Well, a mostly Rook-Free Alien Experience… mostly. Aside from two scenes of his prone, immobile and unspeaking half-torso, face-down on the floor, it turns out the character of Rook can be removed from the plot of Alien: Romulus with zero effect! Andy can also save Rain without needing to steal Ellen Ripley’s best lines! This edit is an alternate cut of late Summer 2024’s breakout horror hit, with some of the more egregious “memberberries” trimmed from its tree, along with an answer to the biggest question about it’s release: “Did they really have to do that?”

It’s not too radical a cut beyond that, though. The oft-described “big swing” ending featuring The Offspring is still intact, for example, and there are no CGI or AI implementations used in the edit as fixes. Aside from the edit’s main calling card (the aforementioned de-Rooking) the bulk of the remaining changes are a few second act sequences getting trimmed/slightly rearranged, some dialog removal (largely as part of the un-Rookifying, but sometimes not!) and some score re-edits.

UPDATE 12/2/2024

The finished (I know that’s tempting fate with any fan-edit, but I’m feeling pretty safe in calling it finished) version of Alien: Romulus - Alternate Cut is now ready and available. If you grabbed the original version about a month ago, good news: the link you grabbed it from has already been updated with v2, so all you need to do is redownload, and the final version is yours. If you lost that link, or never reached out for it in the first place, well hey: The PMs are open and the edit is also listed at Fan Edit Central currently (FanEdit org soon, maybe?) so it should be pretty easy to find the contact info.

There’s been about 1-2 more minutes of changes across the film total between the last version and this one, including some edit fixes, some rearrangement of shots/scenes, and some audio enhancements and score additions. Thanks to everyone that gave their feedback, it was very, very much appreciated, and helped greatly with this revision.

Changelist

• Replaced 20th Century Fox Fanfare with remixed version of 20th Century Fox Fanfare (Based primarily on Eliot Goldenthal’s Alien 3 Version)
• Removed Scott Free logos
• Removed premature reveal that Tyler, Bjorn, and Andy are in a 3D printing lab for Facehuggers
• Intercut Navarro’s discovery of X-Ray Torch w/ Rain’s module recovery
• Cut Rook’s jumpscare during Rain’s removal of his module
• Added partial “It’s Here” cue from Alien: Isolation to everyone trying to figure out what’s stuck to Navarro’s face, and deleted Andy’s “for what purpose I do not know” line, to underline Rook’s module changing him for the worse (and to also blend the removal of upcoming Rook scenes more cleanly).
• Cut Rook out of Navarro’s Facehugger removal completely - Andy never points him out, nor do they ever plug him in. Instead, Rain comes up with the solution to getting it off Navarro’s head after the initial scuffle between Bjorn and Andy.
• After Navarro wakes up, Andy now moves to the front of the room instead of comforting Navarro, and refers to his new “One Directive” strangely, and then expands on it; which alarms Rain and confuses everyone else, before crossing the room to intercept Bjorn and prevent Navarro from leaving.
• After the Corbelan crashes into Romulus station, Andy is already with Tyler and Rain as they reach the Facehugger infested hallway, there is no detour to meet with Rook anymore.
• Kay’s hallway sneaking from the crash is intercut with Rain/Andy/Tyler’s hallway sneaking towards Kay
• Kay’s struggle to find the key is shortened, and a continuity error involving the Alien’s emergence from the cocoon is removed. Kay’s fall happens quicker, and her landing starts the Facehugger chase faster.
• Added partial “Alien Reveal” cue from Alien: Isolation to Kay’s abduction.
• Removed mention of Rook in the abduction aftermath, Andy clarifies his new “One Directive:” that “what is required of him” is now simply to “Do what’s best for the company.”
• Removed mention of Rook and his mission from Andy & Rain’s elevator conversation; now the scene is just Andy reminding Rain that everyone’s original plan involved abandoning him on the station.
• Removed Rook (and all mentions of him/orders from him) from Romulus Beta Lab scene.
• The pathogen is explained mostly through visuals and music - Alien, Prometheus, and Alien: Covenant themes have been pushed forward in the mix over shots of the pathogen being extracted from facehuggers and being injected into the rat. Andy explains the experiments are meant to combat the miners weaknesses, and that he will be taking the pathogen back to the colony for that purpose.
• Andy’s delivery of “This is a much needed, and overdue upgrade for humanity” from an alternate/deleted version of the lab scene has been restored to the Romulus Beta Lab Scene over a shot of the rat being resurrected.
• Removed Andy’s ADR’d “Busy little creatures” line as they discover the hive below the lab.
• Removed the shot of multiple aliens converging on Tyler due to their disappearance from the scene once he is killed - they never reach his body and they never drop down during Rain & Kay’s escape either. They’ve just completely disappeared in any reverse angles and follow-up shots despite full-on sprinting at him just seconds earlier.
• Removed explicit shot of Kay injecting herself with the pathogen by using match-cut transition from Kay’s arm holding pathogen canister to Rain’s arm unlatching gate to go back for Andy.
• Removed Rook taunting Rain and Andy on monitor at end of blocked hallway
• Removed Rook “seducing” Kay on the monitor in the Corbelan.
• Removed “Get away from her… you b-b-b-bitch.”
• Removed Rook on video screen as Rain and Andy get on Corbelan, Rain gives control to MUTHUR, and they escape the station
• Removed the flight to just above the planetary rings for Andy and Rain to betray Rook. The ship escape/station crash is now one continuous sequence.
• Manipulated shot angles/shot timings to increase focus on Kay’s neck post-cryotube malfunction, to make it clear she had injected herself, and mixed Alien: Covenant cues into the score to underline the pathogen’s use.
• Removed the “Cryosleep Log” since the ship is stolen in the first place so there’d be no reason or point for anyone to log anything or anyone to check for a log.
• Re-edited the “Get Away from Her” music cue originally tracked into the end of the film, both to account for the “Cryosleep Log” removal and to fix the noticeable time-stretch effect applied to it
• Removed the ending Title card
• Removed the Rook credits (kept animatronic credit, and thanks to Ian Holm estate)
• Replaced the End Title track with a new End Title symphonic suite from Wallfisch’s score, using the cues “Andy,” “Prometheus Fire,” “XX121,” and “Searching”
• Added credits under “Songs” for Thematic Elements used from Alien 3, Alien: Covenant, and Alien: Isolation.

You had me at “no CGI or AI implementations used in the edit as fixes.” Count me interested!

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.

Hey, glad you dug the post! And you have a Happy Halloween too!

Bumping for updated OP + final version + changelist

It has definitely more power than the original, I liked it very much!
Nice job, mate.

Hey, thanks for giving it your time and a fair shake! I’m glad you enjoyed it 😃

https://i.postimg.cc/kGDDQvp2/imageedit-2-7625155667.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/L8W4Y4n2/imageedit-11-2448425694.jpg

deleted this post as you answered my questions already over on fanedit.org

I appreciate the poster designs! They’re definitely the part of this I was not thinking/expecting to be fumbling with so much, LOL. I’ve got a couple ideas I’m poking at myself, I’ll post one here later tonight when I get one in shape (I think I’m close)

The red one with the dripping chin was a base I was thinking of working from, absolutely. My first thought was using the Dolby Vision poster (the facehugger crawling over Rain’s helmet) too. I might go back to it, but I figure I should at least try something

Okay, this is what I was kicking around for the poster idea

That is very nice. In keeping with past posters and gives me Alien/Alien3 vibes. I would say that big chap doesn’t reflect the actual movie very much though, especially your edit.

You weren’t wrong! Also I just… don’t think my design chops are that great. The idea’s okay but I don’t know that my execution of it is solid enough for people to be slapping up on their Plex or Jellyfin or Emby or whatever, LOL. So instead I think I’m gonna go with this and call it the final:

It’s taking the ScreenX alternate poster (The Scorched variant, not the Helmet one), reframing/recoloring slightly, and setting it inside the border of the Matt Ferguson alternate poster, also slightly recolored and altered to fit the “Alternate Cut” subtitle into the block. I think it works a little better not just as a quick visual at smaller and larger sizes on a screen, but like you said, it’s a little more representative of the cut itself. The chrysalis is the first thing you see in the movie, but that poster design is basically a callback in and of itself, and nothing much more than that, which is counter to the point of the edit. So - thank you for the critique! This is a better choice.

Love that.

I think you might be a genius. This is such an improvement in pacing and your scene edits are seamless. I think this film works so much better without Rook, and without the almost 4th wall breaking “get away from her” line. Did you also remove the close up shot of the Reebok shoe that lingers just a bit too long? I can’t remember seeing it in this watch through.

The one cut I found a little jarring was the cut to Andy announcing he has one directive after Navarro wakes up from being face-hugged, but I guess this the best option when editing out an entire character.

I think there is an error on one line of the subtitles. When the gang first see the station at around 17:40, the line “Fuck, that’s big. What is that?” has an incomplete font tag.

Anyway, please ignore any negatives; this is a brilliant edit. I love it!

DAMN! Thanks so much for saying that, and for taking time out of your holidays to check this edit out, too! Very, very much appreciated 😃 - I did in fact remove the Reebok closeup, as part of getting rid of Kay’s self-injection scene/ending giveaway.

That one cut is… yeah, you nailed it - it’s the best option of getting out of that room without Rook in it. I kinda worked backwards from the progression of the “One Directive” shifting over the course of the movie already, and figured that without Andy stopping to talk to Rook after the Corbelan crash (where the “one directive” first starts breaking down actually), I’d need to imply/allude to the module rewriting him pretty rapidly before that. I cut some lines in the previous scene (i.e. “for what purpose I do not know”) and added music to his preventing Rain from trying to pop his module out to hint at this even more strongly than the theatrical already does.

BUT: the real reason I’ve got him up at the front of the room obliquely being confusing/ominous about his One Directive isn’t story-based, I gotta admit. It’s geographical. It’s because without Rook, I need to have a reason to have him separated from the group (the original version of the scene has him huddled down there with them when Navarro comes to), and saying SOMETHING that will cause the whole group to look at him, and specifically Rain to look really shook and Navarro to go “what is he talking about” - and puts him in the position, geographically, to move across the room and intercept Bjorn. And… it’s not 100%. It’s the one knot in the pine board I can’t sand out, haha. I got nothin really, when people call it out, other than “yeah - well spotted! that’s the one.”

I was hoping the deleted/alternate scenes would give me something that I could work with there, but nada. I have heard that for people who aren’t very familiar with the movie, they don’t really question that transition, it just seems like Andy doing weird shit and they roll with it - which helps a little, but considering 99% of the audience for this is probably going to be people who have seen the movie a couple times… LOL.

ANYWAY: Thank you so much for the subtitle spot, that’s been cleaned up, fixed and remuxed - if you redownload at the link you got this from, the file should be updated to the fix now. Thank you SO MUCH for that. And for this feedback. Enjoy the rest of your Christmas Day!

Hi this is so cool. How can I watch your edit? Sorry new to this and not sure if you actually edited the film or its a script. Either way it’s so cool good work

Hi WXM,
Thank you for your detailed reply and informing me about the site! I appreciate it! 😃 I’ve been looking for a site like this for so many years!not sure how i only just stumbled upon it! 😃

I’ll definitely shoot him a message. Hope you have a nice evening. Ryan

Hey There.

A great poster and a brilliant concept.
Is there a link you can share to the re-edit video?

Best Regards
M