(If you haven’t seen the end of season 2 of “The Mandalorian” and don’t want to know what happened during it, then why read this article? Major spoilers before)
While “Star Wars” bends more into the common universe than in the past, “The Mandalorian” existed for the most part as part of the television universe alongside “Clone Wars” and “Rebels.” Connections with movies are mostly avoided and he has never referred to important people like Han Solo, Princess Leia or Luke Skywalker.
So far.
Fans were treated to a rather annoying sight during the final season 2 of “The Mandalorian”, in the form of a CGI version of Luke Skywalker.
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That’s what Disney did in “Star Wars” several times before, in “Rogue One” in 2016 and in “The Rise of Skywalker” last year. In “Rogue One”, we got CGI versions of Grand Moff Tarkin, who played a significant role, and Leia, who was just a cameo at the very end. And in “The Rise of Skywalker”, we showed CGI Leia and CGI Luke again in a flashback when Luke trained her as a Jedi.
All these examples were met with general derision, because they seemed strange. All faces of CGI work to some extent, but they work best when they discolor the person who initiated the role, such as Samuel L Jackson in “Captain Marvel.” However, in the case of those examples of “Star Wars”, the characters were played by doubles, rather than by the actors who defined the characters – so they are much harder to watch.
Also, this younger version of Luke was brought to life for “The Mandalorian”, with actor Max Lloyd Jones taking over the role behind a computer-generated mask. Hamill doesn’t seem to have been involved in this episode, because it doesn’t even sound like his voice speaking the lines.
And all this creates just a generally disturbing scene.
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Yes, it’s wonderful in theory that I had an appearance by Luke Skywalker in “The Mandalorian.” After all, he is almost the face of the franchise, and his cameo gives extra weight to the events of the show. But this … this is hard.
It was hard to keep looking at Luke as he explained why he was there and why he was interested in Baby Yoda. His face was so expressionless and he felt vague about watching a scene from an old video game. But it’s worse than that, because in a video game all the characters are like that. Here, we had to watch real human faces juxtaposed with this CGI blank face, and the stark contrast makes Luke’s bare face so disturbing.
I mean, look at him.
He looks especially like Luke, but not really. This places her directly in the unusual valley, creating a vague feeling of discomfort as you look at him. And it’s much worse to see her moving.
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Unfortunately, we may see CGI Luke again, since Baby Yoda came out of the “Mandalorian” with him. Wherever Baby Yoda still appears – whether it’s in “Mandalorian” season 3 or “Ahsoka” or another new “Star Wars” show that’s underway – there’s a pretty good chance Luke will be there, at least for a transfer to a new caregiver.
But it’s hard to imagine that Disney would want to face the headache of putting that CGI face on Max Lloyd Jones on a regular basis. And while fans can tolerate this in small doses, I don’t think anyone would be happy to look at it very often. I don’t expect this CGI Luke Skywalker to be involved long before, unless “The Mandalorian” makes a big leap and brings Mark Hamill on board.
Fingers crossed, anyway.