Kurt Zimmerman brought Star Wars from a galaxy far, far away to Michigan. Kurt makes his droids out of wood, but they're filled and painted to look like metal. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. The wood exploded into a million pieces, covering the workshop floor. As he stood there looking at the mess he just made, Kurt Zimmerman was at a crossroads moment.

It's the spring of 1977, and George Lucas is petrified. Having just wrapped work on his third feature film, Star Wars, he retreats to Hawaii, unable to face the early reviews. Yet as he frets in a five-star resort, Lucas bumps into another Hollywood hideaway – Steven Spielberg. The hero's moniker certainly benefited from some finessing, and the action-packed Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) raked in 354m at the box office. Yet as great as Indy's influence was on cinema, it might have had an even bigger one on video games.

If anyone could make the Dark Side sound good, it was James Earl Jones. The actor, who died Monday at the age of 93, provided the voice for Darth Vader in more than a dozen Star Wars properties, from A New Hope to Star Tours. He made the Force sound ominous in a way that made it appealing. With his passing, it feels as though all the power and gravitas and respect he brought to the character is gone. A few years ago, when Jones provided a few lines of dialog as Vader for The Rise of Skywalker, he'd expressed interest in wrapping up his time as the Sith Lord, according to Vanity Fair.

Log Off Movement CEO Emma Lembke and teacher Matt Miles discuss the impact of artificial intelligence on kids on'The Story.' In the past few years, artificial intelligence has trickled into the entertainment industry, distinguishing itself in films, television and music. Despite its rapid advancements, AI remains an enigma to many, with minimal legislation to regulate the technology. In recent days, it's been a part of the conversation surrounding Hollywood's writer's strike, the first strike in 15 years. Given the unlimited avenues of its use, actors and musicians are beginning to speak out on the use of artificial intelligence in conjunction with their name and likeness.

One of the most anticipated games of the year is almost here. Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom may seem to feature the same basic graphics, map layout and general mechanics as its predecessor, Breath of the Wild, but it breaks new ground with Link's new skills – Ascend (shooting to the ceiling), Recall (rewinding time for an item), Fuse (combining items and weapons for countless effects) and Ultrahand (building machines). These can seemingly help fight enemies or get you from A to B. I'm now pretty excited for May 12th. Check out all of our impressions from a 75-minute playthrough. Great deals on consumer electronics delivered straight to your inbox, curated by Engadget's editorial team.

My background came from God of War … I've never worked on a shooter, and you need a different team to do that. You might as well be asking me to make a racing game. And eventually over time, we built that trust to the point where we ended up calling [the franchise] Jedi." The much contested Jedi eventually became Cal Kestis, first introduced in Jedi: Fallen Order. His original reveal saw a slew of criticism for being, well, a little bland, but four years on, it's hard to deny that Cal has won over both gamers and Star Wars fans alike. Case in point: in a recent Disney poll, asking fans to vote on which lightsaber from the Star Wars universe they'd like produced for retail, Cal beat out legendary characters such as Anakin Skywalker and Qui-Gon Jinn. Of course, making the main character a Jedi isn't just a play to Star Wars fans – it's also a clever game design move, given that the well-documented journey of a Jedi developing their skills perfectly mirrors that of a player progressing through a video game, something Asmussen describes as "one-to-one storytelling". "I was hoping that we could come up with a character that the player could go along on the ride with," he expands. "So, he starts off kind of raw.

Although James Earl Jones has stepped away from his most iconic role, the legendary "Star Wars" actor's incredible baritone lives on, thanks to a Ukrainian artificial intelligence startup. First reported by Vanity Fair, the 91-year-old actor worked with the Ukrainian firm Respeecher to recreate Vader's instantly recognizable voice for the franchise's recent "Obi-Wan Kenobi" series -- and it was actually the second time Lucasfilm had worked with the company. Using archival soundbites, Respeecher "cloned" both Jones' voice for "Obi-Wan Kenobi" and the younger version of Mark Hamill's early Luke Skywalker for "The Mandalorian" and "The Book of Boba Fett," the report notes. Per those who worked on the Disney series, Earl Jones still provides guidance on the depiction of his infamous character. He has retired as the voice of Darth Vader so here is a young James Earl Jones reciting the alphabet and it's pretty much Oscar worthy.

Artificial intelligence developed in Kyiv is taking over one of the most treasured roles in film, as James Earl Jones steps back as the voice of Darth Vader. The Star Wars actor, 91, was helped to reach the chilling heights of his performance 45 years ago by the Ukrainian startup Respeecher in the recent Obi-Wan Kenobi series as the company worked with Jones and clips of his past performances. The AI "clone" of his voice could then be layered over lines read by another actor to create a Darth Vader who sounds more real than the real thing. "Lucasfilm came to us, essentially through word of mouth,", said Dmytro Bielievtsov, Respeecher's chief technical officer. "Someone posted about our tech in an internal sound engineering chat, and it got picked up."

During the creation of the Obi-Wan Kenobi TV series, James Earl Jones signed off on allowing Disney to replicate his vocal performance as Darth Vader in future projects using an AI voice-modeling tool called Respeecher, according to a Vanity Fair report published Friday. Jones, who is 91, has voiced the iconic Star Wars villain for 45 years, starting with Star Wars: Episode IV--A New Hope in 1977 and concluding with a brief line of dialog in 2019's The Rise of Skywalker. "He had mentioned he was looking into winding down this particular character," said Matthew Wood, a supervising sound editor at Lucasfilm, during an interview with Vanity Fair. "So how do we move forward?" The answer was Respeecher, a voice cloning product from a company in Ukraine that uses deep learning to model and replicate human voices in a way that is nearly indistinguishable from the real thing.

Luke Skywalker's CGI face in the character's The Mandalorian cameo was met with a lot of criticism, and fans even tried to fix the scene with various tools and programs. One of those fans did so well, Lucasfilm has hired him to help it ensure its upcoming projects won't feature underwhelming de-aging and facial visual effects. That fan is a YouTuber known as Shamook, who uses deepfake technology to improve upon bad CG effects and to put actors in shows and movies they never starred in. In the comments section of a video that replaces Christian Bale with Robert Pattinson as the Batman in Christopher Nolan's film, Shamook wrote that he joined Lucasfilm/Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) a few months ago. When asked what his role within the company is, he said his official title is "Senior Facial Capture Artist."