First off Lar'ja Thwei, don't sweat these guys comments about your age, they just utterly DESTROYED any credibility they had with their comments above.
NO ONE who saw Alien in 1979 and considered it "infallible" would ever say the same of Aliens. Most of what Cameron did was rehash Scott's work but with less beautiful cinematography and worse actors. With the unique slant of a Viet Nam backdrop. Believe me, I had to hear that ad nauseum in the 90's from disgruntled Alien fans put off that Cameron made the series more accessible to the masses with "ra ra" military adventure. No more "perfect organism" that can't be killed, just a bunch of bugs that can be quickly put down if they find themselves at the business end of an assault rifle.
So it sounds like we have a number of fellows who saw Aliens first, fell in love, by default include Alien in that love, and are now resistant to further deviation from Cameron's formula. I'm not telling anyone what their opinion is, but as someone who *has* been here a while, that's certainly what it looks like.
I saw Aliens in 1986 (thank you very much
) and could NOT believe that the marines were stupid enough to interrupt Ripley in the middle of her briefing and didn't even let her finish explaining what they were up against! First viewing, 1986, and I sat there thinking "are you EFFING kidding me? They don't even care!?? Morons, they're all going to die, all of them and good freaking riddance."
So take that Prometheus haters.
But I love Aliens. Love it love it love it. Was my top 2 movie of all time after The Empire Strikes Back (ahead of ANH and ROTJ!) until the LOTR trilogy came along and pushed those two movies down a few notches.
And I love Prometheus. And what you really need to do is look at the entirety of the story and then backtrack, adjusting expectations accordingly. It's what we did with Aliens and what we should do today. See in Aliens it was kind of an eye-roller that the colonists just HAPPENED to find the derelict the same week Ripley woke up just to give her an opportunity to go on another adventure. Until you learn that Burke gave the order to investigate based on Ripley's story. Similarly a lot of what the marines do is pretty idiotic purely based on the position of Gorman and his near complete incompetence. But who put Gorman in charge of the unit at the last minute? Someone who possibly didn't want a stronger leader as competition? Someone like Burke? They seemed pretty chummy when visiting Ripley in her apartment. And suddenly when you backtrack with Burke's motivations there's a whole new light on the entire series of events. It wasn’t just a straight “rescue mission” it was a “cover my ass and erase the evidence” mission initiated by one man.
Now let’s look at Prometheus. Scientists in search of answers regarding the origin of mankind to satisfy a deep curiosity within their souls? Some of whom behave foolishly? No, at it’s core that’s actually not what the mission was about. That was the motivation of Shaw and Holloway, but only Shaw and Holloway. Weylan was pulling the strings, footing the bill, and calling the shots. And what was his mission? To seek out immortality. EVERYTHING/ONE was put into place by him to fulfill that desire. And that brings up an absolutely brilliant twist. That Peter Weylan, founder of Weylan Industries (sorry AvP fans) was not actually looking for a bioweapon of mass destruction. No, he was searching for the key to prolong life. What a brilliant and ironic twist.
And that turns all the preceding scenes completely upside down. David was not poisoning Holloway to test out a weapon, he was testing potential holy grails. And I mean that literally. Think Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Weylan has seen it. And he has deducted that the Engineers created us, created us to be mortal, and possibly created harmful organisms (that is those that already exist on our planet) as a “checks and balances” system to prevent their creations from getting out of control. So Weylan knows that there might be an untainted, tangible method at the Engineers’ disposal to do away with said checks and balances. He just doesn’t want to test the potential “immortality elixirs” himself. Again, he’s seen The Last Crusade and doesn’t want to “choose poorly.”
So he hand picks the world’s greatest “Steve Irwins” (GREAT analogy Frank, no joke
) who are willing to risk death (just by going into hypersleep!) in search of knowledge/adventure/money and therefore act as his oblivious pawns. These are guys who did not risk their very lives and half a decade of their lives (just in the round trip alone) to show up and keep their space helmets on or not interact with the flora and fauna of this unprecedented new world. And with that in mind some of the choices of the crew are not “poor characterization” at all. The real Steve Irwin proved that.
Of course Vickers proves to be a bit of a fly in the anointment for him as she has a lot more to lose (as opposed to Weylan who is only going to live a short few months/years if his mission fails) and she actively works to *prevent* the crew from getting to close to harmful organisms and thereby exposing her.
When they get there it appears that all Engineers are dead and all David can do is systematically start testing crap on the crew in the hopes that they find a cure for “death.” And that’s another amazing twist on our assumptions. Until the very end he seems to be continuing in the tradition of Ash, placing the expendable crew in harm’s way to discover the perfect weapon. But if the black goo worked differently he would have made Holloway the very first beneficiary of immortality! So Alien gave us an evil android, Aliens a good android, and Prometheus one that was completely neutral. A droid that would put someone’s life at risk and then help them immediately after, all for the greater good of finding a way to cheat death. Awesome.
As for the berzerking engineer, again, think Indiana Jones. They did NOT best him in single combat and therefore proved themselves unworthy of the secrets of eternal life.
I say that tongue planted firmly in cheek but the truth is we don’t know WHAT the criteria were for being worthy of addressing an Engineer, whatever it was some succeeded in a sense (as he did not initially pursue Shaw) and some did not (everyone else.)
You just have to keep in mind that Weylan is the “Burke” of Prometheus and pretty much most/all of the alleged holes/mischaracterizations suddenly diminish or disappear altogether once that is revealed. Brilliant movie. Not perfect (and neither are Alien or Aliens) but brilliant nonetheless.
I knew I was on thin ice when I pasted my post into Word to make sure I didn't lose it as I was typing. 
