The “dark side” as a blatantly degradative drug is just kind of a boring read IMO. If The Force is supposed to be “everything” then the nuances of the human experience should be given room to work inside the framework. Agency and choice is a far more compelling engine to drive a story than mythological convention. It’s part of what makes ROTJ work for me; it wasn’t “too late.” It denies this idea weight.
Whether or not it accidentally stumbles into it, the prequels do enough to portray that rigid understanding of the Force as flawed pedagogy too - more than truth about nature. For all the convoluted vagueness about the galactic polity and what it’s meant to analogize, the denial of anything innocuous possibly leading to “the dark” (for a child) works too well in a decade not far removed from satanic panic and at the height of Catholic church scandal. I know not everyone agrees, but I do think that stuff is interesting. The Wire is a good show, and better than Lord of the Rings.
The prequels get so close to finding a good synthesis, but ultimately fail by retreating into Anakin’s wacky yellow-eyes corruption in ROTS’ third act. It just doesn’t leave much genuine room for feelings of remorse or guilt in The Force, and make Anakin/Vader feel less real.
The nuances of the human experience do work inside the framework. That’s the point. The agency and choice is the mythological convention. We always have a choice. We should choose good over evil. Moreover, like I just said, the dark side is not normal emotions at normal levels. Han Solo (or Andor or whoever) gets frightened, angry, jealous, greedy, etc. quite a lot, but he is not tapping into the black magic of pure hatred. He doesn’t have the position of power necessary to make that a possibility - people with the Force do. You can compare it to the Ring or “with great power comes great responsibility” or the atomic bomb in Oppenheimer, or whatever suits your fancy.
Here we go with the anti-Christian stuff again. Here is the issue with that - it’s Faust. It’s inherently a story about a guy selling his soul to the literal devil, which you can then use to symbolize non-religious things if you want. But that is the story. The Jedi’s interpretation of how it works in the prequels is correct. Their portrayal contradicts the message because it was done incompetently.
The Wire is not better than Lord of the Rings. That’s the ultimate apples to oranges comparison.