Remarks on the Sith: A good, if flawed movie. I'd say Lucas finally found the engine of thr story again (the power of the Dark Side), but he still can't change gears for s***. He got it right to finally get his love story, hackneyed and thoroughly unbelievable in chemistry and crap dialogue though it may be, to do something in the story, and, he tied it to the lure of the Dark Side. Ah! Excellent! Passions link up with politics, sounds good... And the politics, ongoing war, gathering in of the reins, insinuations, a nice Roman feel... But anytime Lucas tried to yoke the two together, it choked, except when Palpatine was speaking. When Palpatine is bad, he's very very bad, but when he's good, he's delectable.

A very specific error (spoilers!): when Vader is made so, and awakens to the Emperor's voice, we all know exactly what his first words should be: "Yes, my master." ...but... instead, we hear: "Yes, master." Wrong. Dead wrong, and the most elementary form of wrong. And as for his first question, the response should not be timid, but should cement an irrevocableturning point -- and the response should be, at that moment, not the cry of remorse and weakness, but the assumption of the Dark Side, the self-justification of murder. Vader's first steps should make him Vader forever. The time of the sympathetic character is past at this point in the movie. This is the Darth Vader who has devoured Anakin Skywalker, surpassing even the Anakin who so effectively scowled, and stalked at the head of the StormCloneTroopers in his first hours of Imperial service. If the hate-consumed Anakin Skywalker does not clothe himself in malevolence when he becomes Darth Vader ("more machine now than man"), when will he?

The much-maligned line, "Only a Sith deals in absolutes!", is jarring even in a film marred by the horrors of the Anakin/Padme love scenes, which make bloody Titanic look like fscking Shakespeare -- and especially because it is somewhat self-contradictory (what is is "Only"?), but because if there is one thing Palpatine has never, ever done is present Skywalker with a clear-cut lack of ambiguity. The opposite is (absolutely) true. The snare is set by a potion of truths, half-truths, insinuations, personal considerations, flattery, affection, overstatements, and false dealings. Blinded, Anakin can no longer see absolutes -- what he sees is a fusion of passion, ambition, resentment, loyalty, hope, and thirst for righteousness wrapped together around himself, identical to the Republic, or the Empire, or the family, or whatever he seizes by right and lightsaber. The notion that a Jedi can accuse on absolutes, in an absolutist manner, is bizarre, given Yoda's counsel of indifference to detach from everything, and the infamous "from a certain point of view..."

Still, there's something back in this movie that wasn't in the previous two -- and I think I'd splice together and seriously edit II and III to make a single film, if I had footage, voiceover pow'rs, and a crack M.A.S.H. team of script doctors... I seem to recall going over this with Legends of the Fall, along w/ piscis and yaga, and others. What can we do this time...?