Right, Star Wars was never anything but sci-fi schlock, that was its entire inspiration. Flash Gordon.
The Expanded Universe, yes, a lot of that went in some very unique directions because it had the space to breathe and basically ditch everything about Star Wars except the basic concepts/races/etc. and even most of that was straight garbage. I mean, we talk about two VIDEO GAMES as some of the best EU storytelling ffs lol.
What the OT pulled off was telling a story, though hardly an original one, about a small band of characters and their adventures, while hinting at a larger world, until ESB upends the entire table and forces Jedi to start reaching ludicrous speeds for a conclusion that neither of the prior two films, nor even the first half of Jedi justify. The New Trilogy so far is working off Jedi's model more than the others.
The Prequels went in the entire opposite direction, galaxy altering events were happening all over and Lucas was jamming Obi-Wan and Anakin and Natalie Portman into the center of them. Because prophecy.
My half seriousness about TPM, and ultimately Palpatine's entire plot since his scheming is actually best shown in TPM considering where the film starts regarding all the pieces he has to move, being the best, is it's the actual Star Wars film where there is a full on plot at work. As much as Lucas wanted the Prequels to be about Anakin that's outright trash and ultimately irrelevant, it's really about Palpatine's manipulation of the entire galaxy to not only turn the entire galactic government over to his control, but wipe out the Jedi after millennia with none of them even knowing it's a Sith plot until the last film at which point it's too late. Anakin doesn't even truly fall under Palpatine's thrall until the back third of ROTS and even Palpatine had to be surprised as fuck at how he pulled it off.
The OT doesn't have any of this. It has better actors, better dialogue, better direction, better pacing, better action, etc. but until Lucas decided "the twist" it didn't have anything to hold it together except the character relationships. (Which it upends for Jedi.) The NT so far doesn't have much of any of it either. We're two thirds of a way through the story now and what exactly has been accomplished that the notion of Star Wars as a fantasy epic with a vital universe is backed by? Even our two key characters are at the same point they were at the end of TFA. You could even argue this film spent much of its run time trying to subvert where TFA left them and what we'd expect, only to suddenly revert the entire thing down the stretch. (This is not to mention what they've done with the universe itself.)
The reason the Thrawn Trilogy was/is so praised was not that it's brilliantly written, it's not significantly better than most licensed novels of the era, and even as "Star Wars" it's a poor sequel to Jedi as Lucas hadn't yet actually decided all that shit about how the force works or what Luke's end goal was/the state of the Sith/etc. It's that it took the universe status, and the character status, in the wake of Jedi, and built logically off of it. The Empire had not suddenly collapsed, it was just heavily weakened, the Rebels weren't victors, most of the galaxy was taking the advantage of being freed to be Non-Aligned, much of the time is spent by Leia and Empire equivalents at propping up alliances or neutrality agreements, and both sides are looking for an advantage in the continued war. Han doesn't run off as a smuggler because he's now invested in these friends, Luke is trying to figure out his place but recognizes the advantage of a Jedi being around, etc. I'm going to really work off my memory here so I could get major chunks of this wrong, or be combing it with another book or something. The trilogy's actual hook is Thrawn himself, he's thrust into a role of intergalactic significance and progresses to realize what that means. When he's placed in the position to decide regarding the Clone War armada they come across and most of the one book is spent with both sides fighting over, it's one of the few times that Star Wars (and remember, Thrawn came out when the EU did not effectively exist, it started it, so along with the films and a few other novels and the Christmas Special, this was Star Wars) actually stops and asks moral questions about character actions. Thrawn recognizes the evil of the Late Empire, but also it's importance prior in providing a form of Galactic Order, as well as the Clone War Armada being potentially a greater evil than the continued sparring with the Rebels. (The book is sketchy on the events of the Clone Wars because I know a few people here remember that before the Prequels actually showed the damn thing it was considered this horrific monstrous war, and the book works off that premise that activating the ships may unleash an old terror. And the suggestion that the Empire may have been necessary to simply end it, not because it was a setup by Palpatine, but because it was the only way to end the horror.)
TFA basically said "so like, it's kinda like that being 30 years later, but i dunno how to do it so lol whatever we got a RESISTANCE and a FIRST ORDER and boy it sure looks like star wars tho huh u see some of them vistas"
