Actor Mark Hamill has joined an increasingly long line of Hollywood stars seeking to insert themselves into the Ukraine conflict with his voice, mustering a Jedi knight’s sonorous gravitas, now used on an air raid app to warn of incoming attacks from Russia.
“Attention. Air raid alert. Proceed to the nearest shelter,” says Hamill over Air Alert, an app linked to Ukraine’s air defense system.
When the threat is no longer at hand the 71-year-old American screen veteran simply signs off with “The alert is over. May the Force be with you.”
The whole time his delivery is in character as Luke Skywalker, the Verge reports, adding some of the lines contain recognizable quotes from the Star Wars franchise like “Don’t be careless. Your overconfidence is your weakness.”
Some of the Hollywood voice motifs can be heard in the following video starting around 56 seconds in:
The reason I remain optimistic about Ukraine’s corruption-free future. And a quick update, interrupted by an air raid alert (featuring Mark Hamill) 🇺 pic.twitter.com/DB2fnrzTPo
— Igor Novikov (@igornovikov) January 25, 2023
The actor says he’s admired — from afar, in California — how Ukraine has “shown such resilience … under such terrible circumstances.”
Its fight against the Russian invasion, now in its second year, reminds him of the Star Wars saga, he says — of plucky rebels battling and ultimately defeating a vast, murderous empire. Voicing over the English-language version of the air-raid app and giving it his “Star Wars” touch was his way of helping out.
“A fairy tale about good versus evil is resonant with what’s going on in Ukraine,” Hamill said in an interview with the Associated Press.
“The Ukrainian people rallying to the cause and responding so heroically … It’s impossible not to be inspired by how they’ve weathered this storm.”
This is not the first time Hamill has seen fit to play a part in the bloody conflict.
File/ Mark Hamill attends Galaxy of Wishes: A Night to Benefit Make-A-Wish at Disneyland on December 07, 2021 in Anaheim, California. (Tiffany Rose/Getty Images for Make-A-Wish)
As Breitbart News reported, five months ago he put his hand in his pocket to send funds to buy 500 drones for Kyiv, destined to take on a variety of military and civil tasks against invading Russian forces he says represent the “evil empire.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced last September Hamill had been named an ambassador for the country’s fundraising platform UNITED24’s “Army of Drones“ project.
More recently actor Orlando Bloom flew to Kyiv in his own personal show of support for the Ukraine leader.
Actor Orlando Bloom Meets with Zelensky, Tours War-Torn Ukrainehttps://t.co/f35vwLS931
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) March 28, 2023
“The new ambassador introduction took place during an online call with the President of Ukraine,” a Ukrainian government site stated.
“Volodymyr Zelensky expressed his gratitude to Mark Hamill for supporting Ukrainian people since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.”