His Family Agreed With This Idea

SPOILER ALERT: This article discusses plot points, including the ending of “Alien: Romulus,” now playing in theaters.

When Fede Álvarez decided to create “Alien: Romulus,” he aimed to honor not just the acclaimed movies “Alien” and “Aliens,” but the entire series. “We have to embrace them all,” he tells Variety.

Despite this, a pivotal part of “Romulus” revolves around a character who died in the original film: Ash, the synthetic human played by the late Ian Holm. Previous films like “Alien 3” and “Alien vs. Predator” expanded the role of the android Bishop (Lance Henriksen), and Michael Fassbender’s David became central in the prequels. Álvarez felt it was time to bring Holm’s role (or at least his likeness) back to the series.

“It was out of fairness,” Álvarez explains. “Lance Henriksen and Michael Fassbender made multiple appearances, and I thought it was crazy that Ian Holm never returned.”

The director’s commitment to practical effects led to the creation of an actual animatronic to interact with the young cast. The plot follows a group of young colonists on a scavenger mission aboard a derelict space station, and the need for an authority figure to explain the vessel’s abandonment paved the way for including an android from Ash’s generation.

“Talking with Ridley, we came up with the idea that what if it has the likeness of Ian Holm — different from being Ian Holm or being Ash,” Álvarez says. “We’d never dare to reproduce that talent with any technology. So we created a different character that shares the same likeness.”

Before diving into the idea, Álvarez reached out to Holm’s heirs. He personally called Holm’s widow and family to ensure they were comfortable with the concept. Since he lost his own father in 2021, the same year Holm passed away, Álvarez was particularly sensitive about their feelings.

“His widow told me Ian felt Hollywood turned a cold shoulder to him in his last years,” he shares. “She said he would’ve loved to be invited back into ‘Alien,’ because he loved Ridley and the franchise.”

Though delighted to offer Holm’s likeness another screen presence, Álvarez stresses the complexity of these sequences means they won’t become frequent. “Someone said, ‘They’re going to replace us as actors,’ and I said, ‘It costs me one person’s salary to hire an actor. For this, I need 45 people and still an actor for the performance!’”

The return of Ash-like character seems inevitable. The original “Alien” is a masterpiece known frame by frame by fans. A sequence during the film’s climax further ties “Romulus” to the less acclaimed chapters of the franchise.

In this scene, Kay (Isabela Merced) gives birth to a hybrid of human and alien DNA, known as “the offspring.” This creature resembles the Engineers, the alien race from “Prometheus” that conceived humankind, and echoes the humanoid xenomorph birthed by a cloned Ripley in “Alien Resurrection.”

Surprisingly, Álvarez hadn’t thought of this connection until his son pointed it out at the premiere. “He goes, ‘It’s like in “Resurrection.”‘ I hadn’t processed it that way, but it’s true,” Álvarez confesses. He was more focused on the mythology from “Prometheus” and “Alien: Covenant,” which delve into the genetic links between humans and aliens.

“I was hoping people would pick up on the Engineer part of it,” he notes. “The black goo is the root of everything introduced in ‘Prometheus,’ affecting DNA to produce xenomorphs. It made sense to me that a human-xenomorph offspring would look like that.”

Álvarez admits the new life form raises more questions than answers. “It’s probably a new species, because that mix never happened before.”

Source: Variety