Warning! Spoilers ahead for Alien: Romulus.
Summary
Alien: Romulusdirector Fede Alvarez and producer Ridley Scott defend the film’s digital resurrection of a deceased actor. Taking place betweenAlien andAliens, Alvarez’s new installment in the long-running franchise follows Cailee Spaeny’s Rain as she and a young crew encounter a Xenomorph aboard a derelict space station.Alien: Romulusreviewshave been generally positive from critics, but the film has caught flack online for its decision to digitally recreate originalAlienactor Ian Holm, who passed away in 2020, for the role of Rook, a villainous AI synthetic.
In a recent interview withLA Times, both Alvarez and Scott defend Holm’s CGI resurrection inAlien: Romulus. Bringing Rook to life involved a real animatronic on set as well as British actor Daniel Betts for facial capture, with Alvarez explaining that “It was 80 to 90% done by the puppeteers depending on the shot.” CGI was then used to alter aspects of the appearance like the eyes and mouth, with AI morphing Betts' voice to sound like Holm’s. Check out Alvarez and Scott’s comments about the digital recreation below:
Alvarez: “We were not trying to do what can’t be done, which is to reproduce that person’s talent as an actor, because this is another character. The only thing they have in common is the likeness.
“We knew we were going to create an animatronic, and that later we were going to do CGI enhancements in the mouth and in the eyes depending on the shots. Then the question arose, ‘What face does it have? Who is it?’ The only one who hadn’t reappeared and who we found fascinating was Ian Holm.
“In the last 10 years after ‘The Hobbit,’ Ian Holm felt like Hollywood had turned its back on him and his widow felt he would have loved to be a part of this. He loved this character in particular.”
“We’re not bringing someone back to life and saying, ‘Ian would have done it that way. He would have obviously done it differently. We had an actor who was on the set, who worked on the dialogue, who worked with the actors. It’s not like we skipped hiring an actor.”
“It’s so much more expensive to do it the way we did it — it’s much cheaper to just hire an actor. Doing it this way requires a team of so many people and so many parts to get it done that it’s never going to be really convenient.
“We did it all with a lot of respect and always with the authorization of his family, his children and his widow, who said, ‘We would love to see his likeness again."
Scott: “Ian Holm suddenly appearing as a company on-board robot — that’s bit of an old-fashioned word there — was a great idea. That’s how ideas work. Grand ideas evolve. The next step is ‘Blade Runner,’ where you get Roy Batty as an evolved replicant, a human who’s not human, but actually in essence, in old terminology, a robot.”
Holm played Ash in 1979’sAlienand wouldn’t return to film for any subsequent sequels.
Why Rook Has Been Controversial In Alien: Romulus
Ian Holm’s Digital Resurrection Has Been Divisive
Alien: Romulus' digital recreation of Holm isn’t the first time a deceased actor has been brought back to life using CGI. One of the earliest examples is actually in one of Scott’s films, with actor Oliver Reed having been digitally recreated after he died partway through filmingGladiator. Peter Cushing, too, was digitally recreated forRogue One. There are, of course, sometimes moral objections to such digital recreations, but Alvarez and Scott clearly obtained the Holm family’s blessing to do it forAlien: Romulus.
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Moral concerns, however, don’t seem to be why Rook has been a controversial inclusion in theAlien: Romuluscast. One big complaint is thatHolm’s digital recreation is ultimately an act of fan service that doesn’t add very much to the story.Alien: Romulusisn’t likeGladiatorin the sense that Holm was supposed to appear but died during filming. Too much fan service, in general, has been one key complaint regarding the film from critics, but Holm’s digital resurrection, in particular, has been deemed more distracting than anything else.
Another key complaint regardingHolm’s digital recreation is that the effect itself sticks out like a sore thumb in a film that otherwise features jaw-dropping practical and visual effects. Rook’s appearance, especially when he’s talking, arguably isn’t quite up to the standards of the film’s other effects, and digital actor recreations in general are still very difficult to pull off. Clearly, though, Alvarez and Scott both believe in Holm’s return inAlien: Romulus, and there is franchise precedent from a storytelling perspective that the same likeness is used for multiple synthetics.
Alien: Romulus
Cast
Alien: Romulus is the seventh film in the Alien franchise. The movie is directed by Fede Álvarez and will focus on a new young group of characters who come face to face with the terrifying Xenomorphs. Alien: Romulus is a stand-alone film and takes place in a time not yet explored in the Alien franchise.
