Alien: Romulus helmer Fede Alvarez has addressed one of the new movie’s biggest franchise callbacks and cameos, adding that it was all producer Ridley Scott’s doing.
Warning! This article contains major spoilers for Alien: Romulus, so make sure you’re all caught up with the latest sequel before reading on!
In all the best Alien movies, there is always an Android character involved, but the one who started it all is the original movie’s synthetic named Ash played by the late Ian Holm. That is why Alvarez and Scott decided to bring him back. “There’s just a limited amount of synthetics, and that’s why some come back a few times,” Alvarez confirmed in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. “So we were talking, and Ridley and I felt like the one that has never been back was the best one of them all, the original model played by Ian Holm.”
Whilst waking through the space station in Alien: Romulus, Rain (Cailee Spaeny) and her synthetic brother find a half-destroyed android that resembles Ash, who was memorably severed in half in the original movie. It has been confirmed however that the torso isn’t strictly Ash, as Ripley did destroy his remains, but the android in Romulus does share the same basic template. “It’s a different android, but it’s the same consciousness of Mother that moved from one android to the other,” added Alvarez.
The sentiment was there though as the director later mentioned that he reached out to Holm’s estate first. “She felt that Ian was given the cold shoulder by Hollywood in the last years of his life,” said the director of Holm’s widow. “So she was thrilled about the idea of having him back.”
Alien: Romulus has an android of its own in the form of Rain’s brother Andy played by David Jonsson. Set between Scott’s original 1979 movie and James Cameron’s sequel Aliens, the new movie follows a group of young space colonizers who come face to face with the universe’s most fearsome creatures.
Alien: Romulus is out in theaters now. For more, check out our guide on how to watch the Alien movies in order, or the lowdown on movies and shows to watch before Alien: Romulus.
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