Val kilmer He put the spree; Tom Cruisediscipline. When Tuesday has read that Val kilmer He has died sooner than he should when he seemed to have won the pulse of death, some images of the history of cinema have been come to mind. Because Val kilmer was Batmanbut it was also Jim Morrisonwas The saint… And of course, it was the nemesis of Tom Cruise in Top Gunin 1986 and again, in 2022.
When he started to take shape Top Gun: Maverickits protagonist had a single effort: Val kilmer I had to return. “We all wanted me to come back, but Tom was very convinced: if I was going to do another Top GunVal had to be in it, “said the producer in 2021 Jerry Bruckheimer. That was the impossible sequel … until it became a reality.
But let’s go back. Let us go 36 years before the last return of Val kilmer to the big screen, when his voice still had many things to tell and his binomial with Tom Cruise I was about to burst the box office.
“There were two sides, mine and Tom. While he was focused on becoming the greatest hero in the history of cinema, we enjoyed San Diego’s night. One day we were trapped at a crossing in which all the traffic lights were in red. I turned and burned wheel making a perfect circle, wearing it. Until a police car approached and the agent looked at me and said: ‘ The actor remembered in his memoirs I’M Your Huckleberrywhich published in April 2020. “I was firm and ordered my drunk companions with my strongest voice of Iceman They will sit up and let me talk. As I had not drunk I could trust my talent as an actor. “
The anecdote suggests a feature that the own Val kilmer He regretted not having modulated at the end of his life: pride. “I only regret the jealousy that I sometimes suffered. And of envy. I understand that it can be envied with humility, but it is very difficult. I was not able,” the actor revealed in an interview with El Mundo in May 2022, after his penultimate return to the screen. To the little one, this time. The documentary Valwhich premiered in Cannes in July 2021, was, in its own way, the legacy of an actor to whom the disease snatched the voice.
How could you come back Tom Iceman Kazanskythat authoritarian voice, that evil off the record? How could it Tom Cruise Specify for the last time one of the most iconic rivalries in the history of cinema? The answer was in simplicity: turning the history of the actor into that of the character, at least as far as communication is concerned.
Val Kilmer, in Top Gun: Maverick.
In the film, Iceman He is Admiral and Commander of the US Pacific fleet, and goes to the rescue of Maverick when it seems that he will be expelled from the Navy forever due to his constant challenges to the authority. After several written messages and a photo that lights the nerve in the impatient viewer, the great scene arrives, which justifies the sequel, which returns the two great American heroes in front. The one that melts them in a hug.
“I was very excited the first time I saw her. Almost 40 years is a long time for a reunion. We laughed all day. Tom is great and it was surprisingly fun,” he said Val kilmer The movie has already released. In the air there was who pronounced the brief allegation that closed the scene, in a hoarse voice, although the producers of the film denied that there was technological intervention after the rumors that pointed to a dubbing by artificial intelligence.
Val Kilmer, in Iceman’s skin in Top Gun (1986).
The idea was not a pilgrim. In 2021, Val kilmer announced a collaboration with the Startup British Sonantic to recreate your voice with the help of AI. The actor provided hundreds of hours of file material with his voice to train the machine. “In the end, we generate more than 40 different voice models and select the best, of higher quality and more expressive,” he said John FlynnDirector of Technology and co -founder of Sonantic, to Forbes.
“As human beings, the ability to communicate is essential for our existence, and the side effects of throat cancer have made it difficult for me to Kilmer. Neither of them has ever referred to his voice in the movie of Joseph Kosinski.
“My favorite moment was a small joke in which I gave Tom an extremely expensive champagne bottle, but I put it in the middle of a giant field and made him follow clues in ‘Treasury search’ search to find it,” recalled Val Kilmer in his memoirs of that legendary filming of the mid -80s, in which, as in screen, the rivalry between the protagonists became unwaled friendship. “I hid behind a tier and I saw him load the giant box on his motorcycle. He never thanked me for the style Iceman. I thought I would break the ice, but I suppose the ice was not so bad. “
With or without technology help, Val kilmer He could, in his own way, say goodbye with his own voice from a life dedicated to cinema.
