Has all the right elements ... but falls short each time

Rating: Null/10 (23 December 2019)

If you were to take a step back and think about all the different plot sequences (short events), they look good on the surface: fast-paced action, good dialog, humor, characters from previous movies, lots of cool worlds and great F/X.
Furthermore, if you look at the big-picture story ... it's quite acceptable for a Star Wars story.
So what went wrong? For me, the plot-sequences are not well-thought out and there too many of them for the movie's runtime. Many of the sequences have highly-convenient endings (like someone always swoops down at the last moment to avert disaster). You can almost count on that happening each an every time. It's a cop-out formula that's overused.
Furthermore, the big "reveals" were easy to guess. I'm usually terrible at guessing what happens next, but here it seemed obvious. They'd pose a question in a leading way, for example when raising the question of Rey's birth, pause for a long time ... and ... it's not that hard to put 2 and 2 together. It's like a spoiler during the movie.
Secondly, the movie needs to be longer or have fewer plot sequences. The sequence endings seemed rushed and not well integrated with the film itself. If they had a bit more time to edit the movie and catch these kinds of problems, the result could have been very different.
But without a doubt ... this is one of those movies you "have" to see sooner or later because it involves the completion of the culturally iconic Star Wars story.