A lot of the EU stuff...er excuse me Legends...was pretty schlocky pulp. Even Thrawn is more that than it's politics or "gritty" or realistic. The only part that makes it seem so, is that it keeps the universe logically setup for events of ROTJ, unlike TFA and TLJ where they were like "whatever, fuck it, there's a rebellion again, and maybe an empire sorta, plus like a death star too, whaddya mean what happened to the New Republic? Didn't you see us blow up that single planet thus eliminating it totally?" Even KOTOR is pretty pulpy when you get down to it except for some of Obsidian's various sidetwists.
As bad as Lucas' whole decision two parts into his three six part story that it really should be "Anakin's Story" starring Anakin in two and a half parts. It at least was a concept to tie things together. (Even if he also subtly realized it was really Palpatine's Story.)
I still can't figure out what in the fuck is supposed to be tying these new films together other than they exist in the Star Wars franchise. Or like, what is even happening in them at this point. They're wiping out characters faster than Lucas was taking them out in the prequels and with half as much character development and establishment. And people are just constantly showing up places with plot drive to do one thing then disappearing, and there's never any kind of follow up. Why the hell aren't they doing the side stories for the side characters in the main films? Or fuck, the MAIN CHARACTERS in those films?
And the throwing out directors, reshooting things, major edits, etc. It's like Disney really did burn down everything Lucasarts/Lucasfilm gave them and told JJ and Kennedy to "get her going, times a wastin!"
Even the games are completely fucked up management wise! If DICE didn't have that slave farm to put out BF-mod-based FPSes until the end of time they'd have literally nothing else at this point. They ditched all the stuff Lucasarts gave em, they restarted and then dropped the Visceral titles, and then restarted it at Motive yet again only to shuffle it off to another studio and then go quiet on it. I think Respawn is probably running some kind of scam where they toss art over Titanfall then cash out. And even they're setting their game between the prequels and A New Hope. Nothing to do with the new films. I heard even that Android/iOS MOBA does shit sell throughs.
I really never saw this becoming such a management and production clusterfuck so quickly. I assumed all that shit they announced like Solo or the Boba Fett film or 1313 or whatever was like in pre-production and they were just announcing it early like with the MCU. If IX flatlines James Gunn is probably going to be thankful he got away from Disney before they murdered everyone they could get their hands on. (Or forced him onto Star Wars, just to kick him off, reshoot half the thing and then re-edit half the thing from there before throwing him under the bus.)