A much better story could have been right there, in the middle. Source: Star Wars / LucasFilms / Disney

Storytelling Structure

What The Rise of Skywalker Can Teach about Storytelling

The Good and Bad of The Rise of Skywalker, Why The New Trilogy Is So Predictable, Whose Fault It Is, and What They Could Have Done Differently (Spoilers)

Why The Sequel Trilogy Is Completely Inconsistent

In The Rise of Skywalker, this is Rey’s list of To Dos:

• Get intel about the existence of the Emperor and where he is.
• Realize you need to find the wayfinder.
• Go to Pasaana to find the wayfinder. Get a dagger with Sith inscriptions instead.
• Travel to Kijimi to translate the inscriptions.
• Retrieve the dagger and Chewie from the destroyer.
• Go to Kef Bir to find the wayfinder.

And this is just in the first half of the movie. Everything is so rushed, that there are plot holes everywhere. To name just a few:

• Poe Dameron jumps to lightspeed several times without programming, always landing in weird places, never hitting anything while on lightspeed, but very closely missing obstacles when in normal speed