>>713374961 (OP)desu, if we just look at the movies and none of the secondary material that misses the point, Dooku doesn't come off that poorly. He's clearly a parallel to Anakin. Idealists whose desire to do good is twisted by Palpatine. I find it very interesting we never see "Sith eyes" on Dooku in the same trilogy that introduced them as a consistent thing.
Dooku is calm, measured, collected. He never really shows the screaming hatred we see in all the other PT Sith, even Palpatine has mask off moments in ROTS where you can see his unbridled fury. Dooku shows some jeering satisfaction in his rematch with Anakin, and despair when he realizes his own impending death, but never that raw sith anger. In AotC, he tells Obi-Wan Palpatine's plan, he claims that if Kenobi joins him, they can destroy the sith. He seems earnest in missing Qui-Gon and spares the Jedi strike force when it does nothing to benefit him or Palpatine's plan.
We get little time with him, and not much about Dooku's true motives are told to us. So secondary material tends to vary wildly in how he is depicted. In my estimation, I think Dooku was just a fallen Jedi, one who believed he could beat the Sith at their own game. He was outplayed and died at the hands of his replacement, realizing his folly.