropologists, some people to fly the space ship, a project manager and a robot. I think there's some security type people in there too, but they end up being about as useful as Red Shirts in Star Trek. The problem is that although clearly all academically gifted, they exhibit all the common sense of a potato. In fact I'm more likely to trust my life to a King Edward than any of this lot. 

Anyone who’s seen Alien or Aliens knows there’s a 50/50 chance that the robot (sorry, they prefer the term synthetic) is going to be evil. It’s not completely obvious straight away but the knowing smirk David gives us when he starts monkeying around with strange control panels and unleashes Holographic Plot Devices is fairly demonstrative. It also provides us with moment of stupidity number one, albeit not from our protagonists. We get our first hazy look at the Space Jockeys who are all running away from something patently unspeakable… directly towards a room full of what transpires to be the magical, multipurpose black substance that is effectively Satan in goo form. Smart. That’s like running away from a fire and hiding in a room full of explosives, which are also on fire. 

The geologist, who is previously so proud of his map-making technology, promptly gets himself and the biologist totally lost. Despite there being a fully functioning 3D holographic map available to them should they simply call the ship. Or he could, you know, use his mapping system again to lead them out? Or just walk in a relatively straight line seeing as they don’t appear to have gone very far and the labyrinth they're stuck in looks pretty linear. No, much better to hunker down in a room full of yet more nasty stuff, including arguably the most phallic alien vagina-faced snake-cock thing ever to grace the silver screen. Obviously a well-trained, experienced field biologist will maintain a safe distance, observe its behaviour and document the new species and... Oh no, wait, let's go all Steve Irwin on it and try and prod it in the face orifice. Congratulations! You now have a mouthful of xenophallus and everybody thinks you’re a tool. Plus you indirectly got Fifeld killed with a gene-altering facial, so your family can be extra proud of you.

Shaw and her douche bag of a boyfriend Charlie similarly can't seem to act with the common sense they were born with. Special props for bringing a large possible chunk of unknown genetic material on board, finding out it's actually an alien head and promptly pumping it full of chemicals and electricity; there's no way that could ever end badly. They even actually look surprised when it pops. Quality science work there; prizes, party hats and cake all round. Just don’t drink anything the robot has suspiciously dipped his finger in. Subtle.

The omnipotent black goo bullshit winds me up a treat. It seems to be able to disintegrate you (but create all life on earth, so silver lined clouds etc), mutate you (which here means bad acne and super strength, obviously) or impregnate you (with the fastest developing space squid ever conceived) depending on whatever corner you've written yourself into. Casting Guy Pearce as a decrepit old bloke rather than using an actual older actor is an odd decision at best. Shaw running around literally moments after invasive abdominal surgery? A medical emergency machine that isn't calibrated for women purely for dramatic tension? Setting the whole thing on a planet in the LV system but not calling it LV-426 simply because Ridley Scott was desperate to insist it wasn’t an Alien prequel when it was clearly an Alien prequel? Continuing to insist on it not being a prequel then putting protoform facehuggers and Xenomorphs in at the end? The whole Space Jockey/Alien Spaceship thing? It’s a god damned prequel Ridley, regardless of the fact you got Damon Lindelof, Hollywood’s Worst Storyteller^™, to butcher the script past the point of reasonable comprehension. At least they’ve finally admitted it and put a big, familiar, snarling face on the poster of Covenant.

*Special Mention*

Vickers. Squashed into a bloody, lifeless, crimson stain on a remote planetoid by a giant free-wheeling alien ship simply because running away from something that big is much more dramatic than being sensible and running at a 90^◦ angle to its very obvious and unfaltering path. If Shaw can literally roll away from it and survive, then frankly Vickers, you deserve everything you get. Which in this case is several thousand tons of metal to the face.