A long time ago, in a land far, far away, a young man named George Lucas was wowed by the films of his youth and wanted to do his own Flash Gordon space opera. Twenty-eight years later, we've come to the end of his story with Revenge of the Sith, the final chapter of the Star Wars saga.

Since the odds are low that these movies are a mystery to anyone, I'll keep the summation brief: It is a dark time for the Galaxy. Torn asunder by civil war, the Galactic Republic is on the brink of collapse. The Jedi Knights are stained to the breaking point as their ancient enemies, the Sith, put their final phase of their two thousand year old plan into motion and seize control of the Galaxy once and for all.

Caught in the middle is Anakin Skywalker, distrusted by the very order that brought him to this point, haunted by dreams that his wife will soon die and slowly tempted by Palpatine to embrace his darker side, the young Jedi must make a choice: save his family or let the Galaxy burn.

I have a bad feeling about this. . . .

So this one was a bit sad for me - much like I felt 16 years ago, this was the end of a chapter in my life. More than when I was watching Jedi, this time it really was the end. No more Star Wars movies ever, period. Sure there'll be the spin off material and books and comics until the time the sun grows cold, but since most of those suck anyway (and suck far beyond anything that Phantom Menace could have ever hoped to do to the franchise), I don't count those. No - for a big screen outing, this was it.

Finally the last piece of the puzzle falls into place, and while Anakin's story may be only half done, we get the full picture - and now I have a completely different look on the old trilogy. .While it may not have been a perfect flick, it was a surprisingly heart-wrenching and emotional one about pain loss and death and a basically decent person who made all the wrong choices for arguably good reasons. It is a true tragedy in every sense of the word.

More interesting, it's Luke who I come away with a new understanding of. Consider this: the prophecy about bringing balance to the force that Anakin labored under every day of his life wasn’t so much a 1-to-1 parity between one Jedi and one Sith, but more that the Jedi Council (and by extension the whole order) was broken and dysfunctional. They lived, quite literary, in an ivory tower isolated away from the general populace, that they had a cold, calculating reliance on dogma, that the order was stifled by tradition.

Take the case of Obi-Wan. Throughout all three movies, does he ever feel like a true friend to young Anakin? Oh, sure he fills the mentor roll, but when push comes to shove, there's not a lot of actual camaraderie between the two. Now before you dismiss this as Lucas and his inability to direct, I think it was an intentional move on his part, that Kenobi came from a dysfunctional family, as it were. Even watching Sir Alec in the Holy Trilogy, there's a certain sense of that underlying broken-ness.

Along comes Luke, who manages to take the passion of the Sith, and incorporate it into his Jedi teachings. He relies on his friends, he has an emotional connection to the outside world and a core of loyalty and compassion that guides his actions. When his friends are threatened on Cloud City, and Yoda tries to warn young Skywalker from rushing into things, we see that he was the right one, not Yoda.

One could go on about the acting or the effects or how why this scene plays out thematically this way or another - how the Emperor and Yoda throwing down in the empty senate chamber was representational on how the Sith/Jedi ideology had brought the Republic to ruin and so on - but I suspect tjat Star Wars is like Jazz, either you get it or you don't.

If you strip away all the baggage that comes with the Star Wars brand, Sith is no better or no worse than your average big budget summer blockbuster. Unfortunately that name comes with a whole trainload of baggage, causing people to excessively nitpick the movie to death for its plot holes, clumsy script, over-reliance on special effects, wooden acting, excess humor, insufficient humor and what have you. But when you get right down to it, when you get past the video games, action figures, comic books, underoos, limited-edition lithographs, electric toothbrushes and flotsam and jetsam - Star Wars is EXACTLY what George wanted to make: a big budget, effects heavy, Republic serial with really cool rocket ships, weird aliens, and laser swords. It's Commander Cody, Buck Rogers, Captain Midnight, John Carter of Mars and Flash Gordon all rolled into one, but with modern sensibilities.

Who knows - you might just like it!

THE DVD -
At this point, I'm starting to repeat myself - the DVD, taken from a direct digital source, looks downright mind-blowingly fantastic. It looks crisp and vivid and really, I'm running out adjectives by this point - lets just say it looks and sounds fantastic and move on, shall we?

THE EXTRAS -
I have a bad feeling about this. . . .

After the packed to the gills Attack of the Clones package, I was expecting greatness from Sith. Pity the DVD doesn't deliver (well, doesn't deliver as much as I had hoped for).

We get a commentary track from Lucas and McCallum, and some folks from ILM - John Knoll, Roger Guyett, and Rob Coleman. While the track is informative like the previous movies, it's kind of effects and technical side heavy. For the last Star Wars movie, I really was hoping for a George Tells It All track, where he lays out how he shaped the story and how we wound up where we are at. That would have been worth it's weight in gold.

The next big feature is something called Within a Minute, where they take one minute of the film - in this case, the duel on Mustafar - and explains in detail exactly how they got to the finished product. Everything from the effects work to the live action shoot to the location matte shoot to the grip and best boy holding the cables. It's really a fascinating documentary that runs for just about an hour.

And then the big disappointment - the selection of deleted scenes. Going by the script, there was so much stuff that was trimmed out that we could have gotten a ton of good stuff here. That whole blue glowing Jedi thing? Qui-Gon was suppose to make an appearance and sort things out, but turns up MIA on the DVD. The rest of the missing stuff is okay, but doesn't round out things as the Phantom Menace and Clones deleted scenes did.

There's a short feature on the creation of Darth Vader, and a behind the scenes short on stunts and fight choreography. After that there's fifteen web mini-documentaries from starwars.com - if you've seen the Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones discs, you know what to expect there. There's the full set of teasers, trailers, television spots and the music video A Hero Falls. Oh, and there's a commercial - ahem, I mean playable demo for Battlefield II on the X-Box.

For the very last Star Wars flick ever, I would have expected that they pulled out all the stops. Sadly that's not the case.

THE BOTTOM LINE -
At the end of the day, Star Wars - and I include the Holy Trilogy in this statement - is just a movie. Relax, don't nit pick and over analyze, and just enjoy some high octane adventure with Monks swinging laser swords. Life is too short to get worked up over this.

THE STAR WARS REVIEWS:
* THE PHANTOM MENACE
* ATTACK OF THE CLONES
* REVENGE OF THE SITH
* A NEW HOPE
* THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK
* RETURN OF THE JEDI


Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older