How much time passes in each Star Wars movie?

Good question!

I don't know that there are any official answers on these, but here's my guess:

The Phantom Menace
Total time estimate: Roughly a week.

Notes: Maybe the biggest variable here is the time between leaving Coruscant and the Battle of Naboo. I think we can assume that there was some organization that went on then (particularly the mobilization of the Gungan army), and I'd guess that it took a minimum of one day to organize that. Could've been significantly longer, though, maybe up to a week or so.


Attack of the Clones
Total time estimate: 5-6 days

Notes: I didn't go through the film exactly, but you could probably count the number of "night" scenes in this movie. Of course, with different planetary locations, that doesn't exactly help us much. Off the top of my mind, I'd say if you followed Padme's journey, you're see maybe 2 days on Coruscant, 2 days on Naboo, and one or two days on Geonosis. That isn't even counting travel time, though, so it could be a little longer than that.

Revenge of the Sith
Total time estimate: 6-8 months

Notes: The big key here is Padme. She's pregnant with twins, so I can't imagine that she was very far along by the time of the Battle of Coruscant. At the same time, we've obviously got a less than 9 month cap on how long the film could be. My guess is, considering she wasn't showing much at all when she told Anakin, she was probably less than 3 months pregnant at the time.


Rogue One
Total time estimate: technically, 13 years
Outside of the flashback, though, I'd say maybe 5-10 days


Notes: There is a lot of space travel in this one. However, I think it's pretty clear that the Rebels can reach Scarif relatively quickly from Yavin IV. I'd say Jyn's adventures in this film could span as little as 5 days, and maybe even be as long as 10. Tough to tell


A New Hope
Total time estimate: 4-5 days

Notes: Outside of Tatooine, we don't spend much time at any of the locations in ANH. The thing that really is gonna add in time is space travel.

The Empire Strikes Back
Total time estimate: 1-3 months

Notes: Obviously you can fudge with the time on Hoth a little, but what really makes this complicated is the infamous "Falcon v Dagobah" apparent time paradox. Personally, I think it's explainable enough- the Falcon, out of hyperspace, just took a really long time to get to Bespin. Han and Leia being cramped together that long would go to explain their relationship evolving, and it gives Luke some time to actually train.

Return of the Jedi
Total time estimate: 5 days- ?

Notes: Here's a weird one, in my opinion. We can say the Jabba's Palace and Endor stuff took place each over 2 days apiece, but it's not explicit how much time takes place between the two events, as far as I know. Unless I'm forgetting something, it could've been weeks, maybe even months between Han's rescue and the battle of Endor.

The Force Awakens
Total time estsimate: 4-5 days

Notes: Like A New Hope, space travel is probably the biggest factor here


The Last Jedi
Total time estimate: 2-3 days

Notes: Like @PrincessLeiaCB3 mentioned, this one actually has a pretty hard time limit, given the dialogue line about how long the Raddus could survive


But yeah, looking forward to seeing others' interpretations!

 

The question about Padmé's pregnancy was recently asked to Pablo. Throughout the whole shoot she wore the same tummy prosthetic, which means that when she meets Anakin she was already in a very advanced pregnancy and the length of time that passes from the Battle of Coruscant to Obi-wan giving the Larses baby Luke would have to be at most one, two weeks.

 

Huh, that's interesting.

To be fair, I never even considered what she looked like on Mustafar, right before the birth:



Dang, Padme really didn't look very pregnant at all, especially for having twins!

 

#BecauseStarWars

 

I agree with everything except for Empire and TLJ. I don't even believe in the Empire time paradox, I just don't believe Luke was on Dagobah for that long. In my opinion the film took a week tops.

TLJ is probably the easiest to figure out since we're actually given references. Rey arrives on Ach-To and gets nowhere on her first day. The second day is the whole tree stuff, yada yada... she doesn't start training until her third day. Now sometime on that third day is when Rose and Finn leave for Canto Bight. But truthfully, we don't even need to use them since they pretty much board the Supremacy at the same time Rey does. Rey leaves Ach-To on that 3rd night. She gets to the Supremacy on that 4th day, and figure from there until the end of the film maybe anywhere from 6-12 hours pass. I'd guess it takes a total of 5 days.

 

I think she was. I noticed that her wardrobe seemed unusually bulky. And in a later scene between her and Anakin, it was easy to see that she was pregnant.

 

Excellent thread.....of course if the SW universe observed Newtonian Physics especially time dilation there would be no way to follow stories from different perspectives. Only way would be to follow one character or a set of characters that stay together.

One of my favorite Sci-Fi novels of all time "The Forever War", shows how difficult it would be to fight an intergalactic war due to time dilation.....the main character William Mandella was born on Earth in 1975 and by the time he returns to Earth the final time, the year is 3143....

 

Taking a look at the script, apparently the Resistance fleet had "18 hours" of fuel left at the point that Maz and Poe devise the plan to meet the codebreaker.

That's I think what we're referring to when we say TLJ has the most strict timeline of all.

So I think the biggest key left here is how much time had passed between Rey's arrival on Ach-To and Poe's call to Maz.