Clone Wars: The Voice of Villainy

“I like playing a villain because it’s just no-holds-barred,” says Matthew Wood, the voice of Star Wars‘ General Grievous. “Villains don’t have an inner critic; they just speak their mind and make demands, come hell or high water, with no ramifications. And Grievous is a classic villain – he uses four lightsabers, he’s a Jedi killer, and I haven’t seen any humanity left in him. He knows about as much of the dark side of the Force as you can without having the Force, and now he’s just out for blood. I haven’t seen any redeemable qualities in him. That kind of puts him up on the list of all-time great villains.”

As good as Wood is in the part, voicing villains isn’t how he earns his living. His “real” job is as a digital sound technician for. . . you guessed it, Lucasfilm’s Skywalker Sound.

Wood’s first foray into voiceover land came as Lucas was preparing Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace. Wood made an audition tape based on some insider knowledge of what Lucas was looking for in a character voice. He submitted the tape anonymously and was selected before anyone knew that he worked on the staff.

Wood says he combines a low-pitched, deep voice, lots of yelling and a Bela Lugosi-influenced eastern European flair in his intonations of Grievous. When the voice is filtered through the computer, it is combined with the general’s trademark cough to signify his biomechanical nature.

Wood also provides the voices of the battle droids in the series, which allow him to explore another end of the villain spectrum; as cannon fodder for the Separatists, the battle droids are used primarily as comic relief.

“I love playing both –and it’s especially fun when they’re together because I get to play that juxtaposition,” Wood says. “Grievous is so exasperated at the thought that he’s stuck with these idiotic, low-rent droids that can just be bowled over by Jedi, no problem.

“On the other hand,” he says, “the battle droids have this weird kind of desperation to them. They really want to succeed, but they just know that it’s not within their programming to do a good job. So there’s this weird, funny kind of sadness to them. It’s great to do both the villainy and the comedy.”