No Such Thing As Sith

The "Sith" are somewhat confusing....
They are sometimes considered a alien race, other times it's just two.
Wookiepedia states a former "Sith" set up the "Rule of 2"(mentor & Palawan).
When the sub-ordinate or patawan feels ready they can over take the mentor removing him/her from power.
The "Sith" reportedly ruled the entire galaxy for a 1000 years too. The Jedi Order formed(by a little known alien race that isn't really explained yet) to remove the Sith from power.

It's all very complex & convoluted. The "Star Wars" galaxy is 1000s of years old. The events of the original trilogy are just a small portion of it.

 

Yeah, Vader was sometimes called Lord of the Sith in the Novelizations of the OT. But never on screen. But I do remember that validating feeling you're talking about when they started saying Sith a lot....but then they started saying it way too much. And I didn't like every bad guy in the whole galaxy having the same first name as Vader. Darth kind of looses its luster after its used to name 25 characters.

 

Well George wasn't really concerned about what anyone else was doing. IIRC it wasn't until TPM that it was totally official that the Emperor's name was Palpatine and that he was a Sith. It introduced the rule of 2 and that Darth was a Sith title. It needed some explanation as to why Anakin got a new name so obviously Darth had to become a title.

George himself only created a few Darths though obviously there was a line of them for a thousand years. So outside of Vader, Sidious, Maul, Tyrannus, Plagueis and Bane I don't know how many he named.

I don't see why it loses anything really.

As for the Jedi distinction the point is that the Lightsaber is a Jedi weapon that the Sith use. The Jedi came first and the Sith are an offshoot of them. So the weapons and such originated as Jedi origins.

 

Good points. one thing though seems to be that the Sith name is like a secret identity. No one knew Dooku was "Tyranus" or that Palpatine was "Sidious" (until they were revealled). One point is that if your taking a new Sith name it could be anything. George didn't have to name everyone Darth...Oh well. Back in the day I assumed Anakin had just changed his name to something way cooler sounding. But now that I see that Palpatine used a secret identity I was thinking maybe that's why they get a different name. Anyway, I'm rambling but this makes me wonder...because Palpatine was telling everyone that Jedi are evil, it makes sense that Anakin would take on a new identity. Wouldn't be good for business if everyone knew the Emperor's right hand man was a Jedi.

 

But my question is; Are the Sith evil? Or are they just ruthless & without ethics like the Jedi?
If the canon storyline of a older pre-Disney(before 2012) graphic novel detailing how an ancient alien race came into the galaxy & started to seek out beings to train as Jedi Knights. They would follow strict codes & repel the Sith during the period of the "Old Republic".

 

Kibs greatly dislikes anything that stems from the prequels.

That's fine, whatever. George never knew that Star Wars would do anything (this the peculiar way that Obi-Wan refers to him as "Darth" in ANH). He changed some things here and there and it all works.

Also, while it's not "canon," it does make sense for the title to stand for DARklordofthesiTH. Not to mention, the new name symbolizes a rebirth into the darkside and a shedding of one's former identity (you know, like how Luke...in the beloved OT, says "I know you were once Anakin Skywalker" and Vader responds "That name means nothing to me.")

But I suppose we can just pick and choose what we want to believe and understand.

 

Wait...what?

 

I can see your point. There apparently was an alien species of "pure Sith" and then eventually the cult of Dark Force wielders called the Sith which somehow was derived from the alien species.

 

The word Sith is also in A New Hope's script and was used in speaking in the original draft that was used for THE STAR WARS comic by Dark Horse. But it was Knights of the Sith rather than Sith lords and Darth Vader's name was first name "Darth" last name "Vader" and he wasn't a Sith at all, rather than a figurehead much like Tarkin in the finished movie.

 

As I recall from many, many years ago, Darth Vader was known in the novels, the trading cards, the "Story of..." albums and the comics as "Dark Lord of the Sith." But never in the movies themselves. As Max mentions, I too always thought that the Sith were some sort of secret cult, and not merely what Vader and the Emperor called themselves. I always figured that whatever the Sith were, we'd see a bunch of them in the prequels.

While I understand the point behind the so-called "Rule of Two", it's always seemed to me like it kind of stemmed from Lucas' reluctance to have the Jedi face off against living enemies in the PT - which was one of the reasons he said he went with a droid army as the enemy. You can chop up droids with a lightsaber till the giant ticks come home, and nobody's going to say boo about it. But he was afraid that slicing up actual people (y'know, like he had no problem doing during the sail barge battle in ROTJ?) was apparently going to cross some sort of line. I know I'd sure have rather seen a bunch of Jedi facing off against a bunch of Sith than the Jedi vs. still more droids that we got in Episode II.

 

It would have probably gotten an R rating due to simialr movies at the time getting those ratings, ie Gladiator, The Patriot, Braveheart, etc for seeing actual people getting dismembered.

 

No reason for people to be getting dismembered like that, though. Again, look at the sail barge battle in ROTJ. Luke takes out at least a dozen skiff guards with his lightsaber, and I don't see a single dismemberment in there.

 

Would that be due to lack of visual effects technology to successfully showing dismemberment or because Lucas/the directive team not care to include it?