It's 'Sith,' saith 'Star Wars' master Lucas

"The Revenge of the Sith," eh? I like it.

Bold and to the point, and definitely more in keeping with the spirit of the titles for the original "Star Wars" trilogy, as opposed to the two drastically inferior prequels we've had so far.

For those who somehow haven't heard about it — and, surprisingly, there wasn't the usual hullabaloo — LucasFilm Ltd. and 20th Century Fox made a special "Star Wars" presentation at last week's Comic-Con International: San Diego.

The big news is that the third prequel film, due in theaters next May, finally has a title: "Star Wars: Episode III — The Revenge of the Sith."

"Star Wars" universe creator/overlord George Lucas is also promising that this film will be darker in tone. That's good news to those of us who have been let down by the kiddie-friendly, juvenile tone of the other two prequels, "The Phantom Menace" and "Attack of the Clones."

However, the danger is that most of us already know what happens. We might not know the specifics, but we know that Anakin (Hayden Christensen) is seduced by the Dark Side of the Force and that he eventually becomes Darth Vader. We also know that Padme gives birth to Luke and Leia.

So there's no real suspense going into this one.

And besides, many of us have greatly diminished expectations for anything Lucas is involved with these days. For crying out loud, he's still tinkering with the original "Star Wars" films!

But maybe that was Lucas' goal all along. Maybe he was trying to lull us to sleep . . . and both "The Phantom Menace" and "Attack of the Clones" certainly did that in places.

Of course, there's still time for him to change the title. Remember, "Return of the Jedi" was originally titled "Revenge of the Jedi" — and there were even advance posters with that title in theaters for awhile.

• MORE CON-NING. As usual, the studios were busy touting their upcoming movies at Comic-Con:

— There were panels and presentations for Universal's spin-off of the late, lamented TV series "Firefly." The movie version is titled "Serenity."

— Fox introduced the full foursome (Michael Chiklis, Jessica Alba, Ioan Gruffudd and Chris Evans) starring in next summer's superhero flick "Fantastic Four."

— Dimension had posters and promotional images from Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez's "Sin City."

— Warner Bros. even showed off some teaser footage from next July's "Batman Begins."