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Warning! Spoilers ahead for Alien: Romulus.
Alien: Romulus director Fede Alvarez and producer Ridley Scott defend the film’s digital resurrection of a deceased actor. Taking place between Alien and Aliens, Alvarez’ 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: Romulus reviews have been generally positive from critics, but the film has caught flack online for its decision to digitally recreate the original Alien star Ian Holm, who passed away in 2020, for the role of Rook, a villainous AI synthetic.
In a recent interview with LA Times, both Alvarez and Scott defend Holm’s visual effects resurrection in Alien: Romulus. Check out their comments 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,” says Scott, 86. “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.”
More to come…
Source: LA Times
Alien: Romulus
3.5
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.
- Director
- Fede Alvarez
- Release Date
- August 16, 2024
- Studio(s)
- Scott Free Productions , 20th Century
- Distributor(s)
- 20th Century
- Writers
- Fede Alvarez , Rodo Sayagues , Dan O’Bannon , Ronald Shusett
- Runtime
- 119 Minutes