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“Top Gun: Maverick”: Is Val Kilmer’s voice just AI?
In short: Yes, Val Kilmer’s voice in “Top Gun: Maverick” was reconstructed with the help of artificial intelligence (AI). That is why a secret was never made. But it was also not a big discussion.
Why was that necessary?
Val Kilmer has suffered massive voice problems since his larynx cancer from 2014. After a tracheotomy, he could only speak very limited. Therefore, a conventional synchronization was not possible for his role as “Iceman” in Top Gun: Maverick. And nowadays, people are upset with “The Brutalist” that Adrien Brody’s voice has been changed by artificial intelligence!
How was the voice created?
The company Sonantic, a company that specializes in AI-based voting technology (now part of Spotify), has created an artificial version of Kilmer’s voice. They used audio recordings of previous films and interviews to train a synthetic voice model of his voice. So what we hear in “Top Gun: Maverick” is a copy of Val Kilmers. But a Kopue tried to authenticity.
The result is therefore a very lifelike AI voice that can be heard in the film. Kilmer was no longer able to speak physically to speak. It had to be solved like this.
And how is the scene solved in the film?
In the film, Kilmer’s figure, Admiral Iceman Kazansky, is also sick and hardly speaks, which coincides seamlessly with his real situation. In an emotional scene, he speaks a few sentences. And these lines come from the same AI voice. Maverick, his old rival and now a friend, can hardly hold the tears back. Reconciliation of the two top pilots. Shortly before the death of the Admiral Kazansky.
Jerry Bruckheimer, the producer of “Top Gun: Maverick”, said about Val Kilmer’s participation: “It was very important to us that VAL was there. The AI voice enables him to show itself completely on the screen. That was a great gift.”