Yeah my feelings are it isn’t so simple as one botched opportunity, more the dam busting after a series of unchecked cracks that started to add up over time. One of the bigger complaints about TROS is the breakneck pacing, but consider all the elements unresolved from the previous two IX now had to juggle or otherwise ignore like the Knights of Ren. All while trying to balance an appropriate ending to the trilogy, the saga, and being its own movie. So for me while it’s not blameless and I do think TROS took the lazy way out, it’s a tricky situation and some of it lands on time wasted not establishing more prior when there was time to spare. “We’ll figure it out later”, then all of the sudden we’re at the finale and later became too late.
I don’t really buy that. I mean sure, there were plenty of unresolved elements, but considering TROS didn’t bother to resolve or really spend any time on most of them I don’t think that was the issue. Not to mention the film easily could have just been longer, TLJ had ten minutes on it and Endgame proved you could be 30 minutes longer than that and still make plenty of cash. No, the issue was for whatever reason JJ and Terrio felt the need to add in a million new elements out of nowhere that all needed to be set up and resolved within one movie, which is what really makes it feel so crammed (first act is full of new exposition, second act features all new revelations, third act has to wrap it all up). They shot themselves in the foot trying to outsmart themselves when they could have easily just stayed the course, so to speak.