One thing that really strikes me about Filoni is that he desperately wants to be the next JRR Tolkien or CS Lewis. I mean, he's openly stated that Ahsoka is his Gandalf, and look at Lothal-it bloody well looks like a sci-fi version of Minas Tirith:
And of course, the title of that last episode, the Jedi, the Witch, and the Warlord, is a shot-by-shot reference to the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
The difference is, Tolkien and Lewis, just like Lucas, appealed to a higher truth that goes beyond mere social values or approval; in fact, Tolkien and Lucas were seen as old-school by many futurists of their day, with Tolkien being bashed for being anti-industry, and Lucas being bashed for trying to mix sci-fi with fairy tales. But they appealed to things like religion or timeless, immemorial classics like the epics of old, or Kurosawa movies and cowboy flicks. They appeal to a higher identity, a Christian faith, like how Luke destroying the Death Star is basically David vs. Goliath in space, or how Aslan's sacrifice mirrors that of Christ, or how Frodo carrying the Ring was akin to him bearing the cross for Isildur's past sin, or how Gandalf being resurrected brings him back as a higher form of life than he was before, or how Luke's forgiveness of Vader is a call-back to Christ's parable of the Prodigal Son. Hell, what did they call the redeemed Revan again? Oh, that's right, the "Prodigal Knight".
Dave, at most, makes cartoons for kids like Avatar the Last Airbender, but Avatar didn't have deep, religious truths like Lucas' Star Wars, Lewis' Narnia, or Tolkien's Lord of the Rings had. All it had was feel-good kiddie stuff and basic morality where the Avatar messiah is hardly forced to make a difficult choice, (Aang has to choose between his girlfriend Katara and the Avatar State, he later just ends up with both) and he even lies at one point in order to keep things together, (LOL The Great Divide). The religious angle of Avatar is so paper thin and ambiguous that you don't really know what religious values they're teaching, since they can't even get Eastern values like Buddha's detachment or Ghandhi's radical pacifism right, let alone the Christian spirituality that Tolkien, Lewis, and Lucas were aiming for.
Dave gets some notes right, like when he pays tribute to samurai and cowboys (ie. the duel between Marrok and Ahsoka on Seatos, or the duel between Hunter and Cad Bane on some junk planet). But he doesn't get the real reasons why things are the way they are. For example, his interpretation of the Empire is that they're evil for evil's sake, which is far from Lucas' point of view, where the Empire is made up of good people fighting for an evil ruler. Sure, the Emperor is a cackling villain who has no qualms burning down a village full of innocents to kill one Jedi or rebel fugitive, but most of his minions are average Joes who may even have valid reasons why they're fighting for said Emperor, who does what he can to appear as a just, loving ruler in front of the galaxy. Even the fucking Emperor believes he's doing the right thing, by bringing an enlightened regime to rule over the galaxy and keep order through absolute power. He's an enlightened despot mixed with a dark wizard. Kind of like what happens when you mix Louis XIV with Sauron or Morgoth.
In any other day, your average Stormtrooper could probably be friends with the average mook who joins the Rebel Alliance, but their allegiance to something which they see as good, which turns out to be evil, prevents such a thing and forces the Stormtrooper to kill the Rebel who, in another life, could've been his friend. Hence why the conflict in the OT is called the Galactic Civil War-because it is a civil war, pitting people who could've been brothers in arms against each other, because of their beliefs. Heck, they even added more nuance to that by showing in the Prequels how disorganized the Republic was, which makes it understandable why some people would tolerate the Empire; since to the older generation, it's the lesser evil when compared to the chaos of the Old Republic. At least the Empire provides for countless trillions and puts a roof over their head, which was more than what the Republic did for them.
In Filoni shows, yes, you do have the people who think the Empire is good, but the way they act, they're either goobers who are practically too stupid to tell that the Empire is evil, or they're openly ambitious or corrupt; there's no nuance with them. Tarkin is an asshole for the sake of being an asshole; he wants to get rid of the clones even though they've proven effective, just so they can drive home how evil the Empire is by stiffing the clones (even though in the old lore, the veteran clones were valued, given a high rank, and some were even eulogized by the Emperor as model citizens for their sacrifices). Tarkin even seeks the death of a young girl who literally SAVED HIS LIFE, which is horribly uncharacteristic. In the OT, Tarkin valued his friendships with Force-sensitive warriors like Vader who have done favors for him in the past. You'd think saving the man's life would at least warrant a few favors. Even Thrawn is displayed as the kind of sadist who would taunt his foes when he's leaving them to die on a distant galaxy, or he feigns sympathy in front of a beaten enemy when he's stealing their precious family relics, when in the old lore, he was the quintessential honorable villain, the kind of bad guy whose soldiers will lay their lives down for because he inspires such loyalty.
In Lucas' films, even a brute like Vader fights for the sake of order and peace, to end destructive conflicts, and even Tarkin was only fighting for what he saw was right; bringing order, keeping rebels from causing chaos, hence why he has his giant flying pillbox with its oversized laser gun tooling around space shattering worlds. He blew up Alderaan, yes, but Alderaan was harboring rebels, so for all he knew, it could've been a rebel fortress, and taking it conventionally would've led to another battle as big as the one on Geonosis, especially since Alderaan is a wealthy core world that could easily afford weapons of war. So Tarkin did what he could to mitigate Imperial casualties, eradicate a source of resistance against the Empire, while at the same time, hoping that his actions would persuade other systems to not rebel, saving countless lives, Imperial or otherwise. Tarkin isn't some wannabe mass-murderer who gets hard over the prospect of genocide, he's an old lawman who will do whatever it takes to maintain order......even if he needs to commit mass genocide to do it. Kind of like how General MacArthur wanted to nuke the Red Chinese to win the Korean War.
As for the good guys, in the old lore, they're not fighting just because the bad guys are mean, they're fighting for the sake of democracy itself. As Obi-Wan Kenobi said, his allegiance is "to the Republic, to Democracy." Even if the Emperor was a Light-Sided Jedi who stayed true to the Jedi way, if he still exercised absolute power and violated people's rights in his quest to enforce justice, the heroes of the Rebel Alliance and the Jedi Order would still oppose him. Why did the Jedi send Anakin to spy on the Chancellor? Because he was amassing too much power under his rule and he refused to give it up. Why did the Rebels fight against the Emperor? Because they were trying to restore the Republic which he destroyed. It was a war for constitutional order and civil rights that is rooted deeply in American history, and the good guys are fighters for the law, to return the old order and its fair laws that kept the galaxy running back in place. They're the last people to commit war crimes or carry out terrorist actions-because they'd be against that just as much as the average Imperial citizen would be.
But in TCW and Rebels, we see time and again the good guys breaking their agreements and committing war crimes because.........they're the good guys? From the Jedi ordering flamethrowers to be used against living beings, to Kenobi and Anakin faking surrenders, to the Jedi using mind-rape as a form of interrogation, to Phoenix Squadron literally carrying out terrorist attacks in the middle of civilian gatherings, to Ezra threatening to have Governor Pryce devoured by wolves, and Ahsoka implying that she used "enhanced interrogation" on Morgan Elsbeth to get her to cough up the location of the star map to Thrawn, Filoni's heroes commit so much war crimes that, if you removed the context of protagonist vs. antagonist, Filoni's heroes would wind up getting tried at the Hague. It's funny that in the post-9/11 world, Filoni's heroes have committed both terrorist actions and enhanced interrogation.
NuWars' heroes do whatever it takes to win, even unethical things like conducting terror attacks and using child soldiers, and their only justification is that the other side is evil. Which then falls flat when you see the New Republic that they fought so hard to establish being a corrupt piece of shit like it was in Legends to justify further threats. At least in Legends, it's justified, because the good guys fought to restore a constitutional democracy, and in such a democracy, yes, you will have corrupt pieces of shit who will use said democracy's laws and systems to gain power for themselves. But the good guys in the new canon are more than willing to commit terrorist acts and war crimes to beat the baddies, and to see them suddenly fall flaccid against a bureaucracy that's stiffing them makes them look inconsistent and weak.
If these heroes were willing to commit war crimes against the Separatists or the Empire, why do they suddenly take it up the ass from some bureaucrat on Coruscant just because he's from the New Republic? If Hera in the Ahsoka show was consistent with her Rebels characterization, she'd have Sabine or Chopper arrange an "accident" to kill off Senator Xiono so she can have her fleet go to Seatos no problemo. The threat of Thrawn's return is too big for her to let rules lawyering to get in the way. Even NuThrawn is enough of a threat against this weaker version of the New Republic; doing everything to stop his return would be justified.
I suppose this is just the ravages of time wearing down a franchise that used to appeal to eternal truths. But I suppose it's inevitable, since they need to appeal to a materialist goober class that falls for things like the MCU and sympathizes with a villain who wants to downsize the universal populace out of a misguided idea of solving the overpopulation crisis that doesn't even exist.
In the books Thrawn had Pellaeon - a competent officer he was mentoring. So even when he did something seemingly nonsensical he would then explain it to Pellaeon and tell him (and by proxy the reader) why he did it and why it worked. In the show he has nobody to explain his actions to and the results of those are less than impressive so we are expected to believe that Thrawn is a genius just because they tell us that Thrawn is a genius.
Again, it's capeshit writing. The man is a genius because they say he's a genius. And since most normies fall for capeshit plots, it's something their little minds digest like it's nothing.
Dathomir was much older than Filoni. It first appeared in Courtship of Princes Leia where it was a backwater planet with two matriarchal tribes of self-trained Force-sensitives (nowhere near as powerful as Jedi and Sith) waging a war. Night Sisters were the dark side tribe.
Filoni took it and for some reason made Night Sisters some of the most powerful entities in the universe while retconning the light side tribe out of existence.
I remember Silri from Empire at War being a major player in the Zann Consortium before she deserted and discovered a Sith army in carbonite at the end of Forces of Corruption.
Dr Who actually was marketed as "educational" by the Big Black Cock network.
