Fede Álvarez Comments On Ian Holm CGI in ‘Alien: Romulus’ Home Release: “We Fixed It”

Fede Álvarez, director of last summer’s horror blockbuster Alien: Romulus, stated in a recent interview that they touched up some of the CGI on Ian Holm’s Rook for the film’s home release. The sequel/prequel controversially used CGI to recreate the face and voice of the late Ian Holm to play a character in the film. The crew of course got the approval of Ian Holm’s estate to use his likeness, but that did not stop people from questioning the ethics of essentially resurrecting a deceased actor to be used as fan service.

Ethics aside, a major point of criticism towards Alien: Romulus was that the CGI used to create Rook was distractingly poor, and the constant reappearance of the character pulled some people out of the film. In an interview with Empire, Alvarez admitted that he was not happy with how Rook turned out in the theatrical cut of the film. He said, “We just ran out of time in post-production to get it right. I wasn’t 100 per cent happy with some of the shots, where you could feel a bit more the CG intervention. So, for people that react negatively, I don’t blame them.”

As a result of this, Álvarez and the Romulus team went back in and touched up the CGI on Rook to help him appear less uncanny and a more natural part of the film. He said, “We fixed it. We made it better for the release right now. I convinced the studio we need to spend the money and make sure we give the companies that were involved in making it the proper time to finish it and do it right. It’s so much better.” So for anyone buying a copy of Alien: Romulus physically or digitally, Ian Holm should hopefully look a bit less uncanny.

Ultimately, this does not really solve the ethical question of whether Ian Holm’s likeness should be used in the first place. But that was not really the goal of this fix, and to the average viewer it should now be a better experience. Alien: Romulus, the seventh mainline Alien film and taking place between Alien and Aliens, is now available on digital, Blu-ray and DVD and is streaming on Hulu/Disney+.