Unable to make field private final java.util.Comparator java.util.TreeMap.comparator accessible: java.base doesn’t “opens java.util” to unnamed module

I did not have an Cucumber feature installed so the problem in my setup was not related to it.
what did help me is updating the maven plugin settings in my pom file as below.

<plugin>
  <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
  <artifactId>maven-war-plugin</artifactId>
  <version>3.3.1</version>
</plugin>
<plugin>
  <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
  <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
  <version>3.8.1</version>
</plugin>