TL;DR = whoever is running the Alien franchise hates science and reason and needs to be curb stomped.
I remember how much Prometheus sucked (how did that movie even make money) so I was on guard for the sequel. Avoiding spoilers, preliminary reports indicated more of the same suck. So I'm only watching this because its on HBO and costs me nothing extra, and I was tired of looking for something else to watch.
It sucks. A little less at first, but then it gets sucked into a black hole of suck. I keep getting tricked that this might be a sci-fi movie, and might try to do something remotely smart, but its always a horror movie, and it just needs to keep setting up the next scare, no matter the cost.
Once I realize this, I can kind of let go. But the sci-fi trappings still have a hook in me. In the Alien universe, human ships always seem to have a synthetic on board. On a ship the size and importance of a colony ship with 2000+ people, why only have one? Why not have 100? And why keep only one active at a time, when you could have several online at once, so if there is an emergency they can be all over it (and they could keep an eye on each other for "Three Laws of Robotics" violations). And if more help is needed they can uncrate more of themselves as needed without ever waking up a colonist.
A new planet is found (because of a distress signal) that is just as viable if not more so than the potential colony site they are headed for. Why wouldn't they want to check it out? And yet they make the captain seem crazy for just wanting to check it out.
Speaking of the crew, these people seem like random civilians who were shoehorned into the executive positions. There is nothing professional or disciplined about them. Who in their right mind would entrust these people to run a fast food franchise location, let alone a big colony ship that must have cost a fortune to build?
So they get to the planet, to check it out. So far, I'm OK with this. Then they immediately send down a lander with half the command staff. What!? Why not orbit for a while, and collect data? And only after you have all that info (take a month at least, what's the hurry), send down drones to collect more data, and then send down a team of synths to collect even more data. And only then start risking humans. And then, not the top leadership (such as it is).
And even if you do send down humans, why trust the magically Earth-like environment? Why not wear suits until you have completed the biological survey, at the least? I'm glad to see they make a nod at least to a bio assay, but very late into the game, and seemingly as an afterthought.
And then the orbital crew starts making increasingly dumb risks to try and save the field crew, who should rightly be expendable in comparison to the ship. There are night managers at convenience stores who wouldn't make this many bad decisions this quickly. At this point I shut off the TV.
I know, its horror, not sci-fi. I hope I don't get bored enough to start it up again. I did like the interaction between old and new model synthetics, so that bit of acting might be worth it.
Future me, if you are reading this, don't come back this way. You have been warned.
