(SeaPRwire) – Three years have passed since we last saw Din Djarin and Din Grogu, the two-person bounty hunting clan that won over audiences across the globe in The Mandalorian. Fortunately, our long wait is nearly at an end. This May, Mando and Grogu will make their first appearance on the big screen in The Mandalorian and Grogu, a feature film that follows the pair as they take on an assignment from a New Republic commander.
During Disney’s official presentation at CinemaCon, Star Wars debuted the final trailer for the upcoming movie. But the most thrilling element of the preview was not the lead title characters — instead, it was a split-second shot of an unidentifiable creature, a subtle tribute to the filmmaking technique that helped turn Star Wars into the iconic franchise it is today. You can view the full trailer below:
A large portion of this trailer expands on footage we have already seen in earlier previews: Din agreeing to take on a mission from Colonel Ward (Sigourney Weaver), spending time with Zeb from Rebels, the Hutt Twins from The Book Of Boba Fett, and tiny Anzellans who react to meeting Grogu by exclaiming “Bad baby! Horrible baby!”
Roughly one minute and 30 seconds into the trailer, one of the Hutt Twins threatens Mando with “monsters,” right as a group of terrifying creatures surrounds him. Unlike other Star Wars creatures such as the Basilisk shown earlier in the trailer, which move with smooth, fluid motion, these robotic creatures have a very distinct movement style that feels far more similar to Laika Studios productions like Coraline or Kubo and the Two Strings. This is because the creatures have the instantly recognizable visual style of stop-motion animation.
Stop-motion has been used in Star Wars productions from the very beginning for elements including AT-AT walkers, holochess pieces, and Tauntauns. Industrial Light and Magic collaborated with stop-motion legend Phil Tippett again in 2017 to create a number of stop-motion creatures for Solo, so the technique has never fully fallen out of use.
At this year’s CinemaCon, The Mandalorian and Grogu director Jon Favreau officially confirmed that stop-motion will be featured in the new film. According to reporting from Deadline, he shared that the movie will include “practical sets, stop-motion animation for creature work, motion control miniatures, and more.”
While stop-motion is a common special effects technique, its use in The Mandalorian and Grogu is particularly notable due to its large scale. In Solo, stop-motion was only used for the holochess scene, so the characteristic stop-motion visual style was not very obvious to viewers. But in The Mandalorian and Grogu, the stop-motion creatures tower far above Mando. It may not be the most seamless special effect available in the modern production toolkit, but it shows that Star Wars still remains aware of its origins and the artistic methods that first brought the franchise to life decades ago.
The Mandalorian and Grogu will debut in movie theaters on May 29, 2026.
This article is provided by a third-party content provider. SeaPRwire (https://www.seaprwire.com/) makes no warranties or representations regarding its content.
Category: Top News, Daily News
SeaPRwire provides global press release distribution services for companies and organizations, covering more than 6,500 media outlets, 86,000 editors and journalists, and over 3.5 million end-user desktop and mobile apps. SeaPRwire supports multilingual press release distribution in English, Japanese, German, Korean, French, Russian, Indonesian, Malay, Vietnamese, Chinese, and more.