Star Wars is partying like it's 1999 again. With Ewan McGregor set to reprise his prequel trilogy role as the titular Jedi in Obi-Wan Kenobi, it feels we like traveled back in time 20 years. Only this time, people are being nice to Hayden Christensen, thankfully.
With both McGregor and Christensen out and about promoting Obi-Wan—which will debut on Disney+ this Friday—old wounds from the somewhat maligned Episodes I-III are coming up. Case in point: in a press conference for Obi-Wan, McGregor got to talking about 2002's Attack of the Clones. At one point, he revealed a somewhat concerning production note: every single word of dialogue had to be rerecorded. In film jargon, by the way, it's called ADR (Automated Dialogue Replacement), which is typical for any film or TV project, but certainly not on this level. Apparently, Attack of the Clones used new-age cameras, which caused an issue with the audio. Here's how McGregor explained it:
"They were cutting edge technology, but compared to what we ... they had huge umbilical cords coming out the back of the cameras, and you couldn't change the lenses. Or, they could change the lenses but it would take like, half an hour. So everything was just shot on a zoom lens. The umbilicals led to this big tent in the corner of the stage that literally hummed. It was so noisy. And when in post-production, they realized at the end that the noise they made was exactly the frequency of the human voice. So we had to ADR every single line of Episode 2. None of the original dialogue made it through because of that, because the cameras were like, so new. None of the bugs had been worked out yet. So compared to what we're doing now, it's like night and day."
Of course, this is another fun bit for the inevitable oral history on the making of the Star Wars prequel trilogy. At least McGregor is getting another crack at the galaxy far, far away. Speaking of which: you need a palate cleanser from thinking about Attack of the Clones too hard, don't you? It's OK. We understand. Take another gander at the Obi-Wan Kenobi trailer.
