When The Mandalorian TV series hit Disney Plus the world fell in love with the cutest thing ever seen in a galaxy, far, far away, Baby Yoda. Since then we’ve learned a lot about the diminutive frog eater. He’s actually called Grogu, is a powerful Jedi Padawan, and will eat literally anything you put in front of him, including spiders.
It seems, though, that his affection for eating arachnids has done nothing to dampen his popularity, with even big stars wanting to work with the little guy. This week, it was revealed in some behind the scenes photos from the sci-fi series that Mark Hamill was one the great and good of Hollywood who appeared alongside Grogu, or the puppet version of Grogu at least.
At this point, it’s not a spoiler to say Luke Skywalker makes an appearance in The Mandalorian’s season 2 finale. It is however interesting to see that Mark Hamill played Luke. I presumed they’d just used a body double, and then VFX wizards had pasted a young Hamill’s face on top. Not so, though, instead, it seems like Disney used digital de-ageing to make Luke’s cameo work.
Disney’s attempts at using computers to turn back the hands of time have been met with mixed results so far. It worked in Captain marvel on Samuel L. Jackson, but it looked pretty ropey in The Mandalorian (and don’t get us started on the digital necromancy used to bring back Peter Cushing’s Grand Moff Tarkin).
mark hamill holding grogu is just the best thing ever pic.twitter.com/LiC0D5v8Bj
— zed (@vadersanakin) August 1, 2021
Lucasfilm clearly thought Luke’s face could have looked better as well as it was reported last week that they’ve hired a deepfake expert who managed to make a more convincing’ Young Luke’ than they did.
Shamook, who has over 100k subscribers on YouTube, has been making deepfakes for years now and has had more than 26 million views on his account. He’s reportedly been so busy working for Industrial Light and Magic that he’s not had time to upload any new content to his YouTube channel.
I wonder what Star Wars projects he might be busy with? Could it be Patty Jenkin’s Rogue Squadron film? Maybe we’ll see some old (now young) faces crop up in that science fiction movie.