The season two finale leaned on technical expertise Lucasfilm honed during ‘Rogue One’ and ‘Rise of Skywalker.’
[This story contains spoilers for The Mandalorian season two finale.]
Jon Favreau had one more trick of his sleeve for the season two finale of Disney+’s The Mandalorian.
The episode saw the nostalgic return of Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker, as he appeared four decades ago in the original Star Wars trilogy.
Recent movies from the saga have reintroduced numerous de-aged actors from George Lucas’ original three films. These have included the memorable returns of New Hope-era Carrie Fisher’s Leia Organa and Peter Cushing’s Grand Moff Tarkin in 2016’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and more recently a young Luke and Leia in 2019’s Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.
Hamill, 69, has once again played his younger self in a new story, courtesy of Lucasfilm’s VFX house Industrial Light & Magic, which has produced the VFX magic in all of the Star Wars movies, as well as The Mandalorian. There are numerous ways that this can be accomplished, but a convincing digital actor is always a challenge. While the studio is keeping details of its delicate work on Luke under wraps, there are several techniques that it may have used to bring back the young Jedi master.
From the credits, we learn that Mark Hamill did reprise his role, and Max Lloyd Jones is named as a body double (“Double for Jedi”). That signals that the filmmakers incorporated a technique similar to the one used in Rogue One, where the studio hired Guy Henry, a 56-year-old British actor (who appeared as Minister of Magic Pius Thicknesse in the two Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows installments) to play the part of Tarkin on set before the VFX team took over to replace his head with a digital version of the late Cushing.
Hamill’s face in Mandalorian could have been the result of one or more techniques, including incorporating some found footage into the shots. For instance, to create a young Leia and Luke training with lightsabers in The Rise of Skywalker, the filmmakers found footage of the actors from the production of 1983’s Return of the Jedi and combined those facial performances with digital bodies.
Other ways to de-age a performer include compositing techniques that could be likened to Photoshop or a sort of digital makeup applied to the actual actor to smooth their skin. More advanced processes could involve scanning an actor’s head and creating and animating a fully CG version. This could involve hand animating based on reference material of the actor’s performance and/or incorporating facial performance capture.
ILM’s latest developments in facial capture were on display last year in The Irishman, for which Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci all had decades removed from their faces. For that film, ILM developed a three-camera rig with a main camera and two witness cameras, which allowed the actor to perform on set without the need for tracking markers on the faces. From there, VFX artists brought the nuanced performances into the digital realm.
None of these techniques is simple or quick. It may be that Favreau’s biggest trick from the episode was keeping his surprise under wraps until last night’s debut.
