This is a MAJOR screw-up in Starwars time...

[Aprentize]

According to all sources, ep3 will take place 20 years before ANH, so thats what im counting on in thís post.
In ep3, we will 99.99 percents for a fact see anakins fall to the dark side. So he will fall to the dark side 20 years before ANH. This means that he must have gotten amidala pregnant BEFORE that. So, how come Luke and Leia are only EIGHTTEEN in ANH?!?!?!?!?! Did ani do amidala when he was darth? Does as sw pregnancy last for two years? Is vader actually not the father of the twins? Or did i just get everything wrong? Thats my question for the day.....

[Darth Hez]

I think you can just about work it if Amidala gets pregnant JUST before Ani turns, and Luke and Leia are about to turn 19 in ANH.

Of course you never know, the twins may be born in ep3, which would mean the 20 years may just be a screw up by someone at LF.

[Jedi Master Carr]

This is my thought on the timeline TPM takes place 32 years before ANH, EP 2 is ten years later so it is 22 years, It thought I read some where that the next one will be 3 years after 2 so that would make it 19 and if Amidalia is pregnant in 3 that would make Luke and Leia 18 in ANH, I think. does anybody have that new Star Wars chronology that might help in clairfying this problem.

[ReaperFett]

EP1 is 35 years beforwe ANH I think

[Doc Milo]

Ep2 is 32 years before ANH -- at least, that's what I've always heard.

Could it be that ep3 can have a large time span? Could it start out 20 years before ANH, and end 18 years before ANH?

Also, I've always thought that Anakin will turn to the dark side and begin to betray the Jedi by playing a double role -- known as Anakin as a Jedi, Vader as a Sith. So it could be that he the twins are conceived after he turns to the dark side.

I thought Rick McCallum has said that we will see the birth of the twins, so I tend to think that either ep3 will have a large time span, or the 20 years before ANH timeframe for ep3 is wrong, and it will be 18 years before ANH.

[Grendel 666]

Not to get too weird here (although why not? and if not here, where?: ) but time within SW has always been less than absolutely fixed, at least over periods longer than a day. The best example of what I mean is ESB. How long a period of time is covered in that movie? How long is Luke training on Dagobah? How long is the Millenium Falcon down inside that asteroid? And so on. Now don't go running to check the novelization or script! Not that the script is terribly clear on this from what I remember. As a viewer of the film, how much time do you sense has passed for the characters? A week? A month? More? Six months for Luke but only two weeks for Leia and Han? Things just happen when they happen in a rather dreamlike (or nightmarish) progression.

I agree as a fan, however, that the time between films gets bent, and the continuity seems a little whacked at this point. Obi-Wan should perhaps be older, and I had the impression that he and Anakin were closer in age. Maybe relativity is a factor.

But it was all a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...

Damn. I need to shut up and get some sleeeeeeeep.

[mez7]

umm well hate to mess up the discussion but...


ep3 isnt even scripted yet so who are all these sources saying that it will be 20 years before ANH??
i dont think that anyone will say in the movie,
"obi wan luke will come to you 20 years from now"
or
"20 years from now these twins will be reunited"

or anything else that would say how long it was from ep3 to ANH so this is not a MAJOR screw up,
by watching EP1 do you know exactly how long it is from then to ANH????
no it doesnt,

[Doc Milo]

mez has a point.

And so does Grendel.

I always assumed ESB spanned at least a year. I mean, think about it, how far a distance was it from where he disconnected from the Star Destroyers to Bespin -- and the Falcon made it there at sublight speeds. It could have taken an awfully long time to get to Bespin.

So, since we know how old Luke and Leia are in the OT ( 18 ) then all we really have to know is that from the point the twins are born to the OT, 18 years pass, regardless of when Ep3 starts...

[RHJediKnight]

Sorry if anyone's already mentioned this, I didn't take the time to scroll down and read every post.

In the novel version of ANH (the only one that counts, i.e. the one Lucas himself wrote) states that Luke Skywalker is twenty years old at the beginning of ANH, not eighteen.

[Bromine]

Good points, all. Instead of the Episode 3 rumour being true and the timeline being (potentially) screwed up, doesn't it make more sense that the rumour is false and the timeline is correct? Also, even supposing the rumour is true, it doesn't NECCESSARILY mess up the timeline, it just means things will unfold a litttle differently than how we thought.

About ESB: I've been wondering the same thing. When I first saw the movie I sort of assumed it was a matter of days or maybe over a week, but the more I think about it the more sense it makes sense that Luke was trainging for over a month on Dagobah and Han+crew took a month or so to reach Bespin.
Lando told Han that the Empire arrived "shortly before you did." Obviously, they arrived far enough ahead of the Falcon that they could land tons of troops, make a deal, and hide their ships; several days or a week at least, I'd think. The way the movie is paced, it almost feels like the Falcon made the trip within a few hours!

[ReaperFett]

In the NJO books it says

TPM- 32 years pre-ANH
EP2- 22 years pre-ANH
EP3- 20 years pre-ANH

[Jedi Master Kyle]

I've always thought about that too. But I don't think it would take very long for Luke's X-Wing to completely submerge in the swamp. Then again, Han refers to Bespin as being "pretty far". I would say that it ESB takes place over the span of a week, maybe two.

[Darth Hez]

It is the E1 insider CD that puts ep3 as being 20 years before ANH.

I've always though that Lukes training was at least a couple of months. I mean, Obi-wan was trained from birth virtually, and still took until his twenties to reach Knight status. Sure, Luke had already made a start, and was training every day for hours directly under Yoda, but its still going to take a fair amount of time to reach a stage where he could even think about standing toe to toe with Vader.

This means the trip on the Falcon was a couple of months, which would be a pretty long way in a ship that size. Hence Hans comment of "Its pretty far, but I think we can make it."

[Bromine]

I think I can say now that Episode 3 most certainly takes place 20 years before ANH, since the Insider CD would have the latest information. All this really means is that it takes place around the time the twins are born. Since it's believed Anakin won't become Vader until the very end of the movie, I don't see the problem. Just because he's turning to the Dark Side don't mean he and Padme aren't still, er, enjoying married life.
Also, if the movie covers several years (entirely possible if halfway through they just flash forward a couple years or something) then there's plenty of time for it all to go down.

I was wondering, where does it say Luke and Leia are 18? I always thought they were 20 in ANH.
Either way, I don't think their exact age is really important. If the information in Episode 3 makes them 21 instead of 18, I don't see the problem. Not like it would affect the story at all.

[Grendel 666]

I think (always dangerous) that Leia was theoretically 16 (in GL's mind and notes anyway) and Luke 18 in ANH, back when it was simply STAR WARS. But no reference is made onscreen to anyone's precise age, in any of the films. I think about as close as it comes is Obi-Wan and others referring to Luke as "the boy" and Han calling him "kid" constantly.

Then filming the rest of the story became possible, SW became a series, the first film became Episode IV: A New Hope and suddenly Luke is kissing his twin sister. More than once. So, there's certainly room for more adjustments if they become necessary. And most ticket buyers will never notice, because if it's not onscreen it never happened.

Interesting hearing people's thoughts on the passage of time in ESB. There really is no "right" answer, but the different interpretations are, well, interesting! (I'm going into redundancy hyperdrive...)

[Bromine]

I seem to recall that in one of the early drafts (a copy was included with the old SW screensaver) Leia was described as being around sixteen. Makes Amidala and Leia even more similar.

[Doc Milo]

I just looked it up in the SW novelization (credited to George Lucas, but I believe it was ghost written by Alan Dean Foster) and it describes Luke's age as (not verbatim) "twice as old as [the ten year old vaporator he's standing next to]" So whoever posted this above is correct that the novelization has Luke at twenty.

The Star Wars Encyclopedia, though, has a timeline that says that Luke and Leia were born 18 years before the battle of Yavin.

Even so, it really doesn't matter, since all people are going to know is that enough time has passed between Ep3 and ANH for the twins they saw born in episode3 to be whatever age they think they are in ANH. All other timelines will be adjusted to fit the movies, the movies will not be adjusted to fit whatever timeline exists now.

Also, about how time can move forward fairly quickly in Ep3 -- If Anakin goes off to war, and he and Amidala are separated for a long period of time, it would be easy to say that they were separated for the better part of a year or two, both fighting in various battles on different fronts, then finally reunited after such long periods of time have passed. It would be simple to show the passage of time with such a situation, especially if the Clone Wars are these various prolonged conflicts effecting many systems lightyears distant from each other.

[Darth Turbogeek]

Time span of ESB - According to the novelisation, it was several months. Luke was on Dagobah for quite a bit of time.

[Jedi Master Kyle]

I guess that means he had to put up with Yoda's cooking for a long time then! And it would also seem that Han and Leia never washed their clothes en route to Bespin either! Nasty!

[mez7]

the falcon does have a washing machine and drier according to the han solo corellina series of books
so they would have been able to wash those clothes