Warning: The below story contains FULL SPOILERS for Alien: Romulus. Alien: Romulus hit theaters this past weekend to positive reviews and a strong start at the box office , but one aspect of the movie has left a sour taste in some moviegoers’ mouths. Specifically, at about the midway point of the movie (and this is your last spoiler warning! ), a new synthetic named Rook is introduced, bearing the likeness of the late Ian Holm.
In the 1979 original Alien film, Holm, who passed away in 2020 , played the treacherous android Ash. It’s already inspired some passionate reactions online, who argue the use of CGI to replicate a late actor’s likeness is disrespectful or unethical. IGN’s Jesse Schedeen called it “a distracting and, frankly, unnecessary addition to the film.
” But director Fede Álvarez is defending the inclusion, telling The Hollywood Reporter in a new interview that it was Alien director Ridley Scott who actually wanted to see another version of Holm’s character. “It was unfair that the likeness of Ash was never used again. Lance Henriksen has been used a few times.
Michael Fassbender got to do it a few times,” Álvarez told the outlet, referencing other synthetics who reappeared in the series. “So when we started thinking about the likeness of this character with Ridley, it was going to be a torso [and head] that we would build. So it didn’t need to be the likeness of a current working actor, and Ridley was the one who said, ‘Ash was always .