How Top Gun: Maverick Used AI To Recreate Val Kilmer's Voice
The filmmakers of Top Gun: Maverick used A.I. to help give Val Kilmer's Iceman his voice. After many delays, the long-in-development sequel to 1986 Top Gun finally made it to screens and was a box office sensation. Top Gun: Maverick flew to the box office charts grossing $160 over the Memorial Day weekend, becoming the biggest opening weekend of Tom Cruise's career and claiming the biggest Memorial Day weekend crown from Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End.
One of the most talked-about and heartfelt moments of the film was the reunion between Pete «Maverick» Mitchell (Tom Cruise) and his old rival turned friend, Tom «Iceman» Kazansky (Val Kilmer). Many were wondering how Kilmer's Iceman would factor into Top Gun: Maverick, as in 2014, the actor underwent throat cancer treatment, which resulted in the loss of his voice. For Iceman's brief scene, he speaks to Maverick mainly through typing on a keyboard, but for one final moment, he gets a few encouraging lines to Maverick in, which was done with the help of advanced A.I.
Related: Top Gun: Maverick's Iceman Scene Is A Beautiful Val Kilmer Tribute
According to Variety, in 2021, Kilmer partnered with Sonantic, supplying the company with hours of archival footage featuring his speaking voice to create an AI-powered speaking voice for himself. This audio was fed through the company's algorithms and turned into a model, and this same process was used again for Top Gun: Maverick. The hope with this technology is to allow others who have lost their ability to speak to have their voices again.
Lucasfilm recently made headlines with the news that Luke Skywalker's dialogue in both The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett was not actually spoken by Mark Hamill but was fully
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