Yes, Rots fudged a lot of things up. The whole PT has and it's all George's fault.
Now what's perplexing me is why wesa suddenly need to witness this "POWER". Do wesa want the emperor to pour lightning into a generator and 'power' oops, I mean, UNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNLLLLLLLLLLLLLIIIIIIIIIIIMMMMMMMMMMEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEETTTTTTTTTTTTTTTEEEEEEDDDDDDDDDDDDD POOWWWWWWWWWWERRRRRRRRRRRR up a whole city? What?
We've seen this awesome power of the dark side anyway. Did Maul single handedly whoop two jedi's asses or not? Only to get beaten because Obi-wan had the low ground or something...
Adam's got a pointy point. The PT's really not so good, but we've seen mucho evidence that the dark side has more intense power than the passive, peaceful, *friendly* light side, or maybe it's just UNNNNNNNNNNLLLLLLIIIIIIMMited midichlorians that dark side users have? I wasn't going to do that whole thing over again. The movies keep this thing consistent to me at least.
I hate midis.
Anyway, Maul displays his unyielding physical strength and the Emperor Palpidious does ALL sorts of crazy shit like that corkscrew mcTwist, the mace windu lightning slingshot, AND the flying-pods technique. One problem I see here is that it was TOO easy. The dark side's not THAT powerful is it? Two master jedi who trained for years were defeated in seconds, while Samuel L Jackson jumped out of the way or something. Or maybe he was used to 'trick' anakin into breaking his jedi code even further. Well it's a big mess. Anakin was already a foolish boob who was seduced by the real dark side and married it, then impregnated her, making the dark side look like a pretty good deal if he wanted to keep his family alive...
He had to choose between Yoda's "let go" and Palp's "cheat death, dark side's not soooooo bad, just jedi brainwashing that's all. It's great, look at me...". Seems like seduction to me. Now onto Luke.
Luke has NO IDEA what he's getting himself into by challenging the emperor."*cough* L..l..lluuke.. do not... underestimate the powers of the emperor..." Yoda still feels the bruises from that battle. So I conclude that Vader, in some way, was warning his son about his master and what he can do to him, both mentally and physically, as it was done to him at his age. He'd be cajoled stupidly to join the dark side too. It dominates your destiny. You don't control the dark side. The dark side controls you, darnit. It gives you yellow eyes and bad breath too, I think.