I Built a Star Wars Mandalorian Movie Countdown Site with React + Vite

I'm a huge Star Wars fan, and with The Mandalorian & Grogu hitting theaters on May 22, 2026, I couldn't just sit and wait — I had to build something.

*So I created a countdown website: Mandalorian Cinema Countdown
*
What's on the site?
⏳ Live countdown timer (days, hours, minutes, seconds)
🌟 Animated starfield background
🎬 Embedded official trailer
👤 Character cards for Din Djarin & Grogu
📱 Fully responsive design
Tech Stack
React 18 with Vite
Pure CSS (no UI framework) — custom Star Wars-inspired dark theme with gold accents
Deployed on Netlify (free tier, zero config)
The Fun Part: Pure CSS Starfield
Instead of a canvas library, I went with a pure CSS animated starfield using layered box-shadow on pseudo-elements. It's lightweight and looks great:

.stars::before {
  content: '';
  position: fixed;
  width: 2px;
  height: 2px;
  background: transparent;
  box-shadow: /* 200 random positions generated */ ...;
  animation: twinkle 4s infinite alternate;
}

What I learned
Vite is ridiculously fast for React projects
Netlify deploys a Vite build in under 30 seconds
A well-chosen color palette (#C9A84C gold + near-black) carries a whole theme without needing images