logo Sign In

Post #1614456

Author
Broom Kid
Parent topic
Alien: Romulus - Alternate Cut (A Rook-Free Alien Experience)
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1614456/action/topic#1614456
Date created
31-Oct-2024, 2:36 PM

Haha! Aside from the fact I don’t have any experience in either of those things, it would have been pretty weird to use either of those tools when the point of the edit was to excise a character who could only exist because of those tools.

The craziest thing about Rook as he stands in the movie – aside from the fact the initial concept was apparently a woman synthetic who was (maybe?) a physical version of MU/TH/UR (initially intended to be played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge!), and aside from the fact Alvarez spent most of the PR trail pre-release, talking at length about “real sets” and “practical effects” despite knowing the whole time that primary villain of the movie would be a CGI+AI resurrection of a deceased person – is that Rook is the cause of a weird, ugly sort of metatextual dissonance going on. Especially considering the end of the movie, which is just one big reference/callback to Alien: Resurrection.

The foundational horror of Alien: Resurrection - such as it is, the movie is pretty goofy mostly - is that Ripley has been resurrected and turned into a thing, completely outside her control. She was not asked if she wanted to be brought back, she had no say in it, and she probably would not have agreed to have been brought back as that no matter how good a basketball player she became as a result! But that choice was never hers, the giant corporation that bought the corporation that essentially ruled her life in the first place, decided they weren’t done exploiting the Alien financially, so here she is. Back from the dead.

Romulus does this to Ian Holm in real life. For basically the exact same reason! And what’s even crazier is that when all is said and done it’s not even necessary to the story to have done this at all. It’s a weird, and expensive (!) exposition-laden distraction from the story of Rain and Andy, and nothing Rook says or does isn’t done by Andy himself, in a much more succinct and interesting way. You can cut Rook out of the movie completely and not only does it not hurt the movie, it arguably (hopefully!) improves it. It certainly removes that weird dissonance (and bad VFX work) at the very least.