No, you’re not seeing things, Alien: Romulus’ Ian Holm CGI does look different in the home release, but it’s still an ethical (and visual) nightmare
One of the biggest critiques Alien: Romulus faced upon release was the really bad Ian Holm CGI, but the home release appears to have tweaked it.
I’m really not very fond of the trend we’ve had over the past decade of including actors in sequels to classic films through the use of CGI because they’ve died in intervening years. It pretty much always looks bad and veers right into the uncanny valley, and that was no different in last year’s Alien: Romulus, which featured Ian Holm as a new android, Rook, based on his character Ash, an android in the original 1979 Alien. Fans took an immediate dislike to it not just because of how bad the effects were, but also because it just felt wrong to bring an actor back like that. As it turns out, though, the effects have been updated for the home release, with director Fede Alvarez speaking about them to Empire.
“We just ran out of time in post-production to get it right,” Alvarez explained in the interview, continuing on to say he “wasn’t 100 per cent happy with some of the shots, where you could feel a bit more the CG intervention. So, for people that react negatively, I don’t blame them.” The director noted that “we fixed it” for the home release, saying that “we made it better for the release right now. I convinced the studio we need to spend the money and make sure we give the companies that were involved in making it the proper time to finish it and do it right. It’s so much better.”
Apparently there was actually an animatronic made of Holm’s head based on a cast of him from Lord of the Rings, with Alvarez saying that for the home release they reverted “a lot more to the puppet. It’s way better.”
Alien Romulus – Rook CGI Updates BluRay vs Digital
byu/Davidedby inLV426
Personally, though, I’m not so sure. Comparisons of the blu-ray release and the Prime Video release (which appears to be the original cinema release) shared on Reddit show the changes between the two, some of which are minor, a lot of which casts his face in more shadow. Mostly it’s still quite uncanny, and to be honest just wrong to bring the actor back this way. Let’s stop that one now shall we Hollywood?