Just in time for the holidays, Star Wars is celebrating in style with a cutesy recreation of the iconic Death Star trench run from A New Hope rendered as if it was painstakingly made out of gingerbread. But a simple festive sweet treat, this ain’t: it’s the first in a volley of shorts for a new animated miniseries, Star Wars Minis.
Lucasfilm has released the first of the shorts, a brief side-by-side comparison of the trench run sequences from the original Star Wars with the gingerbread recreation. It’s very cute, from the gingerbread cameos of Luke, Han, and Vader, to the gumdrop proton torpedoes fired to destroy the battle station (which blows up with a suitably adorable cookie aftershock ring).
But the short is really just a herald for a new series of similarly ideated shorts called Star Wars Minis, which will be less festively inclined. An accompanying behind-the-scenes video from ILM frames the new shorts a series of ways to explore beloved moments from across Star Wars film and TV in new styles and materials, utilizing new technologies developed by ILM.
Have no fear about “new technologies” just yet, in the wake of Disney’s attempts to embrace generative AI before the tech bubble bursts: Star Wars Minis looks to be modelling things actually crafted by ILM first, from printed, chibi-fied models of C-3PO and R2-D2 to hand-knitted crochet dolls of Yoda, Grogu, and more. The latter style definitely seems to be the focus of this teaser, with knitted riffs on multiple scenes from Phantom Menace, A New Hope, Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi, as well as The Mandalorian rendered in digital fuzzy felt.
It’s a fun way to create short little Star Wars riffs, especially with fun technological solutions to deliver them on a similarly smaller scale.
We’ll see more from Star Wars Minis in 2026.
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