Beyond the Mountains of Madness: Lovecraftian Cosmic Horror and Posthuman Creationism in Ridley Scott’s Prometheus (2012)

The Engineer appears to have sacrificed his own life in order to seed a planet, indicating members of this race are willing to destroy themselves in the service of a greater cause. [...]while Prometheus embraces von Däniken's notion that alien intervention shaped human cultures (as shown in the cave paintings of giants communicating with people across a range of ancient civilizations on Earth Shaw and Holloway discovered), it goes much further. [...]an admission undermines the transhumanist faith that human technology, rationality, and the scientific method will lead to massively enhanced longevity and posthuman immortality. [...]a team led by David takes Weyland to a sleeping Engineer survivor, whom the android both awakens and communicates with by utilizing his superior understanding of their language and technology. The Engineer's physical superiority and disdain for human endeavor are then expressed when he tears off David's head and beats the aging billionaire to death with it. [...]Weyland's role shifts from Frankenstein to that of his Creature, begging for answers from a disgusted creator (or representative of a creator as yet undiscovered) who desires (but in this case has the power) to "extinguish the spark which [he] so negligently bestowed" (77). [...]the film's ending leaves Shaw and David set to be swallowed by the encroaching black seas of infinity, as posthuman creationism reveals a post-species universe, in which all life-forms are simply components in an incomprehensible cosmic system of evolution by intelligent design