Although the 2024 midquel Alien: Romulus, in theory, is a standalone adventure set between the original 1979 film Alien and the 1986 sequel Aliens, Fede Álvarez couldn’t help but put a very big Easter egg smack in the middle of the film’s basic plot. By now, it’s hardly a spoiler to say that the visage of the late Ian Holm appears in this film, looking pretty much the way he looked when he played the synthetic Nostromo crewmember Ash in the first Ridley Scott sci-fi classic. In Romulus, a digital recreation of 1979-ish Ian Holm was used to give us Rook, a synthetic that was the same model as Ash, but who predated Bishop (Lance Henriksen) in Aliens.
And, if fans were annoyed by the way this visual effect was achieved, the home video release for Romulus has reasonably improved the quality of the resurrected Ian Holm. As pointed out by Gizmodo and Screencrush, the home video version of Romulus features a more convincing version of Rook, and lacks the commonly-cited “uncanny valley” feeling of digitally recreated actors, or digital de-aging in general. One fan on Twitter (now referred to as X) asked Álvarez directly if he did actually spearhead changes to the appearance of Rook in the home video release, to which Álvarez replied simply: “Yes.”
