The recent Alien: Romulus received a mostly positive response from critics and fans, but one aspect of the movie that was met with almost universal backlash was the likeness of a deceased actor being used to introduce a new character via VFX.
When Rain Carradine and her crew arrive on the derelict space station, they learn that the ship's android is still functional despite clearly being in very bad shape after a Xenomorph attack. They plug him in to discover what happened, and we see that the synthetic (sorry, artificial person) is the same model as Ash from Ridley Scott's original movie.
The late Ian Holm was "resurrected" (with permission from the actor's estate) to achieve this, but even setting aside the controversy surrounding the practice of "digital necromancy," the effects used to portray the character were... not the best.
Some shots looked okay, but for the majority of Rook's screen-time, his face basically looked like someone using a Snapchat filter.
During a new interview with Empire (via FearHQ.com) to mark the movie's home release, director Fede Álvarez admits that he wasn't happy with the finished product.
“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 of the CG intervention. So, for people that react negatively, I don’t blame them."
However, Alvarez has assured fans that the home entertainment release of Romulus features a new-and-improved Rook.
“We fixed it,” he confirms. “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.”
The filmmaker went on to explain how an animatronic puppeteer used resources from one of Holm's other projects to assist in the Rook's creation.
"Shane Mahan actually did this animatronic of Ian Holm based on a head cast from Lord of the Rings, and that was the only one in existence. What we did [for the home entertainment version] was revert a lot more to the puppet. It’s way better."
"Not a perfect organism, but despite an overreliance on retreading over old ground, Alien: Romulus does mark a thrilling return to form, and is surely destined to be ranked as the third-best Alien movie," we said in our review of Alien: Romulus.
"The sci-fi/horror-thriller takes the phenomenally successful Alien franchise back to its roots: While scavenging the deep ends of a derelict space station, a group of young space colonizers come face to face with the most terrifying life form in the universe."
The film stars Cailee Spaeny (Priscilla), David Jonsson (Agatha Christie’s Murder is Easy), Archie Renaux (Shadow and Bone), Isabela Merced (The Last of Us), Spike Fearn (Aftersun), and Aileen Wu. Fede Alvarez (Evil Dead, Don’t Breathe) directs from a screenplay he wrote with frequent collaborator Rodo Sayagues (Don’t Breathe 2) based on characters created by Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett.
Alien: Romulus is produced by Ridley Scott (Napoleon), who directed the original Alien and produced and directed the series’ entries Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, Michael Pruss (Boston Strangler), and Walter Hill (Alien), with Fede Alvarez, Elizabeth Cantillon (Charlie’s Angels), Brent O’Connor (Bullet Train), and Tom Moran (Unstoppable) serving as executive producers.