Alexa Offers Exclusive Star Wars Sneak Peek
Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant is offering a special behind-the-scenes peek at “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” ahead of the movie’s release. The arrangement is exclusive between Amazon and Disney and Lucasfilm.
Star Wars Voice
The secret video is available only on Amazon’s website and Fire TV. If you have a Fire TV box or remote with voice, you can say “Alexa, the Force will be with you always” and the video will pop up. If you don’t feel like using the voice remote, you can type #TheRiseOfSkywalker into the Amazon.com search bar or app or just go to amazon.com/threriseofskywalker. Notably, an Echo Show will not pull up the video on its screen. Smart speakers and smart displays with Alexa have to be hooked up to a smart TV to play it. The short video includes footage of the Rise of Skywalker director J.J. Abrams and cast members Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Mark Hamill and Oscar Isaac discussing the movie and what it means to end the nine-movie saga.
The whole setup clever gimmick for boosting interest in the movie for Disney. The end of the video offers links to places to get tickets ahead of its De. 20 debut. For Amazon, it’s a fun way to get people to play with Alexa and a surefire way to draw eyes to Amazon’s enormous Star Wars shopping center. Arguably, a movie franchise of this scale doesn’t need much in the way of marketing to be a huge success, but that never prevents big companies from working together to come up with new ways of luring in more people to watch the movie or buy the merchandise.
Alexa Disney Princess
Of note is the fact that Disney went to Alexa with this exclusive. Previously, Disney has been working much more closely with Google and Google Assistant. Google Assistant will add sound effects and soundtracks to accompany certain Disney books for children as they are read aloud, using voice recognition to be able to tell when a reader has skipped ahead or gone back, and adjusting the sound effects accordingly.
Then again, the partnership may be because of how many Star Wars-related hidden commands Alexa has built into it. There are a couple of Star Wars trivia skills, but the special voice commands reveal some major fans in Alexa’s development team. Asking Alexa for the Jedi Code or who Darth Vader is will net you solid factual answers, but the humorous responses to statements like “that’s no moon,” aren’t you a little short for a Stormtrooper,” and “I am your father” among other deep cuts make it clear that the Alexa office will likely close early on Friday for people to go catch a screening of Star Wars.
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