(Image source: 20th Century Studios)
After its summer release last year, "Alien: Romulus" grossed $350 million worldwide and garnered generally positive audience reception. However, one aspect proved polarizing: the CGI recreation of late actor Ian Holm's face for the synthetic character "Luke." Holm had previously portrayed the synthetic "Ash" in the original "Alien" film.
While Holm's family had granted permission for the use of his likeness, some viewers felt it was disrespectful to the deceased, while others simply found the CGI rendition of Holm's expressions to be artificial, unnatural, and distracting. "Romulus" director Fede Álvarez indeed heard the external criticism. Instead of cutting Luke's scenes, he opted to refine the character's facial expressions.
(Image source: 20th Century Studios)
In a recent interview with "Empire" magazine, Álvarez admitted, "We didn't have enough time in post-production to get it precisely right. I wasn't 100% satisfied with certain shots; you could tell those shots had more CG traces, so I don't blame those who offered criticism."
However, Álvarez has now confirmed that Luke's scenes have been improved for the DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K Blu-ray physical media releases. "We've fixed it. We made improvements for the physical media release. I convinced the studio that we needed to spend money to improve it and ensure the participating production company had adequate time to complete the work properly. It looks much better now."
Luke's scenes were originally achieved through a combination of techniques, including animatronics and CGI. However, during post-production, the team leaned more heavily on CGI rather than the practical animatronic shots. Álvarez explained, "What we did for the physical media was go back to using more animatronics, and the effect is much better."
via： Empire