Looks like the movie has just hit digital today, so the tinkering should begin in earnest.

My big question is this: Considering the plotting, the way the plotting works, and the way the movie ends up working out - instead of trying to fix the bad mishmash of CGI/AI elements used to digitally resurrect Ian Holm (for basically zero reason), is there a way to simply eliminate the character entirely?

Can you pull Rook out of the movie entirely, remove all the exposition he dumps, and simply have Rain take his chip, put it in Andy, have Andy start acting spooky/weird, and still have the movie make sense as an Alien movie? I think you can. I think you’ll lose one or two jumpscares (starting with Rook grabbing Rain) and some of the explanation as to what exactly is happening in the title sequence, but I think a lot of that explanation is pretty unnecessary anyway, and the lack of it being spelled out might actually help the tension.

I do think ultimately folks are gonna have to wait until the physical release to see what the deleted scenes/scene extensions are, but until then: I’m most curious to see if there’s a way to just pull Rook out of the movie entirely, because so far as I can tell, in terms of what the story is actually doing - he’s completely unnecessary.

Everything else I think you can kinda leave mostly alone (although I think if you simply remove “you bitch” and the smile from Andy’s rescue of Rain, THAT scene is salvaged) - maybe cut the log (why is she leaving a log, it’s a stolen ship) but otherwise I think the biggest offense is Rook, not just aesthetically but in terms of story.