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It's one of the good things about Lucas intentionally choosing to make the world of Star Wars so starkly good versus evil. Star Trek can have a good villain for a story or two, but it's not about a war and therefore isn't so black and white. Even the Cardassians and Jem'hadr in the Dominion War show themselves as having their good traits, and even helping turn the tide of war in the end.

It's much easier to do great villains when you're freed from having to make the bad guys admirable, and can just show the Empire as the evil monolithic power it is, absolutely fine from the lowliest trooper to the Emperor himself, with destroying entire world's as long as it wins you the war.

I have to disagree. Bad guys that are just wholly bad are boring, and get old fast. Same with the clumsy, egomaniacs that most Imperial officers and Separatist badies are depicted as in the movies and novels.

A really good villain is the one that you can't help but admire, and wonder if they aren't right after all. Thrawn and Pellaeon in the novels are wonderful examples of that. Dooku had the potential for being that type of character, but Episode II blew that wad way to early.

Lets talk arc.

Star Wars, he IS the big bad.

Empire, it's WHAT?!?! How can this be?!?!?!

Jedi, you're cheering the big guy on!

I have to disagree. Bad guys that are just wholly bad are boring, and get old fast. Same with the clumsy, egomaniacs that most Imperial officers and Separatist badies are depicted as in the movies and novels.

A really good villain is the one that you can't help but admire, and wonder if they aren't right after all. Thrawn and Pellaeon in the novels are wonderful examples of that. Dooku had the potential for being that type of character, but Episode II blew that wad way to early.

I completely agree with your assessment of Thrawn, feel Capt P was just kind of along for the ride and to showcase how different Thrawn was, and couldn't disagree more about anything from the Prequels. Those characters, both good and evil, were as hollow as the blue screen stages George used to "create" his new univers.

Going back to the bad guys of the Real Star Wars, Vader did not have that depth to him, he was fairly one dimensional in his drive to destroy the Rebellion, was completely free of conflict in his motivation and could not have been saved without the faith his son showed in him to be able to redeem himself, and he is still to this day one of the greatest screen villains ever.

The Emperor was again simply a villain in the truest sense, looking to conquer and control the entire galaxy, again free of any sympathetic motivations, other than the appearance of being this frail and decrepit old man that could barely walk without assitance from Vader, and what made him truly interesting and enjoyable was keeping up this charade of vulnerability while trying to convince Luke his only chance to save his friends was to join him. The reveal of that power that Luke was warned about in the end only hightened the Emperor's stature, as we finally understand why Vader and the Jedi's tightly feared this old man.

Tarkin's cool and vicious streak just made me wish he had taken the advice to evacuate in his moment of triumph, just to get some more of that fantastic Cushing presence. And Piet's little toady approach to being the Admiral not getting killed for screwing up again and again just made me happy to see him die in a good way.

These villains just made me want to see more of them.

Going back to the bad guys of the Real Star Wars, Vader did not have that depth to him, he was fairly one dimensional in his drive to destroy the Rebellion, was completely free of conflict in his motivation and could not have been saved without the faith his son showed in him to be able to redeem himself, and he is still to this day one of the greatest screen villains ever.

And I have to completely disagree with this. Vader was the stock, flat, featureless baddie in ANH and ESB but from the the moment he revealed Luke's parentage, he changed as a character. Suddenly there were hidden and possible other motives to his actions, and you can see the conflict start while the movie is still running, which him silently walking off the bridge after the Falcon escapes. In ROtJ, he's nothing but conflict, with his early movie warnings to Moff Jerjerrod serving as the only remnant of his previous flat character. This becomes especially evident when he's reunited with Luke, and for the rest of the movie. I for one enjoyed the Special addition change that added in his "No...." line before tossing Old Sparky off the ledge into the DSII's core. It verbalized him finally coming to a decision, and choosing a new path, where before you only had his actions to show that.

Oh, and Pellaeon's character was as you described him early on, but through the course of the original Thrawn Trilogy he changed remarkably, and by the time of the Hand of Thrawn books, he's almost a completely different character. It was nice to have a die hard Imperial character be given that much development, and is probably why he's one of my favorite Imperials.

Hopefully TFA has 'villians' that have proper motivation and don't just do things because they are evil. From what little I've heard it seems we may have some pretty complex characters in the First Order and the Resistance.

And I don't think the 'world' of SW is a black and white as it first appears. All the 'good guys' lied to Luke for most of his life to 'protect' him from the truth. Han was far from squeaky clean. Vader was a 'good guy' turned bad. Most of the Empire is full of punch-clock villians. Takin and the other Officers seem to be pragmatists and seek order over the chaos and weakness that plagued the Republic. Only the Emperor seems to be truly evil just to be evil, and that is probably due to be nature of the Force and it's Dark Side totally corrupting him, as it does to Vader. Of course if you dig deep into Scum you will see all sorts of motivations, but the films do not dig more than skin deep for characters like Jabba, Greedo and the rest. Boba Fett gets a motivation by proxy of his PT backstory, I suppose, but remains mostly a really cool costume.

The over all story of SW as it stands now is the story of the eventual rebirth of the Jedi after their mortal enemies the Sith had all but caused their extinction. We see the once revered Jedi willing to compromise their morals and values by using a mysterious clone army to fight a war of dubious purpose. The good guys just aren't as good as they should be, they are flawed and fail. Yoda, Windu and Kenobi share a lot of the blame for what happened to Anakin and the Republic. It will be interesting to see how Luke fared as the only Jedi left to restart the knightly order and what his choices were after the war.