Why the crew were so un-professional

in short: because they were all but good scientist.

One more theory - When you work for a businessman, you follow his orders not what your professional instincts tell you. Any work from thereafter becomes less-professioal and more of monotonus activity. It happens in corporate environement where people follow order of upper management by being unprofessional to customers or to their goals.

Not sure what you mean by "unprofessional" Can you please list your definition of unprofessional in the context of the movie? In either case - the website DOES state in the company profile timeline and also in the explore worlds section that there are, literally, millions of people on planets other than earth and the moon. there are also, approximately, 800 million employees of Weyland. They are the largest company ever. Which is why the "government" or "army" are never mentioned in the Alien universe. Why? Because Weyland-Yutani IS the Government and the Army. In conclusion - are you REALLY willing to tell me that, considering our human nature - soldiers, pilots and scientists of the future are 'better' than what they are now? no. humans will always be humans. free will makes us who we are. so 200 years from now, i'm sure there'll be idiots just like there are today. idiot soldiers, idiot scientists and pot heads who light a pipe in their space-suit. do people NOT do stupid things now? in the pub for example? that idiot might be a CEO of a company, but that won't stop him from getting drunk as f**k and deciding to jump off the roof into the river. Your point being? professionalism is really, subjective. at the end of the day, we're stupid humans. so stupid we landed on the moon. and created the atom bomb as well. we also petted snake aliens after smoking weed in a temple on an alien pyramid on a planet we'd never been before.

atom bomb was stupid idea? it can give electricity or it can destroy a portion of planet.

I would state the question like this: [i]What made them act so "unprofessional" when dealing with all the genetic-altering/pre-xeno/ancient-alien-race stuff that was going on around them?[/i] The answer is simple. They were written to be that way by a TV-series script writer and that TV-series script writer presented the vast majority of the Prometheus crew as the equivalent of Star Trek red-shirts. Simply put: They were cannon-fodder. And cannon-fodder doesn't have to be particularly smart or professional or even memorable. ALIENS had (more or less) roughly the same amount of background bodies running about and dying. But, I actually remember and (to a small degree) felt some emotion and/or fear for them as they fought and died in the Alien hive. I felt no such level of emotion or fear for the glorified extras that were filling out the background of Prometheus.

Yer spoilt the film though having all but 2 of them being red shirts! You need characters you care about or like etc. and all but shaw and david were boring / stupid / unrealistic etc. - hopefully this leaves us a good sequel!

@whatisthematrix I think this may be a false proposition. Professionalism isn't, "subjective", at all - it's strictly determined by the requirements and context of a given role and it's an absolute - [a person employed under Contract may test this by undertaking many extreme behaviours at work, in order to find the limits of their HR Departments practical definition of "professionalism". Once found, they will probably discover that the definition turns out to be very precise, indeed]. By the terms of, "requirement and context of a given role", "Professionalism", may be relative, one "profession", to another - but, within context, it is generally absolute in terms of expected behaviours and prescribed protocols etc, etc. With that, while inherently disposed to stupidity humans may well be, our general success as a species is partly understanding when that tendency is inappropriate and when it is conflict with the general good and/or the requirements and context of a role that we may be performing - and then acting accordingly. If, during the moon landing someone had over-ridden an engine burn limit, just to see what would happen; or if an a-bomb scientist had replaced a detonator charge with a pineapple, you might choose to write that off as our charming human stupidity - but it would also be, clearly, unprofessional - and I'd say the correlation is that the more inappropriate or counter-intuitive the context of the poor conduct, the more unprofessional it's likely to be. As stupid as humans like to be, we do tend to recognise an example of that poorly contextualised behaviour when we see it - and it is such an example that I think the OP is commenting on: the behaviour does not seem at all rational - and writing it off as, "human behavior", does not really seem to answer it, as most humans in that context would certainly [i]not[/i] behave in that manner, so why on Earth would [i]this[/i] human do that - and I think that is exactly the, "point", that was being raised. @mrakhoover I don't think there is any need to ruin your head with riddles - I believe @Graphix67 has given you the one and only answer. I'd suggest that, if it displeases, that would be because the Characters were badly written and asked to do things that were - one way or another, whether deliberate or mistaken - very poorly contextualised.

I have thought about why the crew was made up of the mid grade professionals and I thought it was intentional on Weyland. He was on ship, he had trusted henchmen, his prized creation and his daughter running the ship. I see the crew in prometheus as another example of "crew expendable". If I was thinking of using my crew for malicious intent I wouldn't use the smartest people I could find. I'd give them plenty of money to blind them and lie to them about everything. That's my take on it. Weyland has never had a good image for taking the best care for it's employees (in the movies), so why would the prometheus crew be treated anyway but expendable?

Well I agree with mrakhoover I stated pretty much the same theory in another post: http://www.prometheus-movie.com/community/forums/topic/8643&page=2 So thumbs up from me man, but everybody has their own opinion so don't flame us. I just believe the same thing until I can be proven otherwise. Remember in all the other ALIEN franchise movies, the same thing was happening as far as the human population and so forth and those movies where set even way after the PROMETHEUS timeline....

Well, it is not so important to me to GET EXPLANATIONs, WHY they acted so unprofessional, so unbelievable, not authentic. You can find for EVERY Sh..t some explanation, thats what politicians do their whole life - bla blah blah why this happend, why that happend, and who is guilty (instead of us..hehe). In Alien, the crew acted much more authentic, it FEELED REAL, they talked the bonus situation, it was WET and DIRTY and USED... prometheus was CLEAN or DESIGNED DIRT.. - thats the difference. In Alien and Aliens, you FEELED with that crew, YOU HAVE BEEN THERE, while in prometheus, you were in a cinema dispersing some popcorn while some idiots walked around in some clean movie-studio to find what the film-crew placed there...

nuckchoris you sound like born before 80's if i am not wrong?

I thought that Millburn may have felt protected in his suit as well.

Exactly, remember Steve Erwin? He had a TV show where he would goad a reaction out of crocodiles, snakes, commodo dragons etc. Then one day he was killed by a stingray. My children and I loved that show but I always thought that one day he was going to have an accident. And sadly it did.

Steve Irwin - his situation is a bit different. I saw the guy live at his place in Beerwah, Queensland and he knew the animals he was messing with there. The stingray was not familiar to him. Pity he had to go. Seemed a nice fella, and his kid Bindi must miss her dad. But, in context, Steve Irwin didn't have as many reasons to behave erratically. He was in familiar territory and there were no piled up dead bodies and no idea what killed them. (and no suggestion of taking weed either), I think in those circumstances even Steve Irwin would have kept his hands to himself. Unless of course, he was wearing a suit that he thought was animal proof. One of his workers lost a bit of finger by underestimating an otter, which turned it's body while he was holding it and bit him. Now that guy always wears think gloves with the small animals as well as the big ones.