The Emotional Reason 'Alien: Romulus' Brought Back That Spoiler Character: ‘It Was One Of The Best Memories Of His Life’

Cinema Blend

Interview with Writer / Director / Producer Fede Álvarez

Transcript

00:00I'd love to discuss the use of Ash, and obviously the great Ian Holm.

00:03I'd love to know what was that process like, and I guess if there are rules,

00:08what are the rules for something like that now?

00:10Do you guys reach out to his estate and see how they feel about it?

00:12Yeah, yeah, I mean, it started with, because I knew I was going to build an animatronic for it, right?

00:19I knew I was going to build an animatronic that was going to be,

00:21I wasn't going to put an actor through the table.

00:24I wasn't going to get someone to put the torso through a table and pretend they're animatronic.

00:30So I was like, if it's supposed to be a robot, let's build a robot.

00:33That's what it should be.

00:35And I knew the limitations of the technology would be justified because it's a malfunctioning robot,

00:39so it wasn't supposed to work perfectly.

00:42So I was like, good, we can do that.

00:44So once we decide that, we knew it could look however we wanted,

00:49because it wasn't going to be an actor.

00:50We have to mold a face and create a face.

00:52And so talking with Ridley, we both came up with this idea that we both agreed that it was unfair

00:59that Lance Henriksen came back so many times and Michael Fassbender did it a couple of times.

01:04And there was all these actors that got to play different synthetics,

01:08but the best one of them all, Ian Holm, didn't get to do it twice.

01:12So he was really good friends with Ian, and he thought he would have loved to do it.

01:16But still, the first thing I did was personally, I called his widow

01:20and pitched the idea to her and make sure that she talked with his kids

01:25and make sure the whole family was on board with this idea, you know,

01:29because he had passed away not too long ago.

01:31And actually, my dad passed away the same year that Ian Holm did,

01:34so I know how delicate that can be.

01:36So I just want to make sure that they were okay with it.

01:39And, you know, his widow agreed that, you know, Ian, in the last years of his life,

01:45he kind of felt the cold shoulder of Hollywood,

01:47that he wasn't called for many projects and nothing interesting.

01:53And he would have loved to get the call to be part of Alien again

01:56because he loved that character and he loved the character of Ash,

02:00and he was one of the best members of his life.

02:02So they told us that it was okay to do it.

02:06And then also, what I never really tried to do is I never tried to recreate it in a home.

02:11That's impossible.

02:12There's no technology that can bring the talent of an actor,

02:14the nuances of their performance.

02:16There's no way we can know what it would do.

02:18All we approach it from the point of view of, like, recreating a likeness, a face.

02:24But the character is different.

02:25It's a different character.

02:26It's called Rook and has a different personality.

02:28So the style could be different, and we hired an actor to play the voice

02:35and the performance that translated into the animatronic.

02:40So it was this whole incredible, you know, amazing adventure that implied,

02:46also, in a way, to hire a lot of people to do it.

02:50It was this whole adventure.

02:51But we're really proud of it.

02:52Actually, I wish you could see this,

02:54but I was just showing someone the incredible head that, look at this.

03:01You'll get to see it.

03:02I don't know.

03:02I don't know if you get to see it.

03:03Do you get to see it?

03:04Oh, yeah.

03:05That's cool.

03:06Look at that.

03:07Yes.

03:08That's so sick.

03:11Oh, my God.

03:13That's incredible.

03:15That is amazing.

03:16That's the head, the whole body, the guys from Legacy, you know,

03:22Shane Mayhem, who did The Queen on Aliens and all the team,

03:25like, they took on the challenge.

03:28We find a head cast of Ian Holm from Lord of the Rings that he did for,

03:32it's the only one that existed from 1999 that he did when he was starting

03:37to play Bilbo.

03:39So we went out, workshop, had it,

03:41and that was the beginning of the molding of this face.

03:46And then, you know, if you see the movie,

03:47you need some CG for the lips in some moments,

03:50and there's some shots that needed that.

03:52But a lot of the shots, it's just you just look at the animatronic,

03:54which I think is amazing.

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