Releasing in just a limited number of theaters on May 25th, 1977, and produced with just eleven million dollars in the budget, the first saga in a series of space operas began to change the entertainment world forever. Star Wars: A New Hope mesmerized moviegoers with a science fiction tale about an ordinary farm boy who becomes a valiant leader in the fight against an all-powerful and intergalactic evil regime.

Produced and written by filmmaker George Lucas, this overnight sensation was quickly transformed into one of the longest-lasting Hollywood properties from the perfect storm of stellar box office revenues, rave movie critic reviews, and roaring audience approval rates.

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Over time, the ongoing success of the Star Wars franchise paved the way for two additional theatrical trilogies (one set as a prequel and the other as a sequel), numerous tv series (live-action and animated), many video games (ranging from titles that were made for the vintage Atari 2600 all the way to the modern PlayStation 4) and all sorts of other merchandising deals including toys for children and food industry tie-ins.

Long Live Star Wars

     Lucasfilm Ltd.Disney

No matter the medium in which one decides to explore, American pop culture can be compared to an ever-revolving door of creative ideas. While any popular icons of today might as well already be called relics of yesterday because of how fast society changes the direction of their attention, the symbolic characters found within the Star Wars universe will never be forgotten. The inspirational personas of Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Princess Leia for example, which were played by Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher, respectively, continue to stand strong against the test of time due to the franchise’s everlasting impact on the entertainment industry.

Besides A New Hope being preserved by the United States National Congress in 1989 and the U.S National Recording Registry adding the movie’s original soundtrack to its own database in 2004, the first theatrical chronicles telling about the battles between the reigning Empire and the Rebel Alliance remain after all these years as number two on the list of highest grossing films after inflation in North America right behind Gone With The Wind.

While the fictional universe and all the lore therein will remain alive and well for many years to come due to all the different accolades and recognition that Star Wars continuously receives, father time, on the other hand, always finds a way to disrupt the familiar path for the actors and actresses that portrayed these roles a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. As much as we would forever like to see characters be brought to life on the big screen by the same people who originally filled their shoes when they first debuted, organically, that cannot take place.

Modern technological advancements have been made to circumvent this problem, as in the case of Peter Cushing, who starred as Grand Moff Tarkin, and Carrie Fisher, who starred as Princess Leia, as they were both digitally inserted into various Star Wars projects after their individual passings.

James Earl Jones as Darth Vader

     20th Century Fox

Choking fans with captivation every time he made his presence known on screen and described as the most prominent villain in the epic sci-fi drama, the character of Darth Vader is another entity who will always be a memorable figurehead of not only Star Wars but the world of fantasy storytelling. A visually dark wardrobe combined with a hefty breathing apparatus as a mask allows for the unique possibility of many actors to portray the iconic Sith lord over the years. On the other hand, Darth Vader’s intimidating cyborg-like voice has been brought to life by just one single person for the last forty-plus years, James Earl Jones.

Considering Jones is 91 years young, the original announcement that he is officially signing over the rights and retiring from the Darth Vader voice role came as no surprise. Even though the Star Wars fandom knew at some point this was going to happen (as with all aging stars who successfully hold onto an always demanding role), the surprising good news with this decision lies within Mr. Jones’s replacement going forward. In a way, he isn’t actually going anywhere.

Fiction Turning Into Reality

     Lucasfilm Ltd.

Respeecher, a Ukrainian-based company that focuses on A.I. generated voice cloning and speech processing, has inked a deal with Lucasfilm to not only recycle and reuse any archived audio recordings of James Earl Jones for future Star Wars projects but also through Respeecher’s proprietary deep learning software, create new lines of dialogue using Jones’s speech patterns. His unique tone and dialect will be deciphered and copied by the artificial intelligence, digitally stored, and then synthetically layered onto any future voice-overs, fine-tuning the sound until it matches the almost cyborg-like but raspy voice that James Earl Jones made famous.

As much as the news could very well disappoint any Star Wars fan across the globe, we should never forget the fact that, no matter how much time goes by thereafter, we are now living in a world where technology can greatly assist in keeping our most cherished on-screen characters constantly connected to their original real-life counterparts, even if it is for such a dastardly villain like Darth Vader.