I've always loved Prometheus -- I saw it alone at the nearest IMAX theater, since no one I know likes the Alien franchise -- but felt slightly embattled about it. Even among Aliens fans, Prometheus is reviled! Why do you think that is? It's a gorgeous movie with great actors, and it's really entertaining. People seem to be really bothered by the recklessness of the characters, but I've never felt like that was a misstep. People ARE reckless. Even scientists. (Maybe especially scientists!) Anyway, I'm always happy to find someone who wholeheartedly appreciates the movie, since I always feel like I have to apologize for my affection.
If I knew, man, I wouldn’t be here now would I?
More seriously, some thoughts I have on the movie as well as some commentary on the shit people give it.
As for why Alien fans explicitly don’t like it, I think it was too different from every movie in the rest of the franchise.
First, I’ve noticed that when anything involves religion, in general, even tangentially people wig out. The internet at large thinks anyone even remotely religious is whipping themselves in the backroom out of hatred and devotion to God.
Elizabeth Shaw is an extremely religious character, someone in a STEM field no less, whose religion is portrayed in a positive light. The movie is about an expedition’s search for God, or rather, the creators of mankind. That will immediately rub people completely raw and put people up in arms.
A movie searching for God?! How stupid! I would never search for God in space!
It’s also a very philosophical movie in general and very different from Alien and especially Aliens.
Remember that for a lot of people, Alien is not people’s favorites, they actually like Aliens a lot more. Ridley Scott (dir of Prometheus) only directed Alien, Aliens was James Cameron. Both are excellent movies but extremely different, and while I haven’t read any interviews and am speaking out of my hat, I think Aliens is not where Scott would have gone had he decided to do a sequel.
Many people when they see “Alien” think of Aliens, then they walk in, and get a movie that’s mostly the philosophical ponderings about artificial intelligence, faith, and creation in general.
They only get the Xenomorphs at the very end, and even then, not a Xenomorph at all but just a giant face hugger. WHAT IS THIS BULLSHIT.
And then you have the “stupidity” of the characters in the film. Now, personally, I see why they are the way they are. Not only, as you note, are they humans who can make mistakes but their mission has a very weird source. Most of them are directly on Weyland’s payroll, a man who is so desperate for immortality that he funded this mission to another planet to find aliens and convince them to give it to him. This informs much of the actions throughout the series.
More, while yes perhaps they should have sent David into the pyramid alone at first, it wouldn’t have helped. David was under very strict orders by Weyland to get results, that immediately damns at least one crew member, and crew members have no idea to not trust androids because androids typically don’t do this. Even David only is able to take these actions because of Weyland’s orders (who Elizabeth/Charlie have no idea is alive or is anything other than a generous benefactor).
Milton and Fifield get lost, which to me is a very reasonable thing to happen, now their trying to play friends with the hostile alien snakes is strange but people do dumb shit all the time.
More Vickers is very reasonable in refusing to allow them entry into the ship, quarantining Elizabeth (who had no idea having sex with Charlie was such a bad idea), then refusing to allow Charlie entry into the ship. At this point, as the death count rises, it’s more due to things spiralling out of control.
But I’d say most of the mistakes made in the film are fueled by either naivite and mistaken faith in people like Weyland or else by greed.
But people love to hate on horror films. They love it. And so they smugly watch the film and say, “Well I would never be stupid enough to let David poison my tea!” It’s the same thing they do with, well, the original Alien movie “I would never be stupid enough to go back for the cat!”
(As you can tell, this is a pet peeve of mine)
But yes, people hate this movie, and I constantly have to justify liking it which really gets on my nerves. It also makes me sad because it means the sequel we got was “Covenant” because the studio didn’t want Prometheus 2.0. The movie is enjoyable, but just so damn lulzy.