The finale of the second season of The Mandalorian sent Star Wars fans into a spiral of emotions. If you know, you know. Yet, the YouTuber who "fixed" that monumental moment has now been hired by Lucasfilm.
A surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one. Now, spoilers for Chapter 16: The Rescue will follow so head on out if you're yet to catch up with one of the biggest sci-fi shows out there.
In the last episode of the second season, Din Djarin, Bo-Katan Kryze, Koska Reeves, Fennec Shand and Cara Dune invade Moff Gideon's cruiser in order to rescue Grogu. While the ship is searched, Djarin comes face to face with the Dark Troopers and manages to eliminate one and eject the rest into space. However, even though Djarin defeats Moff Gideon and claims the Darksaber, the Dark Troopers make their way back onto the cruiser. Fortunately, Grogu had taken his capture into his own tiny green hands and contacted Luke Skywalker ahead of the event. The Jedi arrives and destroys the Dark Troopers before picking up Grogu to continue his journey as a wielder of the Force.
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The appearance of Luke Skywalker was kept under wraps so the surprise was received very warmly by fans. However, it did inadvertently show that de-aging technology isn't Lucasfilm's speciality, and the uncanny valley effect that young-ish Luke had only underscored the success of CGI elsewhere in the show. Ewan McGregor, who is returning to his role as Obi-Wan Kenobi in the upcoming show, praised the pioneering StageCraft technique that was thought up for The Mandalorian. So, it's a let-down when the Luke Skywalker rocked up looking plasticky and a little vacant behind the eyes.
If you could see me right now, I would look like that meme of SpongeBob sitting and staring at the table. Why am I so dejected?
Well, every day that passes is one more without the Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga game in my life. I mean, just check out its awesome trailer here.
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As is the case for the majority of things on the Internet, plenty of people came forward to claim that they could have done a better job. One of these hotshots was a YouTuber called Shamook, whose deep fake improved that moment in The Mandalorian massively. The expressions aren't too smooth and robotic, Luke's eyes are brighter and more reflective, and his complexion is cooler toned to mimic the dim lighting in the scene. Evidently, with more than two million views on the video, fans thought Shamook had resolved a lot of what was wrong with the reveal, and Lucasfilm appears to have agreed.
"[Industrial Light and Magic is] always on the lookout for talented artists and have in fact hired the artist that goes by the online persona 'Shamook,'" said a representative in a statement supplied to IndieWire. "Over the past several years ILM has been investing in both machine learning and A.I. as a means to produce compelling visual effects work and it's been terrific to see momentum building in this space as the technology advances."
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Shamook has also announced the news to their YouTube subscribers who had noticed that their upload frequency had plateaued. "As some of you may already know, I joined ILM/Lucasfilm a few months ago and haven't had the time to work on any new YouTube content," said the content creator. "Now I've settled into my job, uploads should start increasing again. They'll still be slow, but hopefully not months apart. Enjoy!"
Featured Image Credit: DisneyTopics: Disney, TV and Film, News, The Mandalorian