The Missing Sith Mystery

Spike TV has been showing a Star Wars movie marathon this Labor Day weekend. Featured have been the three movies detailing the story of Anakin Skywalker, who embraced the Dark Side to become Darth Vader. But this article eventually wants to discuss another character: the Sith lord Darth Sidious, who is actually an extremely important character in the six-part series. And how he was completely ignored in the very first movie, 1977's Star Wars (now called Star Wars IV: A New Hope).

But first, I can't write an article about Star Wars without lambasting its confusing system of titles. This happened because the last three movies made in the series are actually prequels to the earlier three films. So when I refer to the first Star Wars movie, that means Star Wars IV, but when I talk about Stars Wars I, well, that's movie #4! Jeez, couldn't they have done a better job of dealing with this nomenclature mess??!!

As I mentioned before, when the first Star Wars movie came out in 1977, the Emperor was rarely even mentioned, and without any indication of him being a Sith lord, or for that matter there being such a thing as the Sith to begin with. The Sith character was introduced in the second movie (although not identified as such), and with each subsequent release, became a stronger and more integral and indispensable character in the developing story. Finally, he became so crucial that the final movie made in the series was named after him: Revenge of the Sith. But if you watch the series in the story-order (not in the order that the movies were made), one movie (III) has Darth Sidious being one of the central, crucial characters and the next (IV) has him completely absent! Worse than that, the character of Darth Vader, only second-in-command to the Sith lord at the end of Episode III, is shown taking orders from some stooge officer in Episode IV.

There was a lot of flack from a tiny revision to the third movie (Star Wars VI: The Return of the Jedi) about the "latter" Anakin being (very) briefly substituted for the "earlier" actor portraying him in one of that movie's closing scenes. But I bet those who made these movies would have also wanted to insert at least a couple of scenes with the Sith Lord in that "original" Part IV film. Or at least a passing reference to his existence...

Hey, it would have been cool with me: I kind of liked that no-account son-of-a-gun!