Star Wars: James Earl Jones ends as Darth Vader – his voice carries on

James Earl Jones will no longer voice Darth Vader. The 91-year-old actor has announced his intention to retire from the role. His iconic voice should still be heard in the Star Wars universe – generated by a computer program. The Ukrainian tech start-up Reespeecher created a voice clone of Jones, which will voice Darth Vader in the future, using particularly concise archive recordings.
This method was already used in the series Obi Wan Kenobi – even in all scenes with the villain. Although the human is named James Earl Jones in the credits, it was actually a computer that did his job. Compared to his actual voice, the clone sounds more like the performances recorded by the actor some 40 years ago than his late works in the current millennium. Jones was last actually heard as Vader in Star Wars 9 – The Rise of Skywalker.

Respeecher has already created the young voice of another “old” character from the Star Wars universe: Luke Skywalker’s voice in The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett was not recorded by Mark Hamill and then digitally rejuvenated by a program, but also on Completely recreated based on old recordings. However, many fans noticed the trick and complained that Luke’s voice sounded strange and fake.