You don't even get to see what happened in the years between ANH and ESB.

The bounty hunter on Ord Mantel was the only thing referenced in the missing three years, and that seemed to be a recent adventure since Han use that as his excuse to leave. Obviously Luke was promoted to (wing) Commander and he learned some more about the force on his own. Vader starting using a new command ship and he figured out who Luke was. And the rebels built a new base, but may have had other bases between Massassi and Echo.

And that's it. And we didn't need anything more, at least for the events of that movie to be understood easily.

Yeah the OT doesn't even make it clear how long passes between each movie much less what happened in the gap.

Yeah the OT doesn't even make it clear how long passes between each movie much less what happened in the gap.

It's all there in the manual...or novelization. I don't think the prequel trilogy spells out the gaps either but everyone knows it's 10 years from TPM to AOTC (making Anakin 19 in that movie, same as Luke in ANH) and 3 years between AOTC and ROTS (Anakin being as old as Luke was in ESB). Of course learning how old Anakin was in TPM (or how old Obi-Wan is) is also something that isn't thrown in your face in the movie.

In fact the 19 years between the end of the Clone Wars and the Battle of Yavin couldn't have been directly referenced until after episode 3 was made, and even then it's something competely outside the films.

The new movies will probably be just as vague.

I'm fairly sure the crawl starts with: A LONG TIME AGO, IN A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY.

IT IS A BAD TIME FOR THE REBELLION RESISTANCE...