Jar Jar is a derpy, goofball character right? And the thing is, Lucas instead of presenting Jar Jar first as derpy and then actually making him super heroic (and going, oh look you were wrong for looking at him derpy he was was heroic all along), basically keeps him derpy. Yes he becomes a senator and all, but he's still a goofball at the end of the day who makes possibly irritating decisions. But the thing Lucas was getting at is, even derpy characters in life have their place in the balance of hings, even if they keep making mistakes. In Clone Wars Mace Windu, while has many good reasons (again other filmmakers would in the end show those reasons to be bogus, but Lucas actually never does that) for finding Jar Jar annoying, but by spending time with him, learns despite his flaws, even this derpy creature has his benefits.
The point being Lucas, didn't signpost his audience or come to absolute moral judgements. Good guys had flaws, made terrible mistakes, and bad guys did good things, had good points, etc. It was all about the balance. It was upto you as the audience to interpret these things. He didn't signpost it.
Like in the prequels, it has only become apparent years later that the Jedi actually had become corrupt and bureaucratic. But instead of signposting it, George Lucas added layers and even had bad guys, like Dooku tell the truth.
Now this brings me to Disney star Wars and I feel like this nuance is gone. Let me use, the best of new Star Wars, Dave Filoni to demonstrate this point.
Don't get me wrong, I think Filoni is great, having made some of the best Star Wars there is, particularly with the Clone Wars. But without George Lucas there, I feel there is this nuance, that I have spoken about, missing.
There's obvious moral signposting going on, for example, I think it's pretty obvious that Filoni likes to use Ashoka as a moral signpost to the Jedi, in the siege of Mandalore, Obi Wan may make a point, and Ashoka has a reaction to it, which I feel is being used to tell the audience how to feel in that situation. Lucas tended not to do that, the closest thing I can find is Dooku in the prequels, who is as corrupt if not more so, so that flips everything on it's head and makes the signposting ambigious.
Likewise in Rebels, I'm not too sure how much of this is Filoni or Disney (I really wish Disney would give Filoni his own show, film, give him creative control), but Ezra comes off like a Gary Stu with any moral situations signposted, unambigious (Holocron tells him its going to destroy things, well easy to know what to do there), and well you're expected to like him cuz he's doing the right thing.
But the genius of George was to make us empathise with flawed, even ambigious characters that were left to our intepretations. For example, Obi Wan is both great because he sticks to the Jedi Code (which I like) but also flawed because he sticks to the Jedi Code (which is also a totally reasonable argument to make).
Anyway in ending, I definetly amn't dumping on Filoni here, he's great. It's just George Lucas was such a genius, it's hard to follow, and hard to do this level of nuance well. In fact, it's hard to verbalise it, I hope I have here, but please feel free to add input. In the future, I do feel this nuanced element of Star Wars isn't really going to be there anymore, particularly in these polarising times. Everyone's looking for moral certainty, when in a lot respects Lucas is about moral uncertainty and ambiguity.
Basically George Lucas made Jar Jar derpy and kept him that way, cuz as an audience we were supposed to find him derpy but learn to understand even with flaws he had a use in the balance of things. In Disney, Jar Jar would be signposted in the end to be amazing."
