Spoilerphobes beware: A couple of old friends showed up (vocally) in The Force Awakens

Rey approaches

No, you weren’t hearing things: Those were the voices of Ewan MacGregor, Frank Oz and Alec Guinness that we heard during Rey’s vision in The Force Awakens, J.J. Abrams confirmed to Entertainment Weekly.

Ewan McGregor came in to record his part (after cartoon counterpart James Arnold Taylor took a shot at it,) as did Frank Oz. Guinness’ “Rey” was isolated from existing audio:

As they worked on editing the dream sequence, Bryan Burk, a longtime Bad Robot collaborator and one of the producers of the film, surprised Abrams one day with the gift of a single word: Obi-Wan Kenobi’s voice saying the name “Rey …”

“I said, ‘That’s cool, is that the thing from Ewan McGregor?’” Abrams recalled. “He said ‘No, we took a line from Alec Guinness saying ‘Afraid.’”

Not only that, but the lilt in his voice from that truncated word happened to fit exactly what Abrams had in mind. “They cut it, and you hear the performance – he’s saying it the way I would have begged Alec Guinness to have said it. It is so crazy perfect,” Abrams says. “So when you hear Obi-Wan talk to Rey it is both Alec Guinness and Ewan McGregor doing the voice.”

Taylor and several other familiar voices can still be heard in various parts around the film – but I’ll leave the specific IDing to those more well-versed in the cartoons than I.

Eye Candy: Searching LIFE for Star Wars

LIFE: Carrie Fisher, Alec Guinness and Mark Hamill @ ANH 10th anniversary party

A couple months ago, the LIFE photo archive went up in Google, fully searchable. Plenty has been done with them since then, but it didn’t occur to me to look for Star Wars until today. There isn’t a ton there – the bulk of images that come up are from The Phantom Menace premiere – but there are a few things of interest, like Time covers, some vintage toy pics and this shot of Carrie Fisher, Alec Guinness and Mark Hamill at a party celebrating the tenth anniversary of A New Hope. You get about the same amount of shots searching for just George Lucas, and even more for Harrison Ford, but clearly Sir Alec wins. (Wait! Was it really a party for ANH? Now I doubt.) But perhaps most amusingly: Jar-Jar and Madeline Albright? Or Peter Cushing in Hamlet?

Off the fannish track, two of the more interesting uses I’ve seen around the web have been Jezebel’s The Way We Were features and Typophile’s book cover meme.

CE: Media behaving badly

I’m not sure if it’s a coincidence or what, but all the Celebration Europe press I ran across today is so… sensationalist.

First, Daily Mail reporter Tanya Gold doesn’t even get a paragraph into her CE experience before breaking out the requisite ‘Get a life’ comment. Keeping reading – it’s full of such classy gems. Although I do like the description of Steve Sansweet as George Lucas’ “representative on Earth.”

As for the real stars of the CE experience, we have comments from Anthony Daniels, admonishing Sir Alec Guinness and a trifecta of Mark Hamill comments that the blurb artists are trying their damnedest on: ‘wanting’ to be Vader; the Luke warehouse; and the one with the legs, Portman’s a babe.

Four Times the Ewan!

It’s the dream of Ewan worshippers everywhere! No, Obi-Wan hasn’t fallen victim to the Kaminoans. But there will be four roles for Ewan McGregor in his upcoming film.

Empire Online notes a couple of links to Star Wars in this:

Sir Alec Guinness (who was old Obi-Wan to Ewan’s Young Obi-Wan, of course) played multiple roles in some of his Ealing comedies.

And the screenwriter is the same one who wrote Local Hero starring Denis Lawson who is, of course, the uncle of Ewan McGregor and who also played Wedge (Wedge!) in the Classic Trilogy.

Star Wars causes all sorts of incestuousness, doesn’t it?

Roll Over, Sir Alec

Sir Alec Guinness did not seem terribly fond of pop culture in his day; bashing the very pop culture icon that gave him a comfortable retirement on more than one occasion.

So imagine his horror if he should look down and discover that his movie Last Holiday is being remade

…starring LL Cool J and Queen Latifah.

Now will be the time we find out if the dead really can come back to haunt.