The Mandalorian wowed audiences everywhere with its wild season 2 finale. Aside from likely causing jubilant hyperventilation among the ranks of Star Wars fans, it basically caught everyone by surprise with not only its big Luke Skywalker cameo but also with the methods used to bring the Jedi Master back to his prime. Others have tried (and possibly succeeded) surpassing Disney with their own Deepfakes, but there's one technical aspect of that climactic scene that many didn't even notice.
As much as the sequence itself may have dipped into the uncanny valley, one part of the shot that The Mandalorian fans have largely overlooked is Luke Skywalker's voice. It makes sense that nobody would really question it, since Mark Hamill himself is an accomplished voice actor himself. So it wouldn't be all that unusual to find out that he simply recorded the character's lines while somebody else did all the on-screen stuff. The funny thing is, the voice may be the one way in which Hamill actually wasn't directly involved with the cameo.
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While Hamill was more involved than some expected, as revealed by the latest behind-the-scenes look at Luke Skywalker's scene in The Mandalorian, it turns out the character's voice was quite a bit more complicated than a simple recording session. "Something people didn't realize is that his voice isn't real," series creator Jon Favreau said in a new behind-the-scenes interview for Disney Gallery: Star Wars: The Mandalorian. "His voice, the young Luke Skywalker voice, is completely synthesized using an application called Respeecher." That's right. The voice of Luke Skywalker is now, ironically, more machine than man.
According to supervising sound editor Matthew Wood, the process involved feeding audio from Hamill's classic performances in character (and some even out of character) into an algorithm, which then used technology similar to Deepfake videos in order to recreate the actor's younger-sounding voice. Looking back at the episode, it kind of explains a bit. Luke did seem to be a rather soft-spoken man of few words in that scene, and the general lack of emotion from the lines makes a lot more sense now.
Of course, this use of technology raises some concerns. Sure, it seems as though Hamill gave his blessing in this instance since he was directly involved with the scene. But this sort of application can easily be used to make almost anybody say things they've never actually said. From celebrities to regular folk, the possibility is a little unnerving, particularly since the tech is largely too new for any proper laws to have been baked into society regarding its use. Though maybe Harrison Ford's Deepfakes might make him angry enough to help with that.
But on the other hand, at the moment it still seems a bit limited. While most didn't notice anything off about the robo-Hamill voice, it's largely because the performance didn't exactly require much heavy lifting in terms of emotion. Inflection is still one thing the computers haven't quite nailed down yet. So for the time being, just enjoy being better at crying than they are. They can have math skills and chess strategies.
The Mandalorian seasons 1-2 are now available on Disney Plus.
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Source: Collider