Yesterday, Alien: Romulus had its official general release, and fans around the world are finally getting to see the latest addition to the Alien pantheon. The film has been massing a positive score from the critics. As of writing, the film holds a critic score of 81% and an audience score of 87% on Rotten Tomatoes, and the polls on our own website and forum are hanging on the positive side of the scale too. Spoilers follow.
But there’s been one aspect of Alien: Romulus in particular that has been causing diversion among the fandom, and that has been the more overt references towards the previous films in the series. And there’s no bigger controversial callback in the film than the inclusion of another model of Ash android, named Rook, which reused the likeness of the late Sir Ian Holm and this time voiced by Daniel Betts.
Alien: Romulus writer/director recently spoke to Entertainment Weekly about the inclusion of Rook and how while the franchise has often revisited the Bishop model, how it came from a desire to revisit what he considered to be the best synthetic character from the series.
“Historically, there’s just a limited amount of synthetics, and that’s why some come back a few times. So we were talking, and Ridley and I felt like the one that has never been back was the best one of them all, the original model played by Ian Holm.”
![[Spoilers] Fede Alvarez Talks That Character's Return in Alien: Romulus](https://www.avpgalaxy.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/17082024_02-469x700.jpg)
Fede was soon on the phone to Sir Ian Holm’s widow, who consented to his likeness being used, and his family were among the first to see an early cut of the film.
“The whole thing started with me calling the estate and talking with his widow. She felt that Ian was given the cold shoulder by Hollywood in the last years of his life, that he would’ve loved to be part of more projects after The Hobbit, but he wasn’t. So she was thrilled about the idea of having him back.”
“As soon as we finished the rough version, the first thing I did was a call with all his family to make sure they were the first ones that saw it,” Álvarez says. “It was a very, very emotional call. They lost him not too long ago, and I lost my dad, too, around the same time. So I could relate to their pain and also their excitement to see him back in the movie. I’m super proud of how we did it and how we worked with them. I can’t wait for the fans to lose their minds at seeing one of their favorite faces from the original.”
Discussing how Ash and Rook related to each other, Fede shared his thoughts on this model and how they were actually extensions of Mother.
“He has the likeness, but he has a different demeanor. Rook and Ash have the same knowledge because it’s all Mother. It’s a different android, but it’s the same consciousness of Mother that moved from one android to the other.”
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Plus, it's not worth having anyways. The file was low quality 480p, horrible audio that was hard to understand, and had watermarks galore. You don't want to have this.
Nope, it was a timed file that I was given access to from a server. I couldn't copy it or download it in any way. Just streamed it. I don't have access to it anymore.
Provided a copy huh?
Could you also provide us a copy? 😅
Fede in an interview tried to say only the mouth and eyes had some CGI to fine tune but that's ... very clearly not the case. The cuts between the digital head and the puppet in longer shots are noticeable and jarring.
I'll say the Rook puppet may have looked nice visually, but the moment it started speaking it looked like a muppet. You could tell a hand was in the head opening the mouth to make it talk. The eyes got messed up too and weren't working properly either. Not in the way that would look good for a damaged synthetic, but in a way that was worse than what we got with the CGI enhancements.
It 100% needed the enhanced visuals, but probably needed more time to cook.
An AI company is credited with it in the credits.
And yes I originally though Bishop was makeup job and wondered how half his heading was missing.
Mike-something (sorry don't remember his username) says Rook was all practical at his test screening and was augmented for final release.
Anyhow it definitely read very digital to me, but reception to Rogue One taught me how subjective these things can be.
Also, I actually used to think the Bishop puppet in Alien 3 was Lance in makeup!
AshRook. Just a puppet that wasn't as good as the 30 year old Bishop from Alien 3.1. Guy Pearce old makeup (Prometheus)
2. CG Ian Holm Rook (Romulus)
cast your votes now
Same way bits of the ship apparently didn't get vapourised. I mean yeah it makes zero sense but this series is rather making it up as it goes along.
Personally I didn't mind another Ash model.
They should have mangled the face up, a la Bishop in Alien 3. Or, alternatively, cast someone else and not made Rook an Ash model!
I would have taken that over what we got. Have it be this glitchy robotic mess of a practical effect.
I agree.
https://i.postimg.cc/SQz2r7k5/Rook1.jpg
Was like that dude from Beetlejuice when they first turned him on.
I think I would have enjoyed (this is what I expected) the Holm scenes to be when they find the original Alien and maybe a little montage of them extracting testing etc.
Cheers for that Ridley!!
Then I pictured Sil firing off a Pulse Rifle in the cinema with popcorn as the ammo.
Rumour has it there was kernels in the grenade launcher.
Spoiler
I always liked to imagine all the Aliens were able to see just like us, but through completely different means, y'know, making them more alien
and intelligence tbhThe effects weren't fantastic, but they were never bad enough to take me out of the movie. I think they looked best on the monitors.
I'm glad that Fede got the Holm estate's permission first, but it still feels unnecessary.
I also wonder whether Rook having the likeness of Ian Holm was a side effect of the bump from Hulu to cinemas. If I recall, Phoebe Waller-Bridge was supposed to play Rook, but it's possible her role was changed when they got the go ahead for a big screen production. More people talking about a controversial role gets more people in seats.
Didn't they buy it just to protect the Aliens in Sevastopol? I don't think WY would have found much use for those synthetics otherwise.
But yeah, it'd have been possible to work around that in Romulus.
WY buys out Seegson at the end of Isolation.
Also Romulus proved already that it isn't beholden to the specifics of EU lore, despite cherrypicking things it likes from it. Plagiarus praepotens is mentioned by name in Romulus, despite the name not being coined by Blue until some time after Alien 3 in The Cold Forge.
Yeah, that makes sense. It's been around 10 years since I completed that game and completely forgot about the whole Seegson thing. Time to give the game another go. But anyway it was still not totally impossible for WY to use similar looking models for certain jobs.
https://static1.thegamerimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Androids.jpg
Oh right. I don't remember the exact dialogue beyond the characters being the same temp as the ambient temp.