Online news magazine Salon.com goes to the Dark Side today, with several features on REVENGE OF THE SITH.

In house film critic Stephanie Zacharek kicks things off with a review titled "Same Old Sith." The review pretty much hits the nail on the head with what's wrong with the STAR WARS movies: they started off as fun-filled, tongue-in-cheek entertainments and somewhere along the way became confused with profoundly serious mythology -- a heavy weight that George Lucas simply cannot support.

Zacharek makes the point that Lucas wants the film to be topical (with references to George W. Bush, etc.), but Lucas doesn't have the intellect to pull it off:

"Revenge of the Sith" doesn't work as a political statement because for all the lip service Lucas pays to democracy, he barely seems to know what it is. [...] Democracy -- the genuine kind, which means you just might get stuck with a president you dn't like -- is too messy and complicated for the STAR WARS worldview."

Political subtext aside, Zacharek writes that the new is "markedly better than the two that preceded it" but concludes that it "is still crap."

There are also two other STAR WARS-related articles up on the website:

"When Did the Force Leave You?" gives various Salon staffers a chance to describe the moment when they ceased to be fans. The results are not too surprising. Typical is Robin Lisle, who writes that ATTACK OF THE CLONES "broke my spirit. It was 143 minutes of gaudy visual effects, Geroge Lucas' infamously god-awful dialogue, and patheticlaly limp love scenes between Natalie Portman and Hayden Christensen. By the end, I was wincing everytime someone opened his or her mouth." The low point is Mary Elizabeth Williams' trashing of Yoda's appearance in EMPIRE STRIKES BACK.

And finishing things up, in "Embracing the Dark Side of the Brand" Andrew Leonard confesses to being an "acessory to a crime" for encouraging his son's interest in the STAR WARS Legos merchandising spin-offs. The best bit comes at the end, when the kid combines Legos from two different characters to create -- get this -- Darth Yoda!