“Attention. Air raid alert,” the voice says with the gravity of a Jedi Knight. “Head to the nearest shelter.”
It’s a surreal moment in an already surreal war: the actor’s grave but reassuring baritone Mark Hamill -Luke Skywalker in “Star Wars”- urging people to take cover as Russia launches another airstrike on Ukraine.
The intrusion of Hollywood sci-fi fantasy into the grim everyday reality of the Ukrainian war follows Hamill’s decision to lend his famous voice to “Air Alert,” a downloadable app. linked to the Ukrainian air defense system.
When the air raid sirens start wailing, the app also warns Ukrainians of the possible arrival of Russian missiles, bombs and explosive drones.
“Don’t be careless,” advises Hamill’s voice. “Your overconfidence is your weakness.”
The actor says he admires – from afar, in California – how Ukraine has “shown such resilience…in such dire circumstances.”
Help with a “Star Wars touch”
His fight against the Russian invasion, now in its second year, reminds him of the “Star Wars” saga of brave rebels fighting and ultimately defeating a vast murderous empire, he said. Giving voice to the English version of the anti-aircraft app and giving it her “Star Wars” touch was her way of helping.
“A fairy tale about good versus evil has a lot to do with what’s going on in the Ukraine,” Hamill said in an interview with The Associated Press.
“The Ukrainian people are joining the cause and responding in a very heroic way… It’s impossible not to be inspired by how they have weathered this storm.”
When the dangers from the sky pass, Hamill announces via the app that “the air alert is over.” He then closes with an uplifting: “May the Force be with you.”
Hamill is also raising funds to buy reconnaissance drones for the Ukrainian forces on the front. He has autographed “Star Wars” posters that are being raffled off.
“Here I am, sitting in the comfort of my home, when in Ukraine there are power cuts and food shortages and people are really suffering,” he said. “It motivates me to do as much as I can.”
Although the app is also in Ukrainian, voiced by a woman, some residents prefer Hamill to break the bad news that another Russian bombing is imminent.
On the worst days, the sirens and app go off every few hours, day and night. Some turn out to be false alarms. But many others are real and often deadly.
Some humor in the midst of tragedy
Bohdan Zvonyk, a 24-year-old app user who lives in the repeatedly attacked western city of Lviv, says he chose Hamill’s voiceover over the Ukrainian version because he is trying to improve his English. He is also a “Star Wars” fan.
“Besides,” he says, “we could use some of the power Hamill wishes us.”
Following an alert, Zvonyk was riding a trolleybus when Hamill’s voice came on his phone. He said the man in the lead “turned to me and said, smiling, ‘Oh, those damn Sith,'” referring to the Russian forces. The Sith are the malevolent enemies of the Jedi do-gooders.
Olena Yeremina, a 38-year-old business manager from the capital kyiv, said Hamill’s line “May the Force be with you” made her laugh at first. Now, her enduring humor gives him strength.
“It’s a great phrase for this situation,” he said. “I wouldn’t say I feel like a Ukrainian Jedi, but sometimes that phrase reminds me to square my shoulders and keep working.”
Sometimes it may be prudent to turn Hamill offline. Yeremina forgot to do it on a trip outside the Ukraine – to Berlin – and she paid for the mistake when the alarm began to scream at 6 in the morning and, again, when she was traveling by subway in the German capital.
I was not alone. Another person in the car also had the app and it also started ringing. The two first cursed, but then “it made both me and that person smile,” Yeremina recalls.
Ajax Systems, the Ukrainian security systems maker that co-developed the app, hopes Hamill’s fame will encourage people outside of Ukraine to download it so they will learn of the anguish caused by nerve-shattering alarms and death among Ukrainians. and the destruction that come from the sky.
“With Mark’s version, it won’t be as scary,” said Valentine Hrytsenko, Ajax’s director of marketing. “But they will somehow understand the context.”
In the first year of the invasion, anti-aircraft alarms sounded more than 19,000 times across the country, so “it’s obvious that people are getting tired,” he said. The app has been downloaded more than 14 million times. Hrytsenko is one of the people using the English setting to hear Hamill’s voice.
“For Star Wars fans, it’s fantastic,” he said. “It’s part of the Ukrainian mentality to find some humor even in a bad situation or try to be positive.”
Hamill is glad that the sci-fi saga is once again transporting people, if only temporarily, to their galaxy far, far away.
“It inspires people,” he said. “Everyone is 6 years old again. And if the movie can help people get through tough times, so much the better.”
Fuente: The Associated Press
Translation: Elisa Carnelli
CB