Poll Star Wars Episode III Revenge of the Sith spans....

[Reverend]

OK, so it seems Pablo has posted a poll on twitter asking fans "Star Wars Episode III Revenge of the Sith spans...."
Surprisingly, even with over 8444 votes (at time of posting) the result seems to be a fairly even 49/51 split!
I'm honestly surprised it's so closely balanced, so just for fun, what do we think the answer could be and why?

Personally, I've always figured it at about a week.
Indeed I think I once tried to work this out and came to the conclusion that the bulk of the story (the opening battle, to the birth of the twins) takes place over the course of at least 5 days, if not a full week.
This is mostly based around the fact that since about half the movie takes place on Coruscant you can chart the passage of time based on daytime to nighttime scenes, and there's four separate nighttimes & five distinct daytimes.

One could conceivably shove in a few extra days here and there (like between Anakin's first vision & seeing Yoda about it) but not much more than that since most of the transitions would be odd if one inserted a significant time-jump.
You could also easily add an extra few days to a week at the end, what with the funeral, and Obi-Wan riding out to the Lars farm, but I rather think that's besides the point.

Going by the responses on twitter it seems most that figure it takes place over months are doing so on the basis that Padme got "bigger" over time. So far as I'm aware, from a production standpoint, Portman wore the same sized "bump" prosthetic throughout shooting, though some of her outfits were designed specifically to hide it.
Also, one gets the impression that Anakin has been away in the Outer Rim sieges for a LONG time (like say, almost 9 months?)

 

[Steven P Bastien]

I voted months because that was the overall impression I got when watching the movie, but I never tried to analyze it. Based on your description, I believe your analysis more than my gut feeling, but I put my vote in as months anyway.

 

[Booji]

I figure a week, maybe two. Definitely not months.

 

[USS Firefly]

Wasn't padme early in her pregnancy?
I thought so because Anakin didn't she she was pregnant.
So I vote months

 

[Nightowl1701]

She said Anakin had been gone for five months, and the movie definitely spans no more than two weeks at most. So either the twins were dangerously premature (which didn’t seem the case), or - and this is only speculation, of course - the Force put Padme’s pregnancy on fast-forward; if the twins weren’t born soon, they wouldn’t be born at all. (There was precedent for that in the old EU, I don’t know about nowadays.)

 

[Reverend]

She said Anakin had been gone for five months

In the 4th draft of the script, yes she does, but that didn't make the edit, so it doesn't exactly count. IIRC it was part of the dropped Obi-Wan/jealousy sub-plot.

Even so, it's entirely possible that Padme was already 4 months pregnant the last time he was back and either 1) didn't know it, or 2) chose not to tell Anakin.
The latter seems a bit out of character, and while the former might be unlikely it's not impossible and is supported by the fact she didn't know she had twins, since it indicates she never had a proper scan (possibly in the name of discretion.)

The twins were probably slightly premature, given the whole "Padme was almost strangled to death" thing, but maybe only by a month. Which while not ideal is entirely survivable.
Oh and newborns in movies almost never look like actual newborns, since having an actual newborn on a movie set is 1) probably not a good idea for either the baby or mother and 2) very difficult to schedule for filming purposes. So I wouldn't read too much into how they looked.

 

[JD]

I went with days. I never really analyzed it, but it just seems to me that once things start, they progress pretty quickly.

 

[The Wormhole]

Honestly, it always felt like everything in the movie was over a course of days to me, maybe a week total. Indeed, that seems to be the norm for nearly all Star Wars movies with the exceptions of the Anthology movies. Even then, that's only a matter of both Rogue One and Solo starting with prologue scenes set years before the main story. The main story of both movies I'd still say spans a matter of days perhaps a week tops.

 

[Campe]

It would make more sense for this to take weeks, perhaps months, but definitely feels as though its over a few days to a week.

 

[fireproof78]

Too many things happened in too short of time in this film. I want to say months but thinking over it I think weeks.

 

[Spot's Meow]

My impression upon watching was somewhere in between. More than a handful of days, but faster than a few months. So, maybe 2 weeks to one month?

 

[PsychoPere]

Turns out the official answer is... "about 10 days." Hidalgo shares some additional thoughts in this Twitter thread, such as musing on how George Lucas was uncharacteristically specific about passage of time for Episode III compared to other films.

The Legends take (from the awesome ROTS novelization written by Matt Stover) was approximately six days.

 

[BillJ]

I went with days, but it has been a while since I last saw it.

 

[fireproof78]

Turns out the official answer is... "about 10 days." Hidalgo shares some additional thoughts in this Twitter thread, such as musing on how George Lucas was uncharacteristically specific about passage of time for Episode III compared to other films.

The Legends take (from the awesome ROTS novelization written by Matt Stover) was approximately six days.

Hmmm....weird. I never got that impression from the book. Learn something new.

 

[Reverend]

The "official" answer doesn't surprise me as it's about what I figured; for me the surprising part was just how many were convinced that Padme fell pregnant at the beginning of the movie. And keep in mind, these are all people that follow Pablo Hidalgo on twitter, so not just random people in the street but mostly actual fairly hardcore Star Wars fans.

Incidentally, I actually came across my notes on this the other day, so here's how I broke it down: -

Daytime - Opening battle
Nighttime - Anakin & Padme (vision)

Daytime - Yoda & Anakin (visions)
Daytime - Anakin & Obi Wan (more executive powers)
Daytime - Anakin & Palpatine (appointment)
Evening - Anakin & the Council (have a seat)
Dusk - Anakin & Obi Wan (spy on Palpatine)
Dusk - Obi Wan, Yoda & Mace (I don't trust him)
Dusk - Anakin & Padme (failure to listen)
Nighttime - Anakin & Palpatine (Opera)

Daytime - Anakin & The council (Yoda on Kashyykk)
Daytime - Anakin & Obi Wan (Obi departs)
Daytime - Anakin & Padme (Obi came by this morning)

Daytime - Anakin, Mace & the council (Kenobi has engaged Grievous)
Daytime - Anakin & Palpatine (You're the Sith Lord)
Daytime - Mace & Anakin (Palpatine is a Sith Lord)
Dusk - Anakin/Padme (Padme's Ruminations)
Nighttime - Anakin, Mace & Palpatime (Under Arrest - Rise of Vader)
Nighttime - Order 66
Nighttime - Bail Organa leaves
Nighttime - Anakin & Padme

Dusk/Dawn?- Bail returns with Yoda & Obi Wan
Dusk/Dawn? - Yoda & Obi Wan at the Temple
Dusk/Dawn? - Senate (Empire Day)
Daytime - Obi Wan & Padme
Dusk/Dawn? - Padme leaves
Nighttime - Yoda escapes

???? - Vader/Palpatine (Storm) / Birthing scene

Daytime - (Naboo) Tantive III lands

Nightime - (Naboo) Funeral

???? - Death Star (space)

Dusk - (Tatooine) Obi Wan, Owen & Beru​

As you can see I grouped together all the relevant Coruscant scenes that must take place on the same day per the context of a given scene. The day Obi-Wan departed for Utapau could have been the same day he fought Grievous, but that makes an already busy day seem way over-crowded so I separated it off, even though there's no nighttime scene to demarcate it.

It breaks down a little at the end since we have no context for the passage of time once Yoda escapes the senate building and we start planet hopping. We don't really know how long it took to get Vader back on his feet, the Death Star scene could have been weeks later, Obi-Wan could have spent days riding out from Mos Eisley to the Lars homestead, and the funeral could have taken a week to arrange. Some of this could have happened concurrently, there's really no way of telling.
Still, surprisingly, it all amounts to 10 days as per the twitter post, so perhaps Pablo did pretty much the same thing?

Another factor in all this is what we know (so far) of what Ahsoka was up to on Mandalore. and this rough chronology could inform the sequences of events in that story .

We know from 'Rebels' that the last time Anakin saw Ahsoka was right when he and Obi-Wan got called away to go "rescue" Palpatine, so presumably the actual siege is going on at the same time as the opening battle and maybe into the second day. However, no mention of Mandalore in the scene with Obi-Wan specifically talking about the status of the Outer Rim sieges, so one must surmise that by that point it's already over and they're both well aware Maul is in custody.

That gives Ahsoka two more days before Order 66 and all hell breaking loose (presumably including Maul escaping.) We know there was probably a lull post battle because we know she has to appoint Bo Katan the provisional leader of Mandalore under the Republic occupation, which wouldn't make much sense *before* the battle. We also know that Maul most likely somehow witnessed Ahsoka fleeing Order 66 given his "...running away again, Lady Tano?" line in 'Twilight of the Apprentice'.

 

[Turtletrekker]

The movie took place over the course of a few days. It just took a few months to watch it.

 

[JD]

CBR has an article all about the time spans of the Star Wars movies inspired by the same poll as this thread. A lot of the stuff they bring up is stuff that I've wondered about myself.

 

[Reverend]

CBR has an article all about the time spans of the Star Wars movies inspired by the same poll as this thread. A lot of the stuff they bring up is stuff that I've wondered about myself.

Weirdly, that article also seems to assume Padme had only just conceived at the start of the movie and that her pregnancy noticeably progressed over it's course. An assumption that as noted up-thread is directly at odds with the both the in-narrative dialogue and various production details.

The author also seems to misunderstand what "pacing" is when applied to a narrative. Specifically that it's the marking of time as explicitly demonstrated in said narrative, which is of course utter nonsense. It shouldn't need to be clarified that pacing is about the style and cadence of the story as a whole; where the peaks and valleys are in the action, where the exciting action scenes are juxtaposed with quieter character building dialogue scenes. Where slow tension builds to a climax, and when audiences are given a moment to breath and when they are nailed to the edge of their seats.

You'd think if someone were going to write a halfway coherent article on the subject they would at least have bothered to research the subject matter for more than the 2 mins it's take to read the first few replies to PH's twitter thread, and not go off on some weird rant about TLJ. The whole thing reads like clickbait guff that was knocked out in an afternoon.


Anyway, the lack of timekeeping in Star Wars movies isn't a flaw, it's a very deliberate choice to underline the fairytale nature of the stories. You don't need to be specific about time to tell these stories and if we're talking about TLJ, I tend to think introducing such an explicit ticking clock was a mistake.

As a general rule of thumb though, most of the movies seem to take place over the course of a week or two, with Empire being the notable exception. For Empire, you're really not supposed to question the passage of time because it doesn't matter. How long did it take the Falcon to get from Hoth, to Anoat to Bespin at sublight in anytrhing less than several decades? Doesn't matter. It's a fairy tale. When the lone adventurers cross a continent on foot to complete their quest and free the kingdoms of the world from freedom you're not supposed to ask "but where did they get the money for tollbooths?", "What did they use for sanitary supplies out in the wilderness?" Or "Wouldn't they get scurvy and dehydration eating nothing but salted meats and bread that entire time?"

And yes, I've heard all the fan theories about the trip to Bespin, from backup hyperdrives, to wormholes and relativistic time dilation. None of it makes sense. But that's fine because the movie isn't really trying to make sense in that respect.

 

[Set Harth]

And yes, I've heard all the fan theories about the trip to Bespin, from backup hyperdrives, to wormholes and relativistic time dilation. None of it makes sense.

You don't need a backup hyperdrive per se. Han and Chewie are, we assume, pretty good mechanics when it comes to their ship, and it seems plausible that they simply could have worked on the Falcon in order to jury-rig the hyperdrive into partial operability, enough for a short jump. ( They notably find themselves in the same position as the heroes in TPM, where they must find a safe port within a certain range, it's just that the specific reason for this is phrased in totally different terms. )

 

[Ithekro]

Bespin is pretty far but I think we can make it.