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Star Wars fans are divided after finding out who - or rather what - played Luke Skywalker in the latest episode of The Book Of Boba Fett and the climax of The Mandalorian.
The Disney Plus show's sixth episode spent (yet more) time away from Boba Fett himself to focus on Grogu's ongoing Jedi training... where we also caught up with none other than Luke Skywalker himself.
After assuming that Mark Hamill's de-aged appearance as the legendary Jedi in The Mandalorian season two finale was a one-off, it was a genuine surprise to see him back in Boba Fett with a much larger role.
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As you're probably aware, Luke's cameo in The Mandalorian was the result of a digitally de-aged Hamill actually showing up on set and giving a performance. It's less clear how the character was realised in Boba Fett. The show makes no mention of Hamill in the credits, but instead references Scott Lang as Skywalker's stunt double, and Graham Hamilton as the performance artist.
While the idea of constructing a young Mark Hamill's face out of thin air is disturbing enough to a lot of fans, it gets worse. As it turns out, Hamill didn't even provide the voice for Luke in either The Mandalorian or Boba Fett.
The show's creator, Jon Favreau, explained in a behind-the-scenes feature (via Esquire) that rather than de-age Hamill's voice - which I'm sure they could've done because Hamill is one of the greatest voice actors of our time - they instead went down the much creepier path of asking a machine to work through archival footage of Hamill and come up with something.
"Something people didn't realize is that his voice isn't real. His voice, the young Luke Skywalker voice, is completely synthesized using an application called Respeecher," the director explained.
According to Matthew Wood, one of the show's editors, Respeecher is "a neural network you feed information into and it learns."
Wood went on: "So I had archival material from Mark in that era. We had clean recorded ADR from the original films, a book on tape he'd done from those eras, and then also Star Wars radio plays he had done back in that time. I was able to get clean recordings of that, feed it into the system, and they were able to slice it up and feed their neural network to learn this data."
This particular quote resurfaced in the wake of Luke's cameo in Boba Fett, with many criticizing the beloved character's strangely robotic and emotionless voice.
This is doubly bad because:
— Andrew Todd (@mistertodd) February 4, 2022
1. Mark Hamill is a terrific voice actor, like, he's known for it
2. Matthew Wood, the sound engineer quoted here, is also a good voice actor and should know better
Do I need to point to the Ian Malcolm "could/should" quote again
While we’re on the subject of digitally resurrecting characters, it sure is a shame that there isn’t an established voice actor who sounds like Luke Skywalker and could have given a genuine voice performance here with only a slight digital massage. A real shame he doesn’t exist. https://t.co/siFGgrRZrj
— Alan Sepinwall (@sepinwall) February 6, 2022
Why AI generated voice acting replication will never work, in just one word.#StarWars #LukeSkywalker #TheBookOfBobaFett pic.twitter.com/lrRMeS5U62
— Kelly Joule 🌹 (@CritGemHero) February 3, 2022
The disrespect of using a voice synthesiser to recreate Luke Skywalker's voice instead of getting the OG to do it who also happens to be one of the greatest voice actors in animation.
— 'Local gal' Hanna Ines Flint (@HannaFlint) February 5, 2022
I JUST GOTTA SAY HOLY SHIT THE DEEPFAKE/DEAGING/WHATEVER FOR LUKE WAS DONE SO GOOD
— David: Jonathan Joestar Supremacist (@SaejimaFanatic) February 2, 2022
LUKE SKYWALKER IS A BEAUTIFUL BASTARD
however the voice is still a little off. I wish they wouldn't use a replication program, and just let Mark do an impression of his younger self.
It's okay to just recast Luke, Disney. Because the alternative is becoming increasingly ghoulish, to be honest.
