The following will get into spoilers for Fede Alvarez’s Alien: Romulus, so head to the movies now and check out the film, before you read about these specific details.
One the timeline of Alien films, the new chapter Alien: Romulus falls between Sir Ridley Scott’s seminal Alien, and James Cameron’s Aliens. We learn what happened to the Xenomorph that is ejected out into space by Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), and even apparently get clues to where Ripley might be during this event. The movie already is off to a good start at the box office, and though it is earning divisive reviews, it seems to be generating conversation, which is always a good thing.
One topic that seems to be dividing the fanbase is the “return” of Alien star Ian Holm, who died in 2020 but is brought back through the use of animatronics, CGI and facial capture. Holm played Ash in Alien, an android tasked with retrieving the alien species so it could be studied by the Weyland-Yutani corporation. It’s not Ash that audiences see in Alien: Romulus but rather Rook, another synth who has been half-destroyed by the alien threats in the Romulus ship.
Seeing Ian Holm in Alien: Romulus is jarring. Other franchises have brought back deceased actors, recently including Harold Ramis in Ghostbusters: Afterlife. The technology to resurrect a late actor isn’t quite there yet, and there will always be the debate about whether or not it should be done at all. While appearing as a guest on CinemaBlend’s official ReelBlend podcast, Alien: Romulus director Fede Alvarez opened up about the work that went into creating Holm’s portrayal, and how Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings assisted the team.
Alvarez said to ReelBlend:
I knew I was going to build an animatronic for it. I wasn't going to put an actor through the table. I wasn't going to get someone to put the torso through a table and pretend they are animatronic. So I was like, ‘If it is supposed to be a robot, let's build a robot. That's what it should be.’ I knew, (with) the limitations of the technology, it would be justified because it's a malfunctioning robot. So it wasn't supposed to work perfectly. So I was like, ‘Good. We can do that.’ Once we decided that we knew it could look however we wanted, because it wasn't going to be an actor, we had to mold the face, and create a face. … We found a head cast of Ian Holm from The Lord the Rings that he did. It is the only one that existed from 1999 that he did when he was starting to play Bilbo. Weta workshop had it, and that was the beginning of the molding of his face.
Never get rid of your props, Hollywood. You don’t know when a head cast of Ian Holm as Bilbo Baggins might be used to recreate Ash from Ridley Scott’s Alien! How is that a sentence that one can write in 2024.
Without question, the technology exists to recreate Ian Holm on an android in Alien: Romulus. But SHOULD the act be done. Fede Alvarez knew that he could not even attempt such a maneuver without the blessings of Holm’s family, specifically his children. As he explained to ReelBlend:
The first thing I did was, personally, I called his widow and pitched the idea to her, and made sure that she talked with his kids and made sure the whole family was on board with this idea. Because he had passed away not too long ago. And actually, my dad passed away the same year that Ian Holm did. So I know how delicate that can be. So I just wanted to make sure that they were okay with it. And his widow agreed that Ian, in the last years of his life, he kind of felt the cold shoulder of Hollywood. He wasn't called for many projects, and nothing interesting. He would've loved to get the call to be part of Alien again, because he loved the character of Ash and it was one of the best memories of his life. So they told us that it was okay to do it.
Having the family’s blessing had to mean everything to Fede Alvarez. Inserting Ian Holm into this movie is one of many big swings taken by Alien: Romulus. Hear the director discuss most of them in the full ReelBlend conversation.
I’m interested to see how Alien: Romulus does at the box office, competing against the powerful Deadpool and Wolverine, but then setting up how it does against upcoming 2024 movies in weeks to come.
