Prometheus 2 set for March 4th 2016

[Vickers]

Well, yes the editing is a big issue (although there are many other flaws), but there's no denying the Milburn thing is very idiotic.

[Alien³]

Wait...what?

Oh yes...

Spoiler

I just denied it.

It seems it can be done.

[close]

[Vickers]

Of course you can deny it but guess what... it's still stupid.

[The1PerfectOrganism]

But... but that's what he denied. ):

[Alien³]

You can't deny the denial.

[SiL]

No, but almost everyone at some time in their lives is given some warnings about encountering animals.

My point was using Irwin as a reasonable example of how an actual biologist would act is silly.

I love that the biggest flaw in Prometheus was the editing yet people just can't get over the Milburn thing.

Different conversations. We aren't talking about the editing now, we're talking about stupid characters. Bad editing is a whole other ball game.

[SM]

Milburn was completely and utterly unrealistic.


http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2006/09/04/Steve_holding_snake_gallery__470x330.jpg

...oh

Irwin wasn't a biologist, let alone one encountering entirely unknown organisms for the first time.

Totally analogous!

Guy doesn't have a piece of paper - so throw everything else out.  Predictable.

[SiL]

Well, yeah. It's like showing a circus lion tamer treats a lion and saying it was totally acceptable for a zoo keeper to run into a lion enclosure with a whip.

And even Steve Irwin wouldn't have been dumb enough to antagonize the Hammerpede like that without knowing what it is.

[SM]

*wheeeeeee*
*sound of bus running SM over*

[SiL]

We'll send you the bill to have your blood scraped off.

[CainsSon]

We'll send you the bill to have your blood scraped off.

You're all focusing on the specifics. The fact is: Even smart people do stupid things. Even pilots crash planes. They have a orders, guides to follow, protocal, training, yet they still make mistakes because human behavior is flawed. Stating that scientists all act a certain way or should behave a certain way because they are scientists, and therefore always would is totally baseless. Scientists disagree with each others behavior all the damn time. The same is true of any profession. 
Do the best musicians all play music the same way? Do the world's top chef always prepare the same meals, identically? Twice the same way?
Even the most talented guitar player can mess up a song they've played a thousand times.

The entire mission is based on the same kind of mistake. You could just as easily argue that scientists would be stupid to track down Aliens on another planet without a military fleet to back them up - but they did. If they didn't make mistakes, there wouldn't be a story to tell.

If you want to split hairs I suppose I would argue that there should have been 10 biologists on hand during that mission but its a movie.

Now, what's most interesting to me about that scene is the fascination Milburn has with Fifield and how that is undermined by the snake and the symbolic way he died.

[SiL]

The pilot doesn't crash his plane because he thinks nose-diving into the ground is a good way to land. The guitar player doesn't mess up because he thinks he's supposed to play a guitar with a pickaxe.

The only people missing the point are those harping on that "People are allowed to do stupid things!". Milburn's actions are stupid for anyone. No normal person is going to stick their hand in a space snake's face and say it's mesmerized when it starts hissing at them. It's compounded by the fact he's an animal biologist and should, presumably, know the least bit about animals. The cherry on top is that ten minutes earlier we saw him wetting himself and running in fear from a perfectly harmless corpse.

His actions are dumb. His actions are even dumber taking into account he's supposed to be a professional who should know better. They become moronic when the film itself establishes him as a f**kin' pansy, and then has him sticking his hand in a hissing space-cobra's face going "Cootchie cootchi coo".

If he had been presented as some kind'a Steve Irwin type, fair enough. If he'd been portrayed as someone overly sure of himself, cool. But he wasn't. The entire scene is just stupidity compounding stupidity.

If people can look past that, more power to them, but sticking fingers in ears going "La la la can't hear you it's totally not that bad" without being able to come up with a single reasonable explanation given the film doesn't make the scene any less dumb.

[Lemonade]

Ugh. Milburn wasn't panicking. It was Fifield. Milburn just went along because he befriended Fifield.

[Xenomorphine]

The thing is, it wasn't an act of stupidity - on behalf of a supposed expert - in isolation. There were a lot of things being done by all of them, which, taken all in one go, kept hitting the audience over the head with how recklessly nonsensical these individuals are. David 8 touching everything in sight, Shaw's other half removing his helmet and contaminating the site, Fifield not having a f**king clue about the status of his own mapping system, etcetera... All of it happens within a relatively short space of time of one another.

It wouldn't have mattered as much if they were just random people, but they're meant to be such leaders in their field (and Milburn, specifically, is meant to have much experience with living organisms and all the scientific protocols of handling them, thereof), that they've been individually head-hunted to go on a potentially one-way trillion-dollar mission of the utmost importance.

Ultimately, we're left with the basic impression that they're all so idiotic that maybe they don't deserve to survive and lose any would-be sympathy for them. The very connection you don't want the audience to lose when it's something as tense as the horror genre.

[Kimarhi]

Prometheus is probably a commentary on modern film!