If you watched season 2 of The Mandalorian, you may have reacted strongly to the Luke Skywalker cameo during the finale. Seeing Mark Hamill reprise his role as the iconic Jedi from the main Star Wars films may have provided a rush of joy. It also may have turned some people off, as it used the same de-aging technique that Disney utilized to bring back Grand Moff Tarkin and a young Leia in Rogue One. But regardless, the cameo likely proved surprisingly either way. An even bigger surprise? Mark Hamill never provided his own voice.
In a special episode of Disney Gallery about the making of The Mandalorian, creator Jon Favreau explained that Mark Hamill never spoke a word. Yes, he did reprise his role as Luke Skywalker in physical form. But in addition to de-aging the actor, they also “de-aged” his voice using an application called Respeecher, Collider reports.
The application didn’t take Mark Hamill’s voice and make it sound younger, rather it synthesized old recordings of Mark Hamill voicing Luke when the actor was younger and then created new lines. Supervising sound editor Matthew Wood broke down how the technology functions:
“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.”
So there you have it. Despite having the veteran vocal talents of Mark Hamill on hand, the production team of The Mandalorian decided to test some new tech instead. It often seems that the newer Star Wars shows and films prioritize visual accuracy over theatrical performance. While other franchises will recast actors or use practical or mild digital effects to change an actor’s appearance, Star Wars under Disney prefers to make the most of its technical wizardry.
Nevertheless, a lot of it remains impressive, such as filming most of The Mandalorian on a massive soundstage with virtual high-def backgrounds. The show has proven popular, and we praised the last season and the “spectacular ending” of it in our season 2 review.
