From Episode 1 to Episode II it looks like about 8-12 years pass and then I don’t know how many between the II and III. What is the amount of time that is supposed to have passed between IV and VI?
I believe (and the official Star Wars website might be a better source of this particular info) that about a year or two is supposed to have elapsed between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, and the amount of time elapsed during ESB seems to be several months - time for the Falcon to fly at sub-light speed from the Hoth Asteroid Field to Bespin while Luke jumps around in a swamp with Yoda on his back. Between ESB and Return of the Jedi should only be a few months - time for the heroes to launch their plan to rescue Han, which relied on Lando’s infiltration of Jabba the Hutt’s organization. The whole of RotJ seems to take a few weeks, careening from the freelance rescue operation to the showdown at Endor.
So, if ANH took a few days to happen, as the action suggests, then a couple of years go by, then ESB takes up maybe half a year, then another 6 months or so for Lando to get chummy with the criminals, then a few weeks to blow up the Emperor. Grand total, about 3 years. So, safe answer, anywhere between 3 and 5 years.
Gad, I’m such a geek.
One can assume that it takes several years…even decades…
to train a Force Sensitive novice to graduate into Knighthood.
And this training must take place starting in early childhood.
(remember, the Jedi Council were wary of training the approx. 10
year old Anikin cause he was TOO OLD).
On Dagobah, a FULL GROWN Luke Skywalker traind under Yoda
for only a few days in TESB, And Is a full Jedi by TROJ.
Just how long does it take to make a Jedi, anyway?
Maybe the “master” and “knight” titles are relative. At the end of Return of the Jedi, Luke is the most powerful (i.e. “only”) Jedi in the galaxy. That makes him a Jedi master pretty much by default, doesn’t it?
Luke, like his father, however, is very strong in the force. That’s why he can be trained so fast. He had been inadvertantly training his raw force skills his whole life with death-defying runs in his Skyhopper and his pegging of womp rats with a stun laser. All he needed was training in discipline and actual force skills.
I sort of got the impression that the Jedi liked to start training people when they were young kids because at that age they were more impressionable and mentally flexable, and more willing to submit to the Jedi philosophy.
According to the ‘reports’ on Holonet (uh… www.holonet.com or something similar. It’s a Lucasfilm site designed to appear as an online newspaper, but set in the StarWars universe, essentially it prepares fans for Ep2) when the Jedi order accepts a Force-sensitive child, they open the child’s mind to a new world. I can’t recall the exact quote off the top of my head.
Anyways, the process was done at a VERY early age, so that the child could totally acclimate to the Force. I’m guessing the Skywalkers didn’t need this period of acclimation, because they were essentially ‘of The Force’ (if you beleive that virgin-birth guff that Shmi spouted).
It is plausible that that Luke had been ‘opened’ somewhat earlier through his contact with Ben on Tatooine (remember Ben saved Luke and Windy more than once before they met in ANH, and there was some contact between Lars and Ben when Luke was a baby. Maybe Luke was ‘opened’ when he was VERY young, and has no memory of this, but it would expalin his flight and combat skills).
This would make him a more apt student for Yoda. You’ll recall Yoda also decided Luke was, ‘too old’, but still went ahead with the training (he would have been hesitant to train another Skywalker after Anikin’s fall to the dark side).
As for the time frame in Empire, there must be months if not almost a year (yeas?) between the Hoth Asteroid field and Bespin. the Falcon has no hyperdrive, so was travelling at sub-light speeds. Unless Bespin was VERY close (it was, Han did a search for nearby systems where he could set down) this would have taken many years even at near-to-light speed.
Luke’s arrival on Bespin would have plausibly been a week or more after Han, Leia, et al arrive. This would explain Luke’s apparent accellerated learning curve (which would have been months of constant training without distraction or interferance, so wasn’t actually accellerated), supported by Yoda’s tutoring. What’s more, Yoda wasn’t a normal Jedi!
Gene-oooooo!
(I’m waffling)
To answer the OP… three-four years between ANH and TESB, and a year between TESB and ROTJ.
As for how much time elapses during TESB… the current theory right now among the nerds is that the Falcon had to make at least one hyperjump during their escape from Hoth. Either they made the jump immediately after leaving Hoth (and we didn’t see it), and are subsequently attacked by Imperials (and suffer hyperdrive failure), and the asteroid belt is not in the Hoth system… or they made at least one other hyperjump attached to the back of the Avenger, and after detaching, they found themselves in the Anoat system.
So there’s at least one hyperjump, and then one sublight trip… another theory holds to the possibility that Anoat and Bespin are binary stars, or that the two systems are otherwise relatively close to each other. Because even at a significant fraction of C, it would take years to travel normal intergalactic distances… time dilation would make the trip seem like a few weeks to the denizens of the Falcon, Luke would have had time to become a Master, kill Vader and the Emperor, and start his Jedi academy by the time Han got to Bespin.
Then there’s the possibility that there’s some other method of FTL travel in Star Wars… but none of the EU material has made reference to such a device, so I wouldn’t count on it.
Of course, when I say “intergalactic”, I mean “interstellar”.