How VR is Changing the Future of Star Wars
The VOID's new Westfield installation Secrets of the Empire offers new pathways of storytelling for the franchise
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The $4 billion Disney originally paid to acquire Lucasfilm has already heartily been returned in box office bucks alone: both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi sit amongst the ten highest-grossing films of all time, while 2016’s Rogue One proved the studio’s plans for cinematic expansion weren’t a dead end risk.
That’s not even to mention the merchandising, the books, the television shows - Star Wars Rebels, for example, only recently concluded its highly successful four-season run.
With the franchise’s second anthology film, Solo: A Star Wars Story, about to blast into cinemas, Disney is continually shifting the Star Wars model closer to what they achieved with Marvel, itself a cultural juggernaut about to celebrate its decade of filmmaking with the event film to end all event films, Avengers: Infinity War.
A model that relies on longevity through constant innovation. To find new, expanding means in which to tell its stories. Not only on film, but within the ever-developing technological landscape.
Currently hosted at Westfield Stratford City is Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire, a whole-body, fully immersive VR experience created by The VOID, which drops you blaster-blazing into a galaxy far, far away.
Set between Episode III and IV, you’ll be tasked by Rogue One’s own Cassian Andor (played by Diego Luna) to accompany his droid companion K-2SO (Alan Tudyk) on a mission to Mustafar, the volcanic planet that serves as Darth Vader’s fortress.
As Mark Miller, Executive Creative Producer for ILMxLAB, the ILM branch specialising in immersive entertainment, points out, it’s a period in the timeline still boasting major storytelling potential for Lucasfilm.
All facilitated by the Lucasfilm Story Group, specifically created to keep a handle on the official Star Wars canon, allowing such a vast number of offshoots to be created without threatening the validity of the core universe.
Whether VR experience, animated short, or spin-off novelisation, it can all remain part of the same overarching narrative. “The great thing about Star Wars is we’ve got so much of a timespan that we can plug in,” Miller keenly points out.
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Such a deeply collaborative process between The VOID, ILMxLAB, and the Lucasfilm Story Group, Secrets of the Empire has the ability to tie-in familiar characters like K-2SO and Cassian, with the involvement of their original actors.
Diego Luna, for example, shot a brief segment for the experience that serves as its mission briefing. “We ended up being able to go down to Mexico and shoot that piece with him,” Miller says. “And he was really excited to get back into that character, which he’d had a gap of a couple of years there between the last time he’d put on his costume.”
Star Wars isn’t the first Hollywood franchise The VOID has collaborated with - 2016 saw Ghostbusters: Dimension hit several locations - and it’s certainly not the last, with the company working alongside several studios to create future experiences.
Yet, Star Wars’ focus on the unified narrative seems uniquely primed for the VR experience, a medium that offers something Disney’s traditional cinematic output cannot.
“It’s a multisensory experience,” Cliff Plumer, CEO of The VOID, explains. “It’s not just what you see and hear, but touch and scent and heat and cold and wind. The other thing we always emphasise is the social aspect of our experiences. It’s something you can go in and enjoy with your friends and family.”
With The VOID already possessing several permanent locations, including Anaheim’s Downtown Disney and Orlando’s Disney Springs, the company is continually looking to expand its potential output and further its relationship as a companion to the cinematic experience.
The success of both the Westfield Shepherd’s Bush and Westfield Stratford installations of Secrets of the Empire in London, certainly, has Plumer suggesting a permanent location will eventually arrive in the city. In the US, The VOID already has a working relationship with the Cinemark movie chain.
Furthermore, Miller hints the opening of Galaxy’s Edge, a Star Wars themed land coming to both Disneyland and Disney World, will also present opportunities for VR integration into the world of theme parks.
“We’re working closely with the people in Imagineering and the other parts of Disney to see what we can do with all kinds of new media to bring that to the parks. That’ll be fun,” he adds. ILMxLAB even announced a new VR series featuring Darth Vader, to be penned by screenwriter David S. Goyer, who worked on the likes of Batman Begins and Man of Steel.
In truth, an experience like Secrets of the Empire really does seem to illuminate the storytelling potential of VR; an approach with the ability to seamlessly bridge the gap between film, gaming, and amusement park ride.
And it offers some interesting introspection for the future, considering Hollywood’s insistence on integrating new technology into the cinematic experience itself has come up against something of a brick wall.
Revenues for 3D films have been steadily on the decline, with 4DX (which integrates moving seats and environmental effects) now being the new trend being pushed on audiences. Granted, it’s found some initial success, but there’s no indication yet whether it can actually survive in the long term.
Which begs the question as to why Hollywood can’t find an ideal solution in an approach like VR: keeping the cinematic experience pure (because, really, what can beat the magic of the silver screen), while opening up avenues for alternative storytelling that can build and expand upon universes as vast as Star Wars. Really, the only boundary should be our own imaginations.
Tickets for Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire are available here. The experience is currently open at Westfield Stratford City.