I can't believe how selfish they were.

A little negative but I'd have to agree. I watched it twice just to make sure. It's dog 5hit

It would help if their spouses weren't among the active crew. The spouses should have been in hypersleep while the crew should have had no ties. That way someone else other than Faris will die, and Tennessee won't risk sending Covenant down to be possibly struck by a dangerous storm. I know they're colonists, but seriously, in missions like this, you need a crew that has no physical or emotional ties to one another. That's how the first Alien movie happened as well, because most of the crew had an emotional tie to Kane for being their friend.

Responding to both you and FordFairlane: I'm not advocating "evolutionary rationality". I'm not advocating anything, I'm simply posing a possible explanation of why events took place in the way that they did. Human brains are wired in an evolutionary way, yes, but we can use our intellect and not rely on human nature. We can use intelligence to make better and more rational decisions.

Altruism is an evolved trait in humanity. Usually with altruism there is an implicitly expected payback. Or, sometimes the mere increase in social standing within the group (and thereby higher preference by the opposite sex) justifies the altruistic behavior.

It's much more difficult to show altruism towards the "out-group" thanks to group bias. It's much more difficult to show altruism towards someone in China or North Korea or the middle east.

That being said, I'm not saying that evolutionary nature cannot be overcome. Some people give charity to Africa and never publicize or broadcast the charity-giving (they don't gain social status from it). This is a completely intelligence based decision and a completely evolutionarily irrational decision. Ofcourse, people who show this type of behavior are an extreme minority.

To FordFairlane's argument regarding how these weren't average joes: Do not underestimate intelligent knowlegeable people's capacity for irrationality. People behave in irrational ways regardless of how intelligent and knowledgeable they are. Just look at The Milgram Experiment or the Stanford Prison experiment. Look at any of the large number of fallacies and biases that humans fall for on a regular basis. Humans are not perfect by any means, regardless of position.

I know about intelligent, decently reputable University professors who not only fail to discourage tribalism and conflict based on group differences and power acquisition, but they actively encourage tribalism and group bias. This is just an example.

I keep retconning it like that in my head. But I have to assume what ever happens to the prometheus/covenant/other2movies gets lost forever as every movies after these prequals implies lvv-426 was our first encounter with the space jokeys and alien.