The process of creating Luke Skywalker's voice in his impactful and exciting The Book of Boba Fett episode 6 appearance has been revealed.
It's been revealed that old recordings were used to bring Luke Skywalker to life in The Book of Boba Fett. The infamous Jedi made his appearance in episode 6 of the Disney+ series, where he was seen training Din Djarin's foundling Grogu in the ways of the Force. The son of Anakin Skywalker was finally seen with Anakin's former apprentice, Ahsoka Tano, who had yet to meet in Star Wars canon. Viewers even got to see a very early version of Luke's Jedi Academy, where Luke offered Grogu a critical choice: the Jedi path, or returning to his Mandalorian father. Luke's appearance in The Book of Boba Fett was an exciting event for its audience.
The return of Luke Skywalker on Disney+ first arrived in The Mandalorian season 2 finale, when the Jedi first came to take Grogu with him for training. Mark Hamill himself was able to help reprise the role as he went to set and stood in his Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi robes for the first time in front of an audience since 1983, with the help of body double Max Lloyd-Jones. While the appearance earned nothing short of the most emotional hype from viewers, it received a fair amount of criticism for the deepfake technology used to bring Luke to life. Thanks to the work of a YouTube artist who improved the deepfake, Luke was able to be fixed in that instance, but the return of Luke in The Book of Boba Fett called for more convincing technology.
Now, Respeecher co-founder and co-CEO Alex Serdiuk has revealed in an interview with Variety what the process was like for bringing Luke to life in the latest Star Wars series. Serdiuk explains how they were originally provided with recordings of Hamill's voice that was decades old, and thus, they weren't as high quality as they needed to be. They were able to utilize archival recordings from ADR, audiobooks, video games, and the like to find better versions they could work from. After waiting two weeks to "train the model," the gathered data transformed into a voice that could use inflections and other alterations based on the director's desires. Serdiuk and Respeecher insisted that teaming up with Skywalker Sound has taught them a lot, which helped to make this process even more fluid.
Luke's appearance in The Book of Boba Fett received incredible praise from its audience thanks to the improvements made by Serdiuk and his team. Many jokes were made about Hamill time-traveling in order to make Luke's recent appearance possible. This voice technology worked alongside the improved CGI technology in a way that dazzled viewers, the latter of which was changed quite significantly from the Jedi's The Mandalorian appearance. Hamill wasn't involved this time around and a different body double stepped up to take Jones' place, though the original double still appeared in The Book of Boba Fett chapter 5 as a New Republic officer. The CGI technology replaced the deepfake to make for a more seamless and realistic face.
Despite any criticisms, this technology is still a huge leap and very impressive in how it's brought Luke Skywalker to life. Star Wars has been utilizing very similar technology in recent years, such as the return of Grand Moff Tarkin and a young Princess Leia in 2016's Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. With more and more stories being told around the era of the original Star Wars trilogy, the use of this technology seems inevitable to tie the stories back into the films that first touched the audience's hearts. The more it's used, the more it improves, as can be seen between Luke's appearances in The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett. With so many other stories to be told, just about any Star Wars character can make a return thanks to the hard work of Skywalker Sound and Respeecher.
Source: Variety
