Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More (Page 4 of 5)

Oh dear God. Now I have to watch the video. I was hoping you would summarize it and spare me the trouble. Alright fine.

I think I'll have to watch the video and offer my own thoughts, but even before that -- I do think it's very easy for an unmade film to be the epitome of excellence because the imagined product will never exist; it'll never conflict with actual reality.

I don’t get it either. And I’ve only ever seen the Clone Wars movie and the first two prequels.

In the original trilogy, the Jedi are regarded as myth that may or may not have ever been real. But the prequels declare that they were a branch of government, installed in political institutions and present in the public eye. In the original trilogy, the Jedi would have at their height been an urban legend at most.

The prequels are bizarre in how overt and obvious the Jedi are in a galactic war despite Han in the 1977 film dismissing them as "ancient nonsense and hokey religions." And in making the Jedi so prominent, Lucas makes the Jedi look incompetent with REVENGE OF THE SITH and THE LAST JEDI calls him out on this.

STAR WARS declares the Jedi to be warrior monks working in obscurity and mystery, but the prequels present them as an ineffective galactic city hall.

I haven't been following any STAR WARS stuff since RISE, but if Slider_Quinn21 and Grizzlor are happy, I am also happy. :-)

Netflix shows are infamous for overstretching insufficient material to fill in time because more episodes means more revenue. Did you feel this happened on Disney+?

So, what's wrong with the deepfake version of Luke Skywalker in BOBA FETT?

Lucasfilm hired a fan deepfaker to bring his skillset to recreating a late-80s Mark Hamill. The image of Luke Skywalker looks to me like it's drawn on 4K scans of RETURN OF THE JEDI, new film scans of publicity and costuming photographs for that film, and the face mapped into a digital profile of every facial expression and lip movement needed for each scene and line of dialogue. Actor Graham Hamilton played Luke on set; the deepfake of Luke's face was then grafted onto Hamilton's face.

In addition, all the dialogue is drawn from recordings of Hamill in the 80s doing voiceover and audiobook readings, fed into an AI network that can then rearrange them into any scripted sentence and smooth over the intonations and volume so that it sounds coherent.

And yet, it doesn't feel like a real person. This version of Luke is photorealistic in contrast to the somewhat immobile and blurry version in MANDALORIAN. Luke can interact with all characters and isn't limited to standing still. But something is off: Luke feels stilted and inhuman in all his scenes, muted and hollow even though the face and eyes look right.

Part of the problem is the voice. Yes, it sounds like Mark Hamill in the 80s, but the tone of the voice is completely devoid of human variability. In matching all the intonations and volumes from different sources and applying consistency, the computer generated lines are very flat. Luke sounds calm and completely neutral; neutral when expressing doubt, neutral when delivering kind or difficult lessons, neutral when told something unsettling. It's Mark Hamill's voicemail rearranged and while the technical achievement is astonishing, it still has the effect of a repurposed rearrangement of Hamill's old voicemails albeit well-disguised.

The face, despite being a technical marvel, is also a serious issue. Luke's face lacks any extremity of emotion: he's mildly sad, mildly satisfied, mildly calm, mild across the board, mild to the point where Luke's face seems less like a human being in motion and more like a still photograph that has been magnificently animated through computer generated modelling and motion but is ultimately a still photograph that's only offering a false illusion of movement. On some subconscious if not conscious level, you can feel that it's an animated photograph instead of a true moving image of a face.

As a result, Mark Hamill's likeness may be present in the deepfake, but Hamill's acting ability is absent. It's fine for a few lines and some action sequences. But when Ahsoka tells Luke that he reminds her of Anakin, there is no emotional reaction from Luke, just a facial movement to acknowledge that she spoke. Mark Hamill could have played this scene with many approaches: he could be proud that he is thought of in the same way as the war hero of the Clone Wars, Anakin Skywalker. He could be disturbed that he reminds Ahsoka of the man who became Darth Vader. He could react with pride but then transition into concern.

The deepfake Luke Skywalker has none of Hamill's emotive consideration; it has no capacity to pitch the moment in either direction. The facial animation model is designed to mimic and maintain the likeness of Luke Skywalker; it isn't capable of expressive emotions when the facial template is ultimately to replicate a still photo of Luke. For this scene, all the deepfake Luke can do is make eye contact to indicate that he heard Ahsoka say words; the deepfake can't produce an actual emotional reaction that contorts the face and maintains the photographic likeness.

The lack of an actor's presence is particularly glaring in the scene where Luke tells Grogu to choose either the life of a Jedi or his friendship with the Mandalorian, saying that Jedi eschew all attachments and Grogu's lifespan, training and path will span so long that the Mandalorian will be dead of old age by the time Grogu can return to his friend. Hamill would have seen many options for this scene.

Hamill could have been sharp and demanding, ordering Grogu to make a terrible choice to show how uncompromising Luke has become. Or Hamill could have described the path of the Jedi in derisive, bitter terms, indicating that Luke doesn't actually approve of the Jedi way and doesn't think it's right for Grogu and is not keen on training Jedi if this is what he has to ask them to do. Or Hamill could have spoken with quiet warning about the Jedi path while emphasizing the Mandalorian with gentleness and warmth, meaning Luke knows Grogu misses his friend and isn't happy with Luke; Luke would be kindly offering Grogu a way out. Hamill would have made choices in how to play this scene.

The deepfake Luke Skywalker makes no choices in how to perform this conflict. The deepfake delivers the choice to Grogu in a mild, neutral, bland tone that doesn't inform Luke Skywalker's characterization in any way. Aside from sounding like Mark Hamill in the 1980s, there is no sense of a human being conveying Luke's emotions and motives. There is just a computer generated animation of an actor's likeness and a computer recreated approximation of that actor's voice. There is no performance.

Acting is about human beings making choices; the deepfake Luke Skywalker is an algorithmic approximation that can only offer mimicry; it can't make decisions and it cannot perform as a character. A short cameo with a line or two is fine, but when put into lengthy scenes, it becomes clear that the deepfake character isn't an actor. It's a body double and a vocal impressionist best limited to a few shots.

It's interesting: Mark Hamill was on set in BOBA FETT. He performed all of Luke's scenes with the actors. Then body double Graham Hamilton performed the scenes. Hamill's performance wasn't used in the final product, but the creators wanted Hamill to be present so that all the other actors could react to Mark Hamill specifically. However, whatever acting choices Hamill made were not retained in the deepfake due to the obvious technical limitations. Mimicry itself is not a full-fledged performance because to truly perform, an actor has to create something new rather than imitate what previously existed.

**

I like the fan film reshoot of the Obi-Wan/Vader fight of 1977. It's great as a short film. Maybe a special short on Disney+.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_V24PLzqRLg

However, I don't think it should be edited into the 1977 movie. In terms of remastering, I think it's fine to remove the smeared jelly under the landspeeders, remove matte lines around spaceships and monsters, get the lightsabers looking consistent, add windows to Cloud City, etc.. However, adding new CG effects to a 1977, 1980 and 1983 movie series made with model kits and sparklers only produces a mismatched look. In the 1977 special edition, the CG X-Wings don't match the model shots. It's distracting whereas sticking with the 1977 effects allows the film to establish a baseline for its effects achieve consistency.

STAR WARS is a 1977 movie that looks like it's made in 1977. Even the story is dated; as a 1977 film, it has no concept of long distance, wireless data transmission. The secret WMD plans are delivered by a barrel instead of emailed. There's no getting around the fact that it's a historical artifact and will remain so no matter how much CGI is pasted on top.

**

Leia's face in RISE OF SKYWALKER is not CG, but her hair and body and clothes are computer generated to disguise that they are shots from a previous movie. The deepfake technology and the Respeecher application (used for BOBA FETT's Luke dialogue) were not ready for the big screen yet when RISE OF SKYWALKER was filmed, but if they had been, I think JJ Abrams and friends would definitely have used it -- but strategically and sparingly.

They could have used high-res photos of Carrie Fisher's publicity stills and all her additional dialogue recording sessions from FORCE AWAKENS and LAST JEDI to form a databank of her voice and vocabulary to have Fisher's face available at any angle for a CG model and with her recreated voice able to speak any line. But I don't think they would have made Leia a bigger character because, as with Luke in BOBA FETT, the more you feature it, the less real it feels.

Instead, I think they would have just filled in some of the gaps in RISE OF SKYWALKER's recreated coverage of Carrie Fisher. RISE has a lot of scenes where we go from a repurposed facial shot of Carrie Fisher to the back of her body double's head and her scene partner facing the camera. A deepfake Leia could have been used so that we could get brief side views of Carrie Fisher in conversation with others so that the limitations of Fisher's actual footage wouldn't be as glaring.

Abrams directs with understatement in his drama scenes, so he would have used it minimally: a shot of Leia covering her mouth in horror when hearing that Palpatine is back (so you don't need expression).

The Respeecher technology could have also filled in some of Fisher's dialogue, not to give her lengthy monologues or highly emotive moments -- the technology isn't good enough for that -- but for small additions of a few lines here. A few sentences of guidance to Rey in her training ("Don't give up!" "Focus!").

In the film, Leia says "Nothing's impossible" and "Never underestimate a droid" and both feel a bit detached from the scene; Respeecher might have made minor additions like "Nothing's impossible, Rey, not for you" and "If you've seen what I have, you'd never underestimate a droid."

Leia's death scene is done with Carrie Fisher's body double in silhouette and no dialogue (because they didn't have any). And while I wouldn't recommend trying to deepfake and Respeecher shots of Fisher performing Leia reaching out to her wayward son, deepfake could have offered a brief shot of Leia's calm face before she dips her head back into shadow. And given her three short lines. "I have to reach Ben. I know what it will take from me. But it's what I have to do."

Also, issues with Fisher's footage caused Rose Tico to be cut almost entirely from RISE. The original script kept Rose at the base with Leia and gave them scenes written around Fisher's unused dialogue from FORCE AWAKENS and LAST JEDI. But Abrams found that the footage of Fisher didn't match the tone of the script, couldn't find a way to amend the script, and the scenes were sadly cut before filming. I imagine that had deepfake and Respeecher been available, the Rose and Leia scenes would have stayed.

I would be okay with Abrams someday filling this stuff in someday.

I'm sorry the OBI WAN series isn't working for Grizzlor. I have not seen it yet, but from various reviews, it looks to be inoffensive to most.

**

I think my issue with the deepfake Mark Hamill body and the Respeecher Mark Hamill voice is based on Robert Floyd's interview with me about imitating Jerry O'Connell.

During a phone call with Mr. Floyd (Mallory in Season 5), I asked him about the intricacies of imitating Jerry O'Connell. He talked about how he watched a lot of SLIDERS episodes to get Jerry's voice in his head. Floyd was a gifted mimic and he could quickly perform a note-perfect recreation of Jerry's voice: the timbre and tone, the weight and pronunciations, and then he moved to studying Jerry's posture and body language. Floyd said in a different interview that he was really taken with the "inner strength" that Jerry brought to the character of Quinn Mallory, and in my interview, Floyd said that he wanted to tap into the fact that Jerry made Quinn so intelligent and scientific and how Quinn "built the show."

I noted that Floyd, when performing the original Quinn in Dr. Geiger's lab and in the later scenes with Rembrandt, did *not* imitate Jerry's voice, but he performed the Quinn Mallory demeanor: the intensity in his gaze, the sense of absorbing and intensely calculating the information around him. Floyd explained that he was perfectly capable of imitating Jerry further. "I'm pretty good at it. I could have done it for an episode. I could have done it for a season."

However, he didn't feel it was good enough to merely act with Jerry's voice and body language. Instead, what he wanted to do was strongly emphasize the identity crisis of Floyd!Quinn and Jerry!Quinn. "I would try to find little things that either Quinn or Mallory could grasp onto, even if it was through the other's voice or the other person's intelligence... Otherwise, you're just playing schtick."

Webster's Dictionary defines "schtick" as "a usually comic or repetitious performance or routine," and I believe Floyd is indicating that only copying Jerry would be empty repetition; it was important to *create* something new as well, making the Jerry-impression merely one facet of an original performance.

To me, the deepfake Mark Hamill body and the Respeecher Mark Hamill voice is just playing schtick.

Question for Slider_Quinn21:

Do you feel the OBI WAN series suffers from Obi Wan having confronted Darth Maul in another TV show already, depriving the OBI WAN show of an important story?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeG215-yu-k

I'm glad REBELS retains its stature for you.

The thing that really strikes me about that scene: despite all the horrible things Darth Maul has done, despite Maul having killed at least two of Obi-Wan's friends (that I know of), Obi-Wan strikes Maul down but then takes pity on him, giving him comfort, considering him as much a victim of the Sith as anyone Maul ever killed, closing his eyes and letting him pass with a peace and dignity that Maul couldn't find in life and certainly never offered anyone else.

It was all about the characterization and not about being Cool. Which brings me (back) to another subject:

Confession: I've never been able to finish watching REVENGE OF THE SITH. I kind of liked THE PHANTOM MENACE, but ATTACK OF THE CLONES was so dull and clumsy and like watching a student film, probably because Liam Neeson brought a certain prestige and importance to PHANTOM MENACE but wasn't there to do the same for ATTACK OF THE CLONES. I watched the first 10 minutes of REVENGE when it came out on DVD and... it was like watching a video game cutscene on YouTube without ever actually playing the game. I couldn't get into it. I ended up giving the DVD away to the little boy next door; I read the novelization by Matthew Stover instead (and that was a great book).

I went on YouTube to watch the final Anakin/Obi-Wan fight and... this is what I could describe as "comic booky" where the scene doesn't make any visual sense and has been designed entirely around cool visual moments. How are Anakin and Obi-Wan controlling the 'surfboards' that are floating above the lava when there are no pedals, no joysticks and no real human interface? How are they maneuvering these surfboards to and from each other to exchange lightsaber blows?

Why are they slashing and hacking at each other instead of, say, escaping the fiery lava all around them first, lava that is splashing madly but nonsensically not burning them or their conveyances? It's possible there's some protective field, but that protective field isn't blocking the lightsabers. Why does Obi-Wan try to kill Anakin but then nonsensically walk away with Anakin down but not dead, allowing Anakin to be transformed into Darth Vader?

These are questions similar to what you would find yourself asking when reading any 90s-era comic book where Batman drives a car with impractical fins that would scrape against any tunnel or wears a mask with horns so long that they would hit the top of any doorframe of any indoor environ and wears a cape that is so long it probably gets stuck on furniture and people around him probably step on it and cause him to trip and fall. REVENGE OF THE SITH in the 20 whole minutes I've seen is very comic booky, it's all about the imagery even if the story completely fails to justify the imagery.

The TV Tropes entry for this is Rule of Cool:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RuleOfCool

In contrast, Obi-Wan vs. Maul is ultimately not about any of that nonsense. It is about how Obi-Wan has in some ways fallen. The once resplendent Jedi Knight of the Republic has become a hermit in the desert, watching over a farm boy. From a knight of an ancient and noble order to a barely tolerated babysitter. But a true Jedi does what is needed and Obi-Wan has to protect Luke from Maul.

And in the confrontation with Maul, Obi-Wan doesn't do any Force grabs or flips or whatnot; he instead mimics Qui-Gon Jinn's stance in PHANTOM MENACE, luring Maul into the same double-bladed attack that killed Qui-Gon -- but Obi-Wan is ready for this move, having already seen how it works. Obi-Wan smartly slashes the double blade in half and Maul across the heart. Maul's silly flourishes are his undoing and Obi-Wan, having protected Luke, now grants Maul comfort in his final moments rather than ranting about Maul's failings the way Obi-Wan ranted at Anakin in REVENGE.

OBI-WAN: Episode 2 -- the writing has some serious plotting issues. Obi-Wan, in his search to retrieve a kidnapped ____, tracks her to a planet. Planets are REALLY big places, but Obi-Wan manages to track her to a city. It's still a BIG city. And Obi-Wan still locates ____ by... randomly talking to some randoms outside the airport and kicking down a few random doors, and randomly, ____ is behind one of them. OBI-WAN doesn't even get to use the Force as a catch-all explanation because his Force powers are pretty curtailed as, like Luke in THE LAST JEDI, Obi-Wan has clearly severed his Force connection to hide himself.

However, while the plotting isn't great, the emotional arc is strong. Obi-Wan encounters a fake Jedi with no power and the story notes that this phony conman Jedi has actually saved more people in a day than Obi-Wan has in 10 years. Obi-Wan is so shattered by the trauma of REVENGE OF THE SITH (a movie I myself couldn't finish) that he can no longer hack it as a hero; at one point, ____ calls him out as a 'fake' Jedi and it's hard to argue.

But then Obi-Wan has to get it together to save a little girl and discovers that he may still have what it takes -- only for this moment of self-realization to give way to horror when he discovers something he hasn't realized for 10 years: his only real achievement in the Clone Wars, killing the Sith apprentice Anakin Skywalker, was actually no achievement at all; Anakin's alive and Obi-Wan's failure to take him out and inability to see the fight through may be why the Empire has flourished while Obi-Wan has been working in a butcher shop. The character arc soars even though the plot is clumsy.

Obi-Wan keeps getting called out as "old" by a little girl which is interesting because Ewan McGregor is 51 and looks like a young man in his late 30s/early 40s with a beard and makeup-deepened lines. But in the context of the story, a man who looks like an adult will seem 'old' to a child

OBI-WAN, Episodes 4 - 6: This works for me. I'm glad it worked for Slider_Quinn21. I am very, very sorry that it didn't work for Grizzlor; I never want anyone to not enjoy a product.

OBI-WAN is an odd little continuity insert of a series. The obvious authorial intent of A NEW HOPE is that Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader have not met since Vader was Obi-Wan's Jedi apprentice. "When I left you, I was but the learner; now I am the master." The obvious authorial intent of REVENGE OF THE SITH is that the battle in the lava (because that's a sensible place to have a swordfight) was Obi-Wan and Anakin's last confrontation before they met again on the Death Star. OBI-WAN is plainly a studio decision to hammer a new Obi-Wan/Vader story in between REVENGE and A NEW HOPE to sell some Disney+ subscriptions.

However, authorial intent doesn't count for much in this franchise. Obi-Wan in A NEW HOPE replies that his old student is "only a master of evil, Darth," and Alec Guinness is clearly addressing Vader as though "Darth" is a first name. Obi-Wan tells Luke that Vader "betrayed and murdered your father," and George Lucas' originally commissioned script for EMPIRE had the character of Anakin Skywalker appearing to Luke in visions alongside Obi-Wan. None of this matches RETURN OF THE JEDI confirming Vader's true identity or PHANTOM MENACE making "Darth" an honorific for Sith Lords.

The OBI-WAN series seizes on these continuity discrepancies as soft spots in the canon to carve out some space for itself, offering some rationale for why Obi-Wan's supposed lie to Luke wasn't Obi-Wan's lie at all, explaining why Obi-Wan would address Anakin as "Darth," and the series offers these explanations with deft writing, a strong emphasis on character conflict and progression over plot or visual spectacle, and a taut sense of understatement, never overselling a moment when the series can instead let the audience realize the implications as the scene unfolds -- and justifying an inserted story into the continuity of Obi-Wan and Darth Vader.

And now to spoilers...

OBI-WAN does a great job of creating an arc for Obi-Wan and Darth Vader. Obi-Wan is shattered and broken after the Clone Wars and hiding behind the name Ben; then he finds out that Anakin not only survived the lava Obi-Wan left him in but has become a mass murdering force of doom, making Ben of Tatooine even more of a disaster as he lives in the shadow of Ben Kenobi's failures.

Ben cowers in the face of Vader, flees from him, can't escape him, and is so weak that Vader's lightsaber swings seem to bat Ben around like a rag doll while Ben staggers backwards from every blow and crawls away in fright. This is not the cool, measured, powerful Obi-Wan Kenobi that Ewan McGregor played in the prequels or the calm, assured Ben Kenobi of A NEW HOPE; Ben of Tatooine is weak. His supposed mission of 'protecting' young Luke Skywalker is shown to be a sham; Ben of Tatooine can't even protect himself.

Never has any Jedi Knight seemed so vulnerable, so fragile; even a defeated Luke in EMPIRE STRIKES BACK was defiant to the last. But Ben of Tatooine is a traumatized war veteran who has lost his capacity for conflict or violence. All he's good for is acting as a decoy so that refugees can escape. He faces down Darth Vader and Vader casually buries Ben of Tatooine alive; this time, Vader has the high ground. Vader is all that will remain of the legacy of Obi-Wan Kenobi.

But then, beneath a thousand tons of rock and soil, saved by the smallest of Force bubbles, Ben sees Leia Organa of Alderaan; Ben sees Luke Skywalker of Tatooine, sees their spirit and potential, sees their light and good repelling the darkness that Vader has cast him into -- and suddenly, Ben Kenobi bursts from beneath the ground, restored, renewed, having accepted that the despair and dark he feels is what makes the light side of Force what it is. Reconciled and renewed, he defeats Darth Vader, he apologizes for having failed to save Anakin, only for Vader to reply that Vader himself killed Anakin, absolving Ben of his guilt at last. "Goodbye, Darth," says Obi-Wan, once again sparing Vader -- possibly a mistake, but ultimately a decision on Ben's part to resume his role as a source of light in the galaxy.

This story is extremely small and intimate. When Ben of Tatooine realizes that his legacy will not merely be Darth Vader, it's a quiet, gentle moment and the transition from Ben of Tatooine to Ben Kenobi is subtle and low key. When Vader declares that Vader killed Anakin, not Obi-Wan, it's a low-volume, low-drama moment voiced by a wheezing, decrepit old man in a broken Vader suit, the voice of Hayden Christiansen's Anakin fading in and out of Vader's James Earl Jones voice.

The minimalism is also present in certain production aspects, in stark contrast to THE MANDALORIAN and BOBA FETT. When OBI-WAN has a flashback to the ATTACK OF THE CLONES era where Obi-Wan and Anakin were training, the show declines to use any deaging effects on Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christiansen. On one level, it's visually jarring because the recap sequences use shots of REVENGE OF THE SITH, but the flashback has a 40 year old Hayden Christiansen playing his 19 year old self, using only his hairstyle and costume to indicate this is the young Anakin. This is one area where slimming Anakin's face and removing the lines would have been worthwhile, but the creators elect to instead have the acting sell it for the audience.

Curiously, OBI-WAN does insist on de-aging the voice of James Earl Jones. Vader throughout OBI-WAN KENOBI sounds like the mean average of Vader in A NEW HOPE and EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. Jones does not sound like this in 2022; his vocal performance in the 2016 ROGUE ONE made Vader sound raspy, wheezy, tired, agitated, struggling to complete his lines before running out of breath.

Vader's voice in OBI WAN KENOBI has been assembled by the Respeecher company which mined Mark Hamill's audiobook recordings to create Luke's lines in BOBA FETT. However, there is no sense of Vader's voice being recompiled from previous clips; it's clearly a performance.

Likely, Respeecher had new 2022 recordings of James Earl Jones performing all the lines, then created a 70s and 80s library of Jones' voice from all his audiobook readings, radio performances and more -- and created a vocal template that Jones' 2022 recordings were remixed to match. It's strange that Disney would hire an effects company for Darth Vader's voice but not Anakin Skywalker's face.

OBI-WAN is good. It's low key. There's some talk of a second season. I'm not sure the story has any room left between the first season and A NEW HOPE, however.

I really liked Moses Ingram's performance as Reva. Disturbing and terrifying only for Vader to turn the tables on her. I also liked how OBI-WAN KENOBI emphasizes how Reva is the one character whose fate is actually open. Ben of Tatooine can't actually die in a prequel to the 1977 movie. Leia can't die. Luke can't die. Darth Vader can be maimed and mauled and marred and mutilated, but not in any way that prevents him from appearing in A NEW HOPE. Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru will probably survive this story to die in a future story. Reva is the only one with an open future.

I was just making a joke saying Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru "probably" can't die. (Unless Obi-Wan were to replace them with clones while Luke sleeps. Or maybe Luke knows they are clones and that's why he wasn't that upset in STAR WARS when he returned to his family farm to find the estate burned to the ground and two charred skeletons that used to be his aunt and uncle.