The legendary James Earl Jones, 91, has officially retired from the role of the voice of Darth Vader after 45 years.
The not unexpected news comes via a fascinating Vanity Fair article which goes into the origins and logistical issues that challenged the Ukraine-based company Respeecher.
Respeecher was the company behind the A.I. created Vader voice seen in this year’s “Obi-Wan Kenobi” limited series. In said series, the voice sounded more akin to the Vader of the original trilogy than that of Jones’ last extended voice work in the role in “Rogue One” where age had obviously impacted him. Jones also recorded a line of dialogue for “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker”.
The article indicates Jones has “signed off” on using his archival voice recordings combined with this AI tech to keep Vader alive with synthetically constructed new Vader dialogue.
Indeed the feature reveals how the speech artists and engineers were still working on Vader’s voice when the war in Ukraine broke out. Nonetheless, they soldiered on to finish the project.
