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“Attention. Air strike alert,” said a voice with the gravitas of a Jedi knight. “Go to the nearest shelter.”
This is a surreal moment in an already surreal war: the baritone grave of actor Mark Hamill, Luke Skywalker from Star Warsurging people to take cover every time Russia unleashes more aerial attacks in Ukraine.
The intrusion of Hollywood’s science fiction fantasy into the everyday reality of war in Ukraine is the result of Hamill’s decision to lend his famous voice to Air Alert – a downloadable app related to Ukraine’s air defense system.
When air raid sirens start wailing, the app also warns Ukrainians that Russian missiles, bombs and deadly drones may be on their way.
“Don’t be reckless,” Hamill’s voice advises. “Overconfidence is your weakness.”
The actor said that he admired – from afar, in California – how Ukraine has “shown its resilience … in such a terrible situation.”
May the Force be with Ukraine
The war against the Russian invasion, now in its second year, reminded him Star Wars saga, he said – from the plucky rebels battling and ultimately defeating the vast, killing empire.
Voicing through the English-language version of the app online raid and give it Star Wars touch is a way to help.
“The tale of good and evil is relevant to what’s happening in Ukraine,” Hamill said in an interview with The Associated Press.
“The people of Ukraine are rallying the cause and respond so heroically … it is impossible not to be inspired by how they have weathered this storm.”
When the danger from the sky passed, Hamill announced via the app that the “air signal is over.” He then entered by raising: “May the Force be with you.”
Hamill also raised funds to buy reconnaissance drones for Ukrainian troops on the front lines.
He autographed Star Wars-themed posters that are being drawn.
“Here I am sitting in my own house while in Ukraine there are power cuts and food shortages and people are suffering,” he said.
“It motivates me to do my best.”
Although the app also has a Ukrainian language setting, voiced by a woman, some Ukrainians prefer that Hamill deliver the bad news that another Russian bombing may be imminent.
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Live in vigilance
On the worst days, the siren and the app go off every few hours, day and night.
Some are false alarms.
But many others are real – and often deadly. Bohdan Zvonyk, a 24-year-old app user who lives in the western city of Lviv that has been repeatedly attacked, said he chose Hamill’s voiceover over the Ukrainian setting because he was trying to improve his English.
He is a Star Wars fans, too.
“Besides,” he said, “we can use the power that Hamill wants.”
After one sign, Zvonyk was riding the trolley bus when Hamill rang on the phone. He said the man in front “turned to me and smiled: ‘Oh, the damned Sith,'” to describe the Russian forces.
The Sith are the evil enemies of the good Jedi. Olena Yeremina, a 38-year-old business manager in the capital Kyiv, said Hamill’s “May the Force be with you” remark at the start made her laugh. Now his enduring humor gives him strength.
“That’s a very good word for this situation,” he said. “I wouldn’t say that I feel like a Ukrainian Jedi, but sometimes this sentence reminds me to straighten up and keep working.”
Sometimes it can be wise to kill Hamill. Yeremina forgot to make a trip outside Ukraine – to Berlin – and paid for the mistake when the alarm started screaming at 6 o’clock and, again, when she boarded the train in the German capital.
He is not alone. Another person in the subway car also had the app and it blew up too.
The two men cursed at first, but then “the man and I smiled,” Yeremina recalled. Ajax Systems, a Ukrainian security system manufacturer that co-developed the app, hopes that Hamill’s star power will encourage people outside of Ukraine to download it – so they get a taste of the angst heaped on Ukrainians by nerve-shredding alarms and air death and destruction.
“With Mark’s approach, it won’t be so scary,” said Valentine Hrytsenko, head of marketing at Ajax.
“But they will understand how the context is.”
In the first year of the invasion, air raid alarms sounded more than 19,000 times across the country, so “of course people were tired,” he said.
The app has been downloaded more than 14 million times.
Hrytsenko was among those who used the English setting to hear Hamill’s voice.
“For Star Wars fans, sounds really fantastic,” he said. “It’s a kind of Ukrainian mentality to find some humor even in bad situations or try to be positive.”
Hamill is happy that the sci-fi saga is once again transporting people, even if only temporarily, to a galaxy far, far away.
“It inspires people,” he said. “Everyone flashed back to six years ago. And if the film can help people through hard times, so much the better.”
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