I know exactly what you mean. The Force was always a subtle thing for me - and when it did cool telekinetic things bigger than "pick up my lightsaber from over there" that was a major event. And even then, the mos powerful beings in the galaxy did no more than slowly move an X-Wing or throw some crates.
You're dead on with the idea of "Force power creep"; I share your preference for a less powerful, more subtle Force but let's face it, that horse left the barn with Episode 1.
Sadly I think this is true of most long-running sci-fi and fantasy series, whether Star Wars, Star Trek, Forgotten Realms, the Wheel of Time, Dresden Files ... pick your poison. Each new release has to be bigger and more dramatic than the last, and so you see increasing "power creep" (or Realms-Shattering Event creep, in the case of FR). This I think is doubly true in genres driven by visual media (movies, TV) than novels.
Star Wars, at least, has some built in mechanism to explain the creep: "We didn't know about it because all of the Force wielders got killed off". But to some extent I feel that's also lazy; I'd be more accepting if there were some rules laid down and everything that followed fell within the rule constraints (which some authors have followed with magic in their fantasy series, and others with their "hard" sci-fi). But, then space opera is fantasy, and Star Wars is certainly operating consistently within its genre constraints.
Much as I'd like, I don't think we can go back to a "low-magic" Star Wars, except perhaps in a home RPG campaign.
