This is what i was trying to get away from a page or so ago. This should be about what happens in 9, not complaining about 8.
I did think it odd people think it needs to be over 2.5 hours to wrap things up. What's left to wrap up?
Hard to see how things go from the end of 8, to ostensibly the final battle versus the first order in even a 4 hour movie unless you skip a lot of important stuff. The resistance has to, you know, grow to a lot bigger than the group that remains that fits in the falcon. That takes a good while. You have to acquire the equipment (i.e. tons of ships) to actually mount a fight and then actually fight capably and show you can win. They seemingly have to skip all that and jump to a last battle.
But what's at stake? The FO lost their leader. The next two in line are morons. That's tough to recover from frankly Point is, while an enemy, not one you feel hopelessly outmatched by. In the OT, not only were the two biggest bads still around, they were both percieved as nearly invincible and on top of that the empire controlled everything. At this point, the big bad is dead, the next two are iditiots and the FO doesn't control much of anything. The resistance simply has to get the existing republic worlds to send ships to ward them off or destroy them. Might be a hard argument, but it pales in comparison (massively) to what was at stake in 3 and 6.
Things change a bit if that's now how they end.
Flip the PT and OT. Imagine the PT being the first movies and ending with the goods guys getting their butts handed to them and losing everything - only to hot have another movie for 16 years.
What if the end of 9 sees the FO winning and you have to wait for 10-12 to resolve that? I don't believe they'll do that as the public isn't likely to go for it. Seems more compelling though than the good guys winning and ben dying, etc. None of that's a surprise. They said originally we'd see the making of a villain. We haven't seen the making of anything yet, really. We were presented with a bad guy and he hasn't change since the first scene of TFA. If anything, he's regressed. 9 being him becoming a leader would very much be the making aspect.
Can the powers that be afford to end it on that note?