It's a commonly accepted theory that people in the future will be more intelligent than they are today. Humanity certainly knows more about health and science than it did fifty years ago. There is even talk of people living to be over a hundred years old without experiencing any disease. Despite all the knowledge humans might gain nothing will ever be able to topple some good old-fashioned common sense. All the book smarts in the world will never save somebody from making that one stupid mistake. Even the supposedly smartest sci-fi characters sometimes screw up. If they didn't watching their stores would be like viewing the existence of robots in the future or in galaxies a long time ago. Not very interesting unless their name happens to be WALL-E. It is their mistakes that make these characters seem more human to us and allows the audience to personally identify with them. Humanity, after all, is a flawed species. Nevertheless sometimes these characters really were just a big group of idiots.
14. Carter J. Burke - Aliens
What a jerk. Seriously. This guy is so obsessed with making money and moving up in the corporation he works for that he is willing to go to a hostile planet and sacrifice the lives of everyone around him. Ripley should have shot him in the face when she got a chance, but instead lets him live. She is the good "guy" after all. Not only is this money grubbing whore the face of the impersonal company that ruins Ripley's life in the Alien movies, but he is also a moron. Once it becomes apparent that something extremely dangerous lives on the planet of LV-426 he decides to accompany the group of Marines sent to exterminate the danger. That would be like a combat photographer demanding to go on a black-ops raid. Not the best decision anyone could make. Burke gets exactly what he deserves in a little poetic justice served up by James Cameron when he comes face to face with the xenomorph that was going to make him a millionaire.