Instead of going back and forth on what motivates the TF in the first movie, could we give some thought to the whole revenge aspect that gets mentioned in the movies and is in the title of the last one.. I mean who exactly wants revenge and for what? Revenge is a great motivator for a movie. Too bad this was basically glossed over, in all three films in fact. Maul wants revenge.. for.. shit I don't know.. Jedi made fun of his spikes?? Stole his lunch money?? No idea. The Sith? Well.. they hate the jedi.. I guess.. and well goddammit there's only room for ONE organization that swings lightsabers and dressed in bathrobes in this galaxy.. Palpy.. Hmm.. I guess he really doesn't want revenge at all. At least he never says anything to indicate he wants revenge, more like he just sees the Jedi as an obstacle to his power.
Ki-Adi-Mundi, Episode I: "The Sith have been extinct for a millennium."
Palpatine, Episode III: "Once more the Sith shall rule the galaxy!"
Palpatine, Episode III: "I have waited a long time for this moment, my little green friend!"
We can debate whether this is a good filmmaking strategy or not, but it's pretty clear that Lucas likes to drop the audience into the middle of a story and let them fill in the blanks on their own. That, IMO, is part of why the SW universe feels so vast...and conversely, why it feels so SMALL when EU gets ahold of it. That's also why we have those opening text crawls, without which none of the movies stand on their own too well.
It is instructive to contrast the handling of the Sith with the handling of a certain other plot element of the prequels.
The Sith: we get little dribs and drabs of information. They are clearly ancient enemies of the Jedi. "Always two, there are." The Jedi had reason to believe they were extinct, and know relatively little else about them (hence, "the mystery of the Sith"). The title of the third movie tells us that they want revenge, and since the only people they wind up exterminating are the Jedi...do the math. And then of course, we see what they do...use unique and nasty Force abilities like lightning (and possibly resurrection), plot to overthrow and subvert institutions, seduce Jedi into following them (Dooku and Anakin), and kill Jedi (Qui-Gon, an attempt on Obi-Wan, Order 66).
You sort of put these pieces together and get a coherent picture. Sith: evil wizards, ruled all, Jedi attempted to kill them off but didn't quite pull it off.
Can we prove all of those things beyond a shadow of a doubt? No. Can we (and most small children) reasonably infer them? Yes, on the principle that, even in Star Wars movies, dialogue doesn't get written, filmed, and escape the cutting room without a
reason. It's important that the Sith want revenge, that they are the enemies of the Jedi, and that their enemies have good reason to believe they are extinct (and why exactly would THAT be, hmm? Sat by and watched as they all met with accidents, I suppose?).
When we can understand a concept such as this that is not directly explained to us, that's world-building at its best.
Now let us contrast this with...
MIDI-CHLORIANS.
The first couple of lines that introduce midi-chlorians are not offensive in the least. Qui-Gon gives some sort of blood test to Anakin, Obi-Wan says "wow there's a lot of them, even Master Yoda doesn't have that many." Just from that, we know exactly what has just transpired: there is some sort of objective way to tell how much of an ass-kicker with the Force you are, and Anakin kicks more ass than motherfucking Yoda.
But then, for some reason, Lucas or some other dingbat decided that the slow kids could piece together the Sith and Nute Gunray's fiendish complexity on their own, but they needed a sort of garbled explanation of the endosymbiont hypothesis in order to understand the previous line. So he has Qui-Gon explain it to Anakin in such a way so that everyone could get outraged about how the Force comes from these sci-fi whatsits. We should count ourselves lucky that he didn't CG them up and show them to us.
So...am I saying that the Sith couldn't have been explained a little better? No, one can conceive of a SW prequel that does explain them and for that or other reasons is a better film. But the Sith don't really NEED an explanation either...they are archetypal evil wizards. There is certainly enough background to conclude that the Jedi extinctified the Sith (or at least pointed and laughed while something else extinctified them) and that's why Palpatine is practically having an orgasm when he's fighting Yoda.
Star Wars movies are
not psychological thrillers*. Any more than
The Lord of the Rings is one. Is it ok to have everyone's motivations (ancestries, final fates, etc.) buried in an appendix, long as they aren't "EU"? Because even with several exposition-only chapters, the mere fact that the hobbits are the viewpoint characters means that we don't really get much of a glimpse into why Aragorn, Saruman, Sauron, and Morgoth (who isn't even mentioned in the main story) do what they do. Why are the orcs evil? They don't seem to get much out of the whole deal. Why did the Balrog kill the dwarves? Did the dwarves kill his sister when they delved too deep?
Genre matters. Genre is why some flaws matter more than others in different sorts of films, and it's why not all movies ask and answer the same sorts of questions. Before this thread turned into another typical SD.net personal shitfit, it was actually getting into some pretty interesting territory (what are the movie's themes, how effectively did it get them across, was it too sanitized to have any impact...). I also think it could be interesting to speculate how the plot could have been cleared up (I don't think simply removing the word "taxation" from the film would accomplish this).
*Interestingly enough, the novelization of Episode III is a decent psychological thriller, and goes to show how the same story with different mediums and target audiences can feel vastly different.
