There are tons of ways to write a story involving the force that doesn't boil down to destiny or power creep. Jedi are essentially swordsmen / samurai / ronin characters; and not every swordsman needs to be in a hero villain pair.

And there's plenty of fun stuff in the EU (Luke's Jedi academy, the force blocking Ysalamari lizards, Sith Holocrons, etc.) that could have been used to write a solid force-centric plot.

Though as you say the writers were too timid to do anything really interesting with it.