Star Wars has a formula. When it gets followed, the stories are pretty solid and, with competent film making they lead to good films or shows, when it doesn’t, you don’t.
One of the most important parts of the formula is that there has to be a totalitarian power that promotes evil for the heroes to fight. This black and white framing of the world is the foundational lens through which we view what would otherwise be ordinary evening news. And it isn’t dystopia, it is domination. In dystopia, the world is bleak and the people are cynical and the machine grinds down the people and you get slums soaked in failure that breed a kind of scavenger cannibalism, where crime and criminality become part of the air you breathe and morals become “more like guidelines”. It fits well with the neo-noir vibe that the most recognizable cyberpunk stories project.
Star Wars is different. There isn’t the lower classes in slums and ruling classes in luxury. There are only those few at the top who are feared, and everyone else who is always afraid that they will be found wanting and killed for their failings. Fear is in the air, and the vibe of the stories has the hard-boiled characters of noir but not the bleakness or moral ambiguity; there is always hope and the evil is unambiguous. Stories set in the Star Wars galaxy are not (typically) in the genre of horror, but the galaxy itself is a horror setting. The stress of life is visible and palpable because fear is everywhere; step out of line and you, someone you know, or someone you love is going to die as a reminder to everyone else that compliance and obedience are table stakes.
I realized this while watching this well crafted video by YouTuber, Swift Video Edits.