I always thought Space Opera was just the scale of the stakes, the amount of melodrama, the amount of swashbuckling romantic adventure stuff included. The more it has the more operatic, i.e Death Stars and Galactic Empires. However Science Fiction can be all of these things while still being full of real ideas about people, culture, technology, warnings about the future, the decline of society or the impact of higher learning. i.e. Not Star Wars. In fact SW is more of a fairy tale than anything else. There are obvious disconnects between the content in SW and the content in Blade Runner, Star Trek or Planet of the Apes.
Well, Star Wars some pretty good warnings about fascism. It has its own technology. It is a fully fleshed out universe from religion to politics to technology and more. And you named two dystopian settings and a space opera series full of morality tales so there is bound to be a disconnect between them and Star Wars.