Alien: Romulus Director Fede Álvarez Breaks Down That Controversial Cameo

And then it was this whole journey of trying to see how we were going to do it. But we found a head cast of Ian Holm from ‘99, from The Lord of the Rings, and that’s when we started to put it together. [Álvarez pulls out his smartphone.] And also, the family was always close during the process. They were the first ones to see it. And everybody was at the premiere, all the kids and his widow.

[On his phone, Álvarez shows me a short clip showcasing the animatronic Ian Holm bust. It’s impressively lifelike.]

So it was predominantly a practical effect?

Yeah, you have him there on set, that’s what the actors worked with all the time. … It’s a very unique technique. It takes a lot of people. The massive team that it took to put it together, it’s incredible.

We had Daniel Betts, a great actor that actually performed the lines, and worked with the actors on set; the lines and the facial performance that was translated into the animatronic, and then the CG part of it all as well. So it was a whole undertaking.

Was the voice an impersonation?

It was the voice of the actor, Daniel Betts, with EQ and a bunch of technology—you’d have to ask the sound guys—that [made] it sound like Ian Holm.

It was also rumoured that AI was used. Is that correct?

The thing is, I guess, for the discussion today—and I’m not a computer engineer, but I did actually [go] to college for computer engineering before I went to film school, so I have a good understanding of how technology works—it’s all computers. As far as I know, some expert can say otherwise, but it’s all computer language.

So CG, or some things use AI when it comes to machine learning … All that machine learning does is take pictures and wrap them around an image. No different than what CG or like Avatar does. It’s all artificial intelligence, so it’s computers. It definitely is a combination of all sorts of things. But I know that AI is seen as the evil force right now, for some reason.

Where do you stand on that?

Look, I started work in a 3-D studio, doing graphics in 3-D in the early 2000s, and I remember rendering a glass of wine in 3-D that looked great; it was very basic, but it was a glass of wine. And a friend of mine that was an artist was like, “Fuck, we’re done. This fuckin’ thing is going to replace us all. You just push a button and render this glass that would take so much time to do before.”

But that’s the history of art. There’s always a technology that comes that does it easier and faster. Now it’s scary to me, on the art side, because it’s so incredible and it’s so quick. But the feeling is the same that I remember happened 25 years ago when CG started to be a thing.

Are you keen to stick around for another Alien?

Alien, the franchise, always takes this strange approach. Between Alien and Aliens is seven years, and that was a massive hit, and it still took seven years to do Alien 3. It takes many, many years. It’s never been on an assembly line where they just boom, two years, two years, another one, another one.

I would definitely love to do one. I don’t think it’s a good idea to do one and put it out next year. Hopefully you won’t quote me on that when they announce they’re doing a sequel. … [Twentieth Century Studios] love Alien, and everybody there really loves it, and understands that as well. It’s one of those franchises that you have to pace yourself, and be careful about it, and not put one after another.

This story originally appeared in British GQ.