Disappointed that the PT did not explain what a Sith is.

Yeah, the Sith honestly get explained perfectly fine IMO. It suits their evil to really not have much to them when you look closely-real evil is always hollow in it's philosophy.

But yeah, I think ROTS does a pretty good job of explaining just what these guys are about-"Once more the Sith will rule the galaxy!" "Never will the oppression of the Sith return, you have lost!" "The Sith think inwards, only about themselves", the various obviously bending-the-truth speeches Palpatine gives-you can sum up that these are pretty major galactic baddies without a whole lot of effort.

Plus, one of them killed Liam Neeson; the only good guy to kill Liam Neeson was Batman.

 

And if the sith were believed to be extict for a millenium how did yoda know of darth bane's rule of two?

 

I've always wondered that myself - the backstory of the Rule Of Two is that it was put in place after the Jedi all but wiped them out, & that the Sith spent a thousand years in the shadows.

Ki-Adi Mundi, a Jedi Council member, states that they're 'extinct', & you can't be a little bit extinct. As none of the other Jedi contradict him, it's fair to assume that they believe the same thing. By the end of the film, presumably from what Obi-Wan tells them, Mace & Yoda conclude that Maul was a Sith Lord, perhaps based on his lightsaber technique, Force use and appearance, but there's no dialogue between Maul and either Qui-Gon or Obi-Wan, let alone anything that would illustrate something as complex as the Rule Of Two.

I imagine that the Sith did make the occasional appearance during the millennium before, and someone managed to discover a bit more about them. Perhaps Yoda (and other Jedi) became aware of such rumours, but had no proof that any of it was real. No idea if it's covered in the EU.

 

There is-I can't remember the Jedi's name, but in any case he/she/it discovered the Sith; he had a mental breakdown or something and nobody believed him. SithStarSlayer brings it up every now and then.

 

Yeah... but that was probably one oft he worse retcons..
Someone found the Sith... Knew about the Rule of two, told jedi, they didn't beleive him, Jedi has a mental break down

 

Ehh, not sure that's really a retcon, as it doesn't actually change anything. Information discounted may as well not exist.

 

Yoda knew because he referred back to his old copy of "The Sith For Dummies."

 

I guess its just another case of EU not quite matching up with the movies. Who knows, maybe in Lucas's mind there were ever only ever 2 sith at a time. This whole 'Sith Empire' stuff is just EU fan made stuff which Lucas could trample at any time he wanted.

 

Yoda seems to argue against a similar statement by Mace that he did not think the Sith could have returned without their knowledge, so he's at least open to the possibility. It's hard to know what the other Jedi are thinking.

Kibh Jeen.

 

I have a feeling thats the case...

 

And you know what? To me that honestly a little more cool. Makes the sith seem more dangerous and dark. Mace mentions that "the oppression of the sith will never return". So maybe in Lucas' mind the Sith once had control of the galaxy and the Jedi overthrew them and helped oversee the formation of the Republic, swearing to be its eternal protectors should another threat arise. That would explain the "Revenge" the sith are so eager to exert. I dont know, maybe Lucas should write his own version of "Knights of the Old Republic" so we would once and for all know the history of the story. Just let someone else make a movie out of it. Lucas is a great story-teller, but has trouble executing that story on film at times.

 

Actually, George's Sith backstory can be found in the TPM novel. It goes about like this: A Jedi Master, who felt that power denied was power wasted, brought his beliefs before the Council, and surprise surprise, was expelled. He left the Order, taking about fifty other Jedi with him and declared war on the Jedi and the Republic. A thousand years down the road, he'd been killed by his followers, who then turned on eachother, leaving only one survivor-Darth Bane. He at first worked alone, but then realized he needed an apprentice and invented the Rule Of Two, which is what the Sith have followed ever since then.

 

Hmm thats cool. I never read TPM novel. You remember where it is in the book? Prologe or something? Just so i can thumb through it.

 

Mmm....well it's been years since I read the TPM novel, but it's in the scene where Maul gets dispatched to Tattooine, so fairly early in the novel.

You should read the novel, actually; it's a good expansion of the movie.

 

Yeah, the novel's well worth a read - even more so if you're not entirely happy with the film. Sith lore aside, it develops the dynamic between Obi-Wan & Qui-Gon much more, and even Jar-Jar comes across as a more worthwhile character, not just comic relief.

 

This is what TPM novel has to say about the Sith and their origins.

"The Sith had come into being almost two thousand years ago. They were a cult given over to the dark side of the Force, embracing fully the concept that power denied was power wasted. A rogue Jedi Knight had founded the Sith, a singular dissident in an order of harmonious followers, a rebel who understood from the beginning that the real power of the Force lay not in the light, but in the dark. Failing to gain approval for his beliefs from the Council, he had broken with the order, departing with his knowledge and his skills, swearing in secret that he could bring down those who had dismissed him."

"He was alone at first,but others from the Jedi order who believed as he did and who had followed him in his study of the dark side soon came over.Others were recruited,and soon the ranks of the sith swelled to fify in number.Disdaining the concepts of cooperation and consensus,relying on the belief that acquisition of power in any form lends strength and yields control,the Sith began to build their cult in opposition to the Jedi.Theirs was not an order created to serve;theirs was an order to dominate."

"Their war with the Jedi was vengeful and furious and ultimately doomed. The rogue Jedi who had founded the Sith order was its nominal leader, but his ambition excluded any sharing of power. His disciples began to conspire against him and each other almost from the beginning, so that the war they instigated was as much with each other as with the Jedi.In the end,the Sith destroyed themselves.They destroyed their leader first,then each other.What few survived the initial bloodbath were quickly dispatched by watchful jedi.In a matter of only weeks,all of them died.

"All but one."

Here is where the Rule Of Two comes into the picture.

"The Sith who had survived when all of his fellows had died had understood that. He had adopted paitience as a virtue when the others had forsaken it. He had adopted cunning, stealth, and subterfuge as the foundation of his way - old Jedi virtues the others had disdained. He stood aside while the Sith tore at each other like kriks and were destroyed. When the carnage was complete, he went into hiding, biding his time, waiting for his chance."

"When it was believed all of the Sith were destroyed, he emerged from his concealment. At first he worked alone , but he was growing old and he was the last of his kind. Eventually, he went out in search of an apprentice. Finding one, he trained him to be a Master in his turn, then to find his own apprentice, and so to carry on their work. But there would only be two at any one time. There would be no repetition of the mistakes of the old order, no struggle between Sith warring for power within the cult. Their common enemy was the Jedi, not each other. It was for their war with the Jedi they must save themselves."

"The Sith who reinvented the order called himself Darth Bane."

 

I find the TPM novel passage in question to be poorly worded on this point, creating the impression which you described above. However, I don't believe it's actually intended to mean that the Jedi heretic - who we now call Phanius or Darth Ruin - ended up living for a thousand years. I think the "leader" referred to around 1000 BBY was someone else.

Well, we already know that part is wrong.

 

Yeah, I've noticed the strange wording there too; given that Phanius didn't exist yet as a character, either it's just badly worded, the Sith founder was an exceptionally long-lived species, or the least likely option, he'd discovered the gift of immortality, which I doubt as his followers apparently killed him.

Then again, it is tempting to look at that in regards to Palpatine's musings about the immortality trick having been lost; who better to have figured it out than the Sith's original founder?

 

Wow thanks Cain for reprinting that for us. I actually have TPM novel but it was great not having to dig it out.

Doesn't all that lend to the conclusion that the Sith are simply "anti-Jedi" and that's it? That there's really no difference between "Dark Jedi" and Sith? I mean, it sounds like we're to assume that the Jedi almost all stay in line with the order.

Sure there could be some rogue Jedi here and there, but it sounds like the Sith are literally force users who spend their time exploring the dark side as much as the Jedi explore the light. Not really anything to do with the Sith being a race of beings or anything.

 

Kevin J Anderson (I think) claims that GL came up with the backstory for the 1990s TOTJ stuff about the Sith originally being a race of people taken under the wing of a Dark Jedi - I suspect that's an exaggeration, more likely he provided them with material from very early drafts of The Star Wars, where the Sith were basically just pirates trained by a Dark Force user.

 

Yes, Lucas supposedly had a hand in the Exar Kun material, and that's well before 2000 BBY.

 

Yeah, the "Dark Jedi"/"Sith" distinction was pretty shaky for awhile in the 1990s (for example-C'baoth from the Thrawn Trilogy and Jerec from Dark Forces were Sith in everything but name) but more recently, "Dark Jedi" typically refers to Dark Siders of lesser ambition than the galaxy-craving Sith.

 

Exactly, not everything has to be spelled out. We know about the Force, the dark side and the fact that they're the Jedi's archenemies and oppressors of freedom. You can put two and two together.

 

Having inexplicably evil enemies killing people without any kind of underlying philosophy included just makes them seem like 2-dimensional goons.

 

You seem to forget the part about wanting to rule the galaxy. It's the same in all six movies. Unless you mean that Vader and Emperor were "2-dimensional goons" in OT?

As for philosophy, it's hinted at several times, and some things can be inferred from the Sith being the antipodes of the Jedi.