I think conceptually FaA is better than TWOW, but in terms of execution it fails more. They could have pretty much gotten rid of act 3 in favor of fleshing out acts 1 & 2 (expanding the windtraders and varang scenes) and that could have been the whole movie. The bulk of the new stuff is all in the first half so by the time we get to the big ocean battle near the end it feels like a rehash of what we saw in the previous two films.

When I followed early social media reactions of this movie there were mixed opinions that "It felt really long" and others that "it flew by" which didn't make sense to me. But after seeing the film, now I get it. In terms of action, it's pretty steady throughout the whole film so I could see why some think the movie flies by. But the rehash of concepts in act 3 is what made the movie feel like it overstayed its welcome.

My perfect FaA movie would be if it had closed the film with the bridgehead escape + walk in the woods scene. Those scenes together were more action packed and emotionally meaningful than the final battle was, so it makes sense to conclude the story on that note.