The following article contains spoilers for The Book of Boba Fett.
When The Mandalorian brought back Luke Skywalker few fans would have anticipated what Disney had in store for the future. Yet, The Book of Boba Fett may have blown all expectations out of the water with a special Mark Hamill cameo that didn’t even feature the actor at all.
Despite his prominent role in the Star Wars sequel trilogy and his familiarity with the force, Hamill can’t simply de-age himself back to his twenties to play the Jedi Master, meaning Lucasfilm and its special effects branch had to employ some Deepfake wizardry to pull of that first cameo. Regardless of the mixed reception that Luke cameo got, The Book of Boba Fett features a much-improved Master Luke Skywalker thanks to some savvy hires, though Hamill's voice is what’s now drawing fans' attention.
As Slash Film reports, whenever Luke Skywalker speaks in The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett, it's not Hamill's real voice that the audience is hearing. Instead, the output of a highly advanced voice synthesizer called Respeecher is responsible for Skywalker's voice. This was first uncovered in Disney Plus' own featurette Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian, where experts explain that “It's a neural network you feed information into and it learns” from old material featuring Hamill's voice around the time the original Star Wars trilogy came out.
The decision seems somewhat puzzling given Hamill is an incredibly talented voiceover actor in his own right, plus the fact that he always seems willing to collaborate with the franchise. Whether it’s down to schedule conflicts, budget reasons, or simply the studio’s interest in test-driving this novel software at the highest level, Disney has still not addressed why this particular choice was made. The Book of Boba Fett is already having a hard time winning over viewers.
Nevertheless, while the quality of the young Hamill’s digital recreation has gone up considerably enough to put that matter to rest, his dialogue leaves a lot to be desired. Indeed, Hamill's voice sounds quite on point, but the problem is that the speech software appears to take away a lot of what the original Luke or any other actor could bring to the table with their performances, such as the tone or inflections that really bring the dialogue to life.
The small nuances in Hamill's repurposed voice were perhaps easier to forgive in The Mandalorian's short cameo, however, the extended banter between Luke and Grogu makes the flatness in the former’s voice stand out a lot more. If Disney truly wants a Luke Skywalker spinoff, it might be time to find someone else to play the legendary Jedi, even if it's not Sebastian Stan.
The Book of Boba Fett is now available on Disney Plus.
Source: Slash Film