Deepfake Luke Skywalker

Overview

Deepfake Luke Skywalker refers to the AI-generated appearance of a young Luke Skywalker in the Disney+ TV series The Book Of Boba Fett, which led to much debate in early 2022 within the Star Wars fandom online about the merits of recreating a likeness of a 40-year-old character instead of recasting the role or using Mark Hamill, the actor who originally played Luke.

Background

At the end of The Mandalorian season two, a computer-generated young Luke Skywalker appeared, although the appearance was widely mocked online.^[1] Mark Hamill played the part, and Disney and Lucasfilm used de-aging technology to make him look younger. Following the appearance, YouTuber Shamook posted their version of Hamill's appearance in The Mandalorian and went viral (shown below). The success of their video led Lucasfilm to hire Shamook.^[2] Skywalker's appearance in The Book Of Boba Fett was made with Graham Hamilton providing the motion capture.^[6]

In the February 2nd, 2022, episode of The Book of Boba Fett, Luke Skywalker appears and trains Grogu (shown below). He clearly resembles Shamook's deepfake improvement of the character.

Developments

The Skywalker appearance in The Book of Boba Fett proved much more divisive among viewers, as some Star Wars fans were thrilled that Luke looked so realistic, while others were creeped out, particularly by his voice. Mark Hamill, though an accomplished voice actor, did not read the lines for the episode. Instead, old Hamill dialogue was fed through a neural network called Respeecher.^[1] This resulted in a performance many found awkward to listen to.

On the positive end of the spectrum, Twitter user @Knuckle_headTV^[3] wrote on February 4th, 2022, "This was literally Luke Skywalker… You find it ‘horrifying’ or don’t want Star Wars or film/tv to go this route, you do you, but I am eating. it. up. My hero is back," gaining over 40,000 likes and 2,400 retweets in three days (shown below, left). On the negative side, user @JohnDelilo^[4] wrote, "star wars fans rejecting mark hamill’s finest performance in favor of a demonic robot simulacrum of his younger self feels like a real inflection point for the next fifty years of culture," gaining over 2,800 retweets and 27,000 likes in a similar timeframe (shown below, right).

Media critics were similarly divided. Esquire^[1] expressed their discomfort at watching the deepfake Luke Skywalker, while The Gamer^[5] wrote it was pure fan service, stating:

Luke wasn’t at all engaging in the latest episode. He wasn’t fun to watch based on his own merits. A lot of what made Luke so captivating or interesting was the fan-service for fan-service’s sake. Oh my god, we saw Luke with Ahsoka! Oh, it’s Luke and Grogu re-enacting the Luke and Yoda scenes from Empire Strikes Back! It’s shallow, meaningless fluff that banks on nostalgia, adding nothing to the series or Luke’s character. It’s pointless but, if the reaction is anything to go by, people will continue to eat it up.

Search Interest

External References