Synopsis:

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.

Intentions:

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 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.

Change List:

* Replaced 20th Century Fox Fanfare with remixed version of 20th Century Fox Fanfare (Based primarily on Elliot 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 behind 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 wakes him up. Instead, Rain comes up with the solution to getting it off her head after the initial scuffle between Bjorn and Andy. * After Navarro wakes up, Andy now moves to the front of the room instead of helping comfort Navarro, and refers to his new “One Directive” strangely, 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 crash into Romulus station, Andy is with Tyler and Rain as they reach the Facehugger infested hallway, 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 her fall starts the Facehugger chase faster. * Added partial “Alien Reveal” cue from Alien: Isolation to Kay’s abduction. * Removed mention of Rook in abduction aftermath, and 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 primarily 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 face huggers 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 the shot of the rat being revived. * 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 board the Corbelan, Rain gives control to MUTHUR, and they escape the station * Removed the flight to just above the planetary rings so Andy and Rain can 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 prior to the escape, and mixed Alien: Covenant cues into the score to underline the pathogen’s usage. *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.

Additional Notes:

It was weird, leaving the theater as this movie ended, with its sirens blaring, wondering how everything in it had deflated like some sort of gross facehugger souffle. Because writer Royo Sayagues and co-writer/Director Fede Alvarez were legitimately COOKING for the first hour of this movie! And as the discussions about how it somehow all fell down kept pinballing around the parking lot, the threads kept revealing themselves: There were of course, the franchise references that were really only there to be references for the sake of themselves. The decision to try digitally resurrecting Ian Holm, but over a puppet, but not as Ash, but as a constant fountain of exposition and/or Alien "lore." We mostly thought the decision to run back the ending of Alien: Resurrection was good! And done better in this film - but it was also undercut by all the lesser, cumulatively deadening callbacks that built to it, culminating in having Andy chewing up and spitting out one of Ripley's best lines! The Resurrection homage (which, if Alvarez is to be believed, he didn't even realize he was doing until his son pointed it out on premiere night!) also pulled into sharp focus a really unpleasant parallel: Resurrection was, at its core, a horror movie about a person, brought back to life by a giant conglomerate, for the sole purpose of pursuing the financial exploitation of an Alien. Alien: Romulus essentially does this exact thing IN REAL LIFE. And then (unwittingly?) steals that movie's ending! So: as we were discussing... all THAT, and the standard suggestions everyone's since heard all came up (i.e. "Why didn't they cast someone else as Rook? Why wasn't it just another Andy?" etc) it slowly occurred to me: What if you just... deleted Rook? And that sent even more questions pinging through my head: Did Alvarez and Sayagues really write him so redundantly, that you could pull him out, and all the plot advancements you "needed" him for could be handled by Andy and his module? Would the movie still make sense without all that "lore" being dumped? Could you get rid of most of the other callbacks too? And with those gone, could you shape what was left into a leaner, more focused narrative that's not callback-free (it's the 7th Alien movie, a prequel AND a sequel - There's GONNA be references) but what's left DOES have a use as storytelling in some way? This is the best answer to those questions I could come up with, thanks to some music cues from "Alien: Isolation", "Alien: Covenant", and "Alien 3", some lucky (for me) blocking choices made by Alvarez and cinematographer Galo Olivares, and some brilliant acting by David Jonsson and Cailee Spaeny; whose reactions and expressions and depth of performance made cutting to, and away from, and around them a lot more feasible than it otherwise would be.

Other Sources:

"20th Century Fox Fanfare - Alien 3 Version" - Composed by Alfred Newman, arranged by Elliot Goldenthal from "Alien 3" "It's Here," "Alien Reveal" - Composed by The Flight and Christian Henson, from "Alien: Isolation" "Wheat Field," "The Med Bay" - Composed by Jed Kurzel, from "Alien: Covenant"