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Ironically, the very category Alien: Romulus is being nominated for in early awards competitions is its visual effects, but some scenes are so crispy they take you out of the movie.
It’s probably obvious which ones, but if you don’t know, and this is a spoiler, it’s the ones involving Rook, the nefarious robot modeled after the first Alien’s similar villain, Ash, played by Ian Holm in 1979.
Using the late Holm’s countenance, visual effects creators used CGI to overlay his face onto Rook’s as an homage to the first movie. Only, it’s not convincing enough and looks like a one-way trip to Uncanny Valley.
Thankfully director Fede Alvarez says they’ve fixed the effect for the physical release of the film.
Alvarez says he wasn’t blind to the rudimentary looking Ash/Rook and he admits it was caused by time constraints.
“We just ran out of time in post-production to get it right,” He told Empire recently. “I wasn’t one-hundred percent 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.”
But now time isn’t so much a factor and Alvarez went back and improved the effect for its physical release. They used a more practical approach using existing puppetry including a mold of Holm’s face and relied less on CGI.
“We fixed it,” he continues. “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.”
Computer-generated effects have come a long way over the past 10 years. But there is still some work to do in digitally crafting a realistic human face. Even 2023’s Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny couldn’t quite replicate Harrison Ford’s in a flashback sequence where de-aging was necessary. It’s a wonder why because nowadays convincing deepfakes on social media are incredibly accurate.
Let us know if you noticed the changes in Alien: Romulus and whether or not its an improvement over the theatrical version.