I would say Revenge of the Sith was every bit as dark as Empire Strikes Back and perhaps maybe a little more.

IMHO, Lucas really did redeem himself with ROTS and it more than made up for my disappointments with Episode 1 and 2.

I'll add that I think that the movies stopped introducing much new after TESB.

In the first one, everything was new to the Star Wars universe, of course:
Luke, Leia, Kenobi, Han, X-wings, Y-wings, TIE fighters, the empire, Darth Vader, the Millennium Falcon, Tatooine, Alderaan, the Death Star, hyperspace, the musical score, Jaba the Hutt, etc.

In TEST they introduce or fleshed out more new, significant stuff:
The Imperial March (very iconic now), combat speeders, Yoda, walkers, Jedi training, Boba Fett, Leia/Han love story, Luke's father, the emperor (although they changed the look later), etc.

After that, things just seemed to be re-hashing what you already knew with characters you pretty much expected (except Jar Jar - no one could have expected that). Of course a lot of that is to be expected with the prequels, because they're just telling you how the characters you saw got to where they are, but to me that's all the more reason to make the characters and story with as much depth as possible, because you already have an idea of what's going to happen and you need more to keep it interesting.

I think about the only remotely iconic things from any of the movies released after TESB are the Ewoks, Darth Maul and Jar Jar Binks.

Carrie Fisher in the Metal Bikini was all that appealed to me,

Dark in a clumsy, for-the-sake-of-cartoon-villainy dark kinda way. Slaughter the younglings in a scene devoid of any emotional depth whatsoever, hammy brooding-face guy! The only sequences which had any resonance, for me, were the Order 66 Jedi killings, but that was over so quickly it was soon forgotten amid other general lameness.

The "least worst" of the prequels it may be, but ROTS/TESB not remotely comparable to my mind. Nothing in there that even comes close to the throne room conflict of ROTJ, either (before that too was defiled, of course).

nooooooooooooooo.com

My eyes, my eyes.

IMHO

Oh yeah, that too.

Of course you guys realize that the sheer scarcity of female characters in the original SW trilogy meant that Leia in a metal bikini would carry even that much more significance.

Not to mention facilitating Luke's Force use to "discover" who his sister was...

He didn't use the Force, he used about 30 seconds of brain power. It was THAT hard. After all, even Luke realized he didn't know any other women.




The Jedi Master

Irony sometimes escapes even the mightiest Jedi...

Ep 1 did try to have a big reveal moment, when they suggested some kind of immaculate conception. It fell way flat as more of a "yeah....right. Too far." kind of moment. The do-it-yourself Force blood test for midichlorians (sp?) really took the wind out of the sails too.