Here's the 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' Stop-Motion Toy Tribute You've Been Waiting For
Back in the 1990s, a trio of Star Wars fanatics with time on their hands and toys at their disposal remade their favorite flick for kicks. Borrowing the audio from the 45-RPM Star Wars read-along storybook, the budding buddy filmmakers — Troy Durrett (who went by Pez D. Spencer), Lance Robson, and Jon Ramos — crafted a stop-motion retelling of the movie with Kenner action figures and Atari video-game footage. Their opus, titled The Star Wars, became a fixture at conventions and was eventually incorporated into the concerts of the surf-rock band Man or Astroman?.
Watch ‘The Star Wars’:
Now, with a next-gen film in the space saga tearing up the box-office charts, a new stop-motion tribute has popped up online. Star Wars: The Toys Awaken, created by Damon Wellner and released last week on the Probot Toy Cinema YouTube channel (hat tip to JediTempleArchives.com), gives a CliffsNotes version of the film using Hasbro’s hard-to-find 3.75-inch figures (Santa really delivered for Damon!) and audio from the various trailers of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Watch ‘The Toys Awaken’:
There’s Rey modeling a Rebel helmet! There’s BB-8 getting assaulted by Jakku thugs!
Related: ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ Ultimate FAQ
From Finn’s TIE fighter escape to General Hux’s First Order pep rally (with a sweet nod to the dearly departed Grand Moff Tarkin), from Han and Chewie homecoming on the Millennium Falcon to Kylo Ren and Finn’s lightsaber showdown, The Toys Awaken touches on the key moments from the previews without any revealing any huge spoilers.
Guess we’ll have to wait until Hasbro releases toy versions of Maz Kanata, Supreme Leader Snoke, and the rest of the film’s rouges gallery before we can get a full-on action-figure remake. But in the meantime, The Toys Awaken will do nicely.
