If you're a Star Wars fan, chances are you'll never forget the return of Luke Skywalker in the closing moments of The Mandalorian season 2. Unlike the dejected Jedi Master we met in the Star Wars sequels, this version of the Jedi Knight was exactly what fans had hoped for post-Return of the Jedi.
Yesterday, Disney+ dropped an episode of Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian exploring how Mark Hamill reprised his most famous role. Much was said about the work that went into de-ageing him for this return, but the biggest surprise came when executive producer and writer Jon Favreau revealed that the voice we heard come from Luke wasn't really Hamill's.
"Something people didn't realize is that his voice isn't real," he confirmed. "His voice, the young Luke Skywalker voice, is completely synthesized using an application called Respeecher."
Sound editor Matthew Wood adds, "It's a neural network you feed information into and it learns. 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."
Hamill's voice has obviously changed since he played Luke in 1983, and it's fascinating to learn about the sort of work that went into recreating a version that would line up with this part of his life. You'd think it would be as simple as making some changes to the actor's existing voice, but the technology Lucasfilm is playing with these days is beyond imagination.
We'd strongly recommend watching the full documentary on Disney+ as there are lots of reveals, though the biggest might be how Plo Koon was used to protect Luke's role in The Mandalorian finale!
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