If you could re-write Prometheus, what would your story entail?

"Second I'd change the whole Fifield/Milburn debacle. That was just wierd. Having them act as intelegent scientists, confronted with an alien species for the first time. I also never understood the Fifield yelling at Shaw, outside of the chamber. That felt somewhat misplaced..."

Who said they are intelligent?

David 8 is the intelligent character...having multiple 'super men' would diminish David.

Intelligent Millburn- "These seem to be a dangerous Riftia pachyptila, perhaps we should leave...?"

Intelligent Fifield- "I concur, we should leave the cave immediately.."

Boring.

Having all your characters be super-intelligent supermen(smart unerring scientists) ...Would turn them into hero like characters(Dudley do rights/infallible) .......the characters would then demand, by popularity with the audience, more screen time and a bigger role in the plot.

You need disposable characters in a haunted house flick. 

I think that the engineers and the Belugamorph would've been enough of a tease for Alien for the first film. Would've saved the Deacon for the second film 

@Starlogger - Thank You, must be a inteligent guy (smiley! )

@Grinning & Dropping Linen - That is exactly what I was thinking, I totally agree.

@MonsterZero - That really made me laugh! And You'Re right! Who would like to se more of Fifield? (God forbid) Though behaving rational don't make You a superinteligent superhero, but I get what You mean. Your post made my evening!

@Pakerparrot.

Thanks!

If the Prometheus crew were really intelligent...they would have stayed back on Earth relaxing in hot tubs...waiting for David 8 to return from LV223!!

Darn right, MonsterZero! The only way to be sure...

Excellent topic. I share most frustrations.

Get rid of Shaw, Holloway, Fifield, Millburn, and the lady with a Scottish accent.

Make Charles Bishop Weyland the central character, and his quest to seek out humanity's destiny among the stars.

Don't don Guy Pearce in appalling make-up -- in fact don't make Guy Pearce Weyland at all! Save him for another role, and use an actual old guy i.e. Lance Henriksen.

Give Janek and his 2 lieutenants more airtime, and make better use of Charlize Theron.

Tear out every engineer and make the space jockeys a bona fide extra terrestrial.

And definitely no damned black goo!!!

Finally, my outline of a story would be that the humans find an ancient artifact which they realise is instructions on how to build a faster-than-light craft. Weyland builds it and brings together a team to journey in it. The craft is self-piloting and takes them to a mysterious world where they discover the space jockeys -- as we have always imagined them to be. But the humans soon realise it's all a ruse and they've been lured to this place as a source of fodder for the space jockey's war machine: the xenomorph. Fortunately, the surviving humans manage to turn the space jockey's deadly weapon against them and infect them before they head for earth. The last space jockey tries to escape but is chest-bursted by the first queen. And the rest is history.

@Stan... I TOTALLY agree about the Black Goo. I REALLY don't like the concept, and think it is just too "generic", I guess. They may do something wonderful with it, but so far, count me as one to think they could've done COMPLETELY without it. Genetic splicing and cloning and "induced" mutations are already part of our scientific repertoire, and in the future "Engineers" would damn sure be able to make any creature they wanted without it.

Well, it's a hard question because the initial premise, the engineers seeded life on earth, feels like the first wrong step, but that's what took us to Zeta Reticli. So you'd have to take a whole other approach. In a way, I wish A. The space jockeys were what they appeared to be, aliens with elephant trunks. If you told the story without any humans at all, just these weird aliens and how they initially encounter and deal with the Xenos, that's a more interesting movie: 

the black goo, for example, isn't an improvement on the life cycle of the alien, if anything it's just another version of ambulatory infection/host/chest burst, but lacks so much of the elegance and horrificness of the Giger alien. To be honest, it's more like the tons of Alien knockoffs that came out after Alien. 

Another shortcoming of Prometheus is the characters are boilerplate. Parker & Brett, Dallas, Hudson & Hicks great & memorable characters - who did Prometheus have? Honestly, Fifield was so weirdly antagonistic and the biologist was such a dipshit, who wasn't cheering for them to be first kills? I agree the actor playing Holloway was a terrible choice, but to be honest, every scene he's calling Shaw babe or looking at her meaningfully, we get it, you're a couple but real couples don't broadcast like that, it made him seem creepy, who doesn't want to see him die. 

So scrap all the humans, send the space jockey ship to one of the moons, the first third of the movie is just taking in their weird ship and culture, like one of the joys (still) of Alien is that it's so fucking alien, things we've never seen before, so go with that, it's a cop out to have them using holograms and technology we'd use ourselves, go crazy, push the technology as part of you angle, make it gross and fascinating - finally, we assume(d) the Xenos were part of a evolutionary process so dire it created the ultimate living/killing machine, so go to a world that hellish and show us what it's like... they crash or what have you, encounter eggs, facehuggers, then when the aliens start getting born, based on what we know about aliens taking on characteristics of their hosts, make some badass aliens based on space jockey variants. 

That's how I would fix Prometheus

If I could rewrite Prometheus, I'd make it so Dr. Ford survives. Shaw would still be a main character in the story, but I would unexpectedly let Dr. Ford live and play a bigger role in the end.

In my version of it, we would see Dr. Shaw freeze up after the Engineer rips off David's head, while Dr. Ford would be the one who eventually uses the Trilobyte against the Engineer (and ends up stuck on the planet).  IMO it makes the next parts of the story easier to swallow if David uses Dr. Ford.

Prometheus was really just the start of David's "adventure."  It wasn't all about Dr. Shaw, but the writers couldn't make an android the male lead or co-protagonist at that point.  I'd make it clear that David is perhaps a more important character to the future of the series, as he'd be a main character in his own right.  We don't need to empathize or sympathize with Shaw, because David doesn't feel much when he does what he does.

It potentially makes more sense to use Dr. Ford as part of David's next "experiment."  Ford was willing to help David put Shaw back to sleep after she learned about the creature growing inside her.  David chooses to use Dr. Shaw as his test subject, while Dr. Ford is simply asked to "assist" David... 

With the way things play out, the company appreciates Ford sending them data on the Trilobyte in her secret transmissions to them.  It turns out that Dr. Ford was looking out for Weyland corp's interests the whole time, as she knew Sir Weyland was aboard the ship.  This is partially why Ford shows little reaction when Dr. Shaw stumbles in on them tending to Mr. Weyland. 

I would basically focus on David more, make the writing far less ambiguous, and have it be apparent that Dr. Ford was part of Weyland's secret agenda all along.  If Ford is able to survive, and we find out she was "in on it" the whole time (sort of like a Burke character), it's easier to use her as part of David's later experiments.  There are some who like the Shaw character and don't want to see her suffer a tragic fate:  this could allow Dr. Ford to be used as a plot device instead.

One thing to consider is whether or not the Engineer actually killed Dr. Ford or simply broke a number of her bones when it tossed her aside.  There's a chance that David lost track of Dr. Ford's body while he was worrying about his own body being tossed around inside the Juggernaut.  He assumes that Dr. Ford is dead when he tries to contact Shaw but detects faint signs of life from Ford's body.  The Engineer is heading to Shaw's location in a hurry, while Ford is stuck crawling out of the wreckage with a bunch of broken bones and many injuries. David decides not to tell Dr. Shaw that Dr. Ford is still alive.

Ford is pissed off at the android for leaving her for dead, but her medical knowledge allows her to fix herself up enough that she manages to survive -- just barely.  Shaw's transmission makes the company think there are no other survivors left on the planet.  We would see that Ford and a security officer are stranded alone on LV-223 after David and Shaw leave. The Deacon eventually tries to attack them, and they work together to survive until the company finally shows up about 3 years later.  The company takes so long to rescue them that it forces them to leave the relative safety of the life cabin, where Ford is able to patch herself up (before running out of air at the 2 year mark).  But that's a whole different story for another time.

Smarter Scientists.

After the outbreak (as shown in hologram) we see a flash back of another surviving Engineer take flight only to crash land on near bye LV426, crash landing into an Engineer outpost crushing it into its subterranean complex.

The Engineer pilot's chest erupts and a Xeno (large, fully formed and large) chest burster falls to the floor of the pilots chair. It's blood burns a hole through the ships floor and down'through dark levels into a huge silo like expanse.

The Xeno moves down into the dark expanse where it matures.

The Juvenile finds and kills the few Engineers who escaped the crash.

The Juvenile becomes a Queen and lays eggs. She grown old over millennia and dies.

2000 years later we see a ship landing........

Flash forward.

No silly octopus fleshy creatures.

Only Gigeresque creature design.

No giving the plot away in the trailer.

We get a quick glimpse as to what is chasing the Engineers in hologram.

That'll do it......

Was going to do a re-write myself, i had a number of changes jotted down.

The broad Changes was.

*Tone down some of the Goofy/Cheesy Dialog

*Flesh out some Characters

*Add more clues to some of the Dialog but not as Spoon Fed as Spaights especially Commander Data i mean Holloway lol

*Spend bit more time on the Mural and Fresco, and give some minor clues.

*Scene behind the Mural Door that exposed a Sacrificial Chamber with another Mural but again only vaguely see this room.

*Re-fit the missing parts that made some elements silly, like Fifield and Milburn getting lost (the drafts had good reason for this).   Add extra dialog for other elements like the taking off the Helmets supported more by a bit more information on the Atmosphere composition via a Device (but we got this explained loosely by David and Ford).

*Change the Prologue a bit and other parts to make more of a Ancient God connection like throw in parts from Spaights Draft that highlighted Changes to our Evolution at constant intervals etc. 

*Give a More Xeno looking Fifield who kills few less people.

*Show a scene of the Hammerpedes having Eggs, that look like small Xeno ones.

Few more changes here and there....

But certainly No Spaights Xeno Flick where Shaw (Watts) basically makes Ripley seem a total (kitten) i felt it was lame she basically killed nearly all the Xenos in that flick lol... Like she was more Bad As than Doom Marine from the Doom Games.

And also Nope... dont explore the Deacon more... it was fine how it was, we needed to leave a number of things vague more not as vague so that a Sequel would cover them.

Oh my Draft...

Ford dies from injuries after being attacked by a Hammerpede

Vickers gets picked up by Engineer as he seems impressed with her, and Shat attacks him with the Axe, and this pisses him off and he flings Vickers to the Floor and she bangs her head and cuts it open....

Engineer then attacks Shaw as per alternative Scene, When Shaw runs off she looks at Vickers Body and she its twitching like ASH but has Red Blood... she soons gathers stuff and leaves the Life Boat.

These Changes was to show that the Engineer maybe had no real interest in killing the Females, and maybe he had other interests for them.

Thanks everyone for contributing.  I been away due to work and came back to read all these responses.  Personally, I just wished they confined the story to LV-426 and stop making the planets so earth-like (like in the current Alien Covenant).  I love the bleak looking worlds.