Great start, but progressively fails to tell a concise story

Rating: 6/10 (19 December 2019)

As a fan of star wars, I was excited to watch this movie, I enjoyed force awakens and 'The Last Jedi' had some great moments. From the get-go we get a great introduction between Palpatine and Kylo Ren, it was a very dark and menacing scene, a welcome change for Kylo Ren as is frequently between the 'Light side' and 'Dark side' in both movies.
We are shown the incredible threat of the 'Final Order' a massive fleet that Palpatine has put together with the intention of having Kylo Ren lead. Kylo gets his mask repaired and we finally get a good look at the frequently teased "Knights of Ren". The entire introduction here was brilliant, we had Kylo Ren with newly found motivation to lead the first/final order and the scarred mask was a great look.
Unfortunately the many of these areas that are interesting are never developed and just seemingly thrown out. Kylo Ren only briefly uses the helmet and still removes it in most scenes that warrant it.
I will break down many of the areas that are too difficult to look past that I couldn't help think about by the end of the movie.
The Knights of Ren are built up and teased around three or four times during the movie before we see them in action. We only see them in action at the end of the movie against none other than Kylo Ren! Who disposes of them like a team of stormtroopers. A big waste of potential, they didn't lay a finger on anyone else.
General Hux, the brains of the first order who has feuded with Kylo Ren in the first two movies of the trilogy was treated as an after thought. All of a sudden Hux is standing behind a returning general from the Empire, we aren't told why he's important but he essentially takes Hux's place. Hux, the epitome of a First Order Patriot (remember his passionate speech in the previous movie) turns against the first order! His reason, he doesn't want Kylo to win. You could forgive this decision if Hux wasn't taken care of within about 5-10 minutes of the audience being told this. Massive waste of potential.
Many times the movie has to quickly explain itself to fill in details that they didn't show on screen, when they really should have just shown us! A great example of this is when we see Finn riding the creatures that the ex-storm troppers introduced. While Finn's allies are being blown out of the sky all around him by the first order, Finn says "Not bad for one lesson!" very lighthearted and awful timing.
Rose is forgotten about, her entire sacrifice and story from the previous movie is forgotten about and she is a background character with around 3 lines that I can remember. A very strange decision that just seems like they didn't know how to expand on her so they just didn't.
Kylo Ren gets his life drained and subsequently his limp body is tossed into a deep pit. He climbs out and we aren't told how that was possible.
There was a lot of fan service which was great, like Rey being spoken to by all the iconic jedi, it was a great scene and it was pretty well executed. However one of the biggest problems with episode IX is that they don't take risks. Rey didn't sacrifice herself, ending both herself and Palpatine in the name of the rebellion. Kylo revived her and there is a moment of romance, we lose Kylo but Rey is saved. I can't support an abusive relationship being romanticized but there you go.
The ending was also very rushed to the point in which you really notice it, they rush through getting every characters reaction to being the first order, but it's so fast you can barely follow it.
Overall, it's a fun experience with a lot of fan service, but that doesn't make up for the poor story telling and wasted opportunities.