It’s disrespectful because Holmes never agreed to appear in the movie. I’m sure whomever handles his estate signed off on it, but it didn’t really add much to the movie. You could have replaced CGI Holmes with a completely new android, uh, I mean artificial person, and nothing would have changed about the movie at all. It was an unnecessary callback to the original Alien. They made a decision to use his likeness…and it was wrong. It was a bad call, vislor. It was a bad call.
That said, I did get a kick out of Rook telling Andy his model was once the backbone of Weyland-Yutani’s colonization efforts and it was an honor to be in his presence.
Basically it appeared to be a callback to both Prometheus and the “newborn” alien in Alien Resurrection.
As others pointed out, “awfully fast” and a bit heavy handed with the constant callbacks to the other films. Resulting in a perfectly serviceable, if forgettable film.
One of the problems with the Aliens films IMHO is that the more films they make, the more convoluted the lore gets.
Not realizing that Ash was really a synthetic doesn’t really work if all the “Hyperdyne Systems 120-A2” model (which have a reputation for being a bit “twitchy”) all look like Ian Home. Any more than a T-800 terminator works as an “infiltration unit” if each one looks exactly like the same person.
And Bishop telling Ripley that “with his behavioral inhibitors. It is impossible for me to harm or by omission of action, allow to be harmed, a human being” is total bullshit as that’s exactly what the “Wayland” version does in the next film.
On a positive note, Rook’s explanation for Wayland-Yutani seeking out the Xenomorphs for bioengineering advances to help colonize space makes a lot more sense than trying to weaponize giant space cockroaches and elevates W-Y from mere “evil profit-seeking corporation” to simply misguided. But the problem is that by the time of the events of Aliens, W-Y should be a lot more knowledgeable about what they were dealing with.