Today’s major blockbuster sequels have been following an undeniable formula: functional, entertaining, but completely lacking in soul. Unlike their predecessors from decades ago, these modern sequels ride on nostalgia, heavy-handed CGI and meaningless cinematic tradecraft. They’re driven not by directors with a vision, but by film studios with Chinese backers who want to rake in profits by suckering in fans of the originals and Generation Z-ers with soft-rebooted storylines. Terminator: Dark Fate is the latest example of this, and on the backs of similarly awful sequels like Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and Star Wars: The Last Jedi, I’m just about out of hope.

Much of Dark Fate‘s marketing angled itself towards old-school Terminator fans as a return to form for the franchise, with Linda Hamilton and James Cameron involved for the first time after three pointless sequels. The notion is that this would be the movie to finally take the series forward with its original creator in the mix (in reality, he just made notes on the script while filming Avatar sequels). I walked into the theater with an open mind as to how they would do that, and even with low expectations, I walked out not just disappointed, but kind of insulted.

Incredibly, the filmmakers, led by Deadpool director Tim Story, decided to make Dark Fate a Star Wars New Trilogy/Rian “Fuckface” Johnson-esque soft reboot by killing off John Connor right away, replacing him with a new soon-to-be resistance messiah Dani Ramos, replacing Skynet with some vague AI called Legion, and tacking on Sarah Connor and the T-800 Terminator in order to draw in the fanboys, even though they aren’t entirely critical to the overall plot. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a Terminator is sent back in time by an evil AI to assassinate the future leader of the human resistance, so the resistance also sends back a human guardian, who protects and mentors the future resistance leader, then sacrifices their life to that end. This is the story of the original Terminator, and, rather amazingly, Terminator: Dark Fate. It adopts the brain-dead tactic of trying to have it both ways by appealing to younger viewers who don’t know or care about Terminator while suckering in older viewers who do with generous sprinklings of meaningless fan service.

Unfortunately, even as a reboot, Dark Fate doesn’t work. Dani, the new female Mexican version of John Connor, is extremely cringe-y in the way her arc goes from timid to badass, suddenly becoming an iron-willed warrior without any meaningful justification. In one scene, she is practicing firing a gun to no avail. The T-800 tries to give her advice, but is shushed by Sarah Connor, who instead tells her, “The Terminator has killed your family. What are you gonna do about it?” In a straight-up comic-book moment, Dani instantly gains the marksmanship of a Navy SEAL and swiftly nails two targets with a shotgun. It’s a cheap way to get a laugh out of the audience, but it belongs in a stupid Marvel movie, not something with the weight and gravitas of Terminator. 

It doesn’t even work as a science-fiction action horror movie, either. It’s evident in the way the film is shot and the action sequences are handled that Tim Story doesn’t have a  clue on what made Terminator 1 and 2 so great. Whether it’s the legendary helicopter chase and Galleria battle between the T-1000 and T-800 in 2, or Kyle Reese dreaming of the apocalyptic future while the Terminator is running around murdering people in 1, the original films were permeated with an overwhelming sense of hopelessness, and the action scenes were slower, muscular, and packed a lot of punch. By contrast, Dark Fate has no sense of horror or dread, and its action scenes are so fast, overly CG’d and filled with criminally generic orchestral action music that they rapidly become uninteresting. In Terminator 2, every punch, every body slam and shotgun blast was memorable because they were synced to carefully designed sound effects and a distinct soundtrack. Here, it just feels like Tim Story copied and pasted the action formula straight out of Deadpool.

The one thing that was terrific about Dark Fate also happens to be the one thing that the writers chose not to explore more deeply, which is the dynamic between Sarah Connor and the T-800. The brief interplay between the two is great, with Connor, the human, ironically single minded in her hatred of the T-800 for killing her son, while the cyborg T-800 has “matured” to atone for its sin. This, I thought, would have made for a genuinely interesting Terminator story; a parent who has turned into a killing machine alongside a killing machine that has turned into a parent. Arnold in particular plays the T-800 to perfection, more so than in Genisys, which is amazing considering he does so by being completely devoid of emotion. Everything about his performance, from his monotone voice, to his movements, to his poise, proves that the role belongs only to him, and when he calmly talks about his day job of selling drapery, it’s believable and doesn’t come off as forced humor. Watching Sarah Connor practically frothing with rage at the T-800, which has gained a Zen-like serenity, is one of the best moments in Terminator.

It felt like such a missed opportunity to have had a new movie based on this subplot, rather than a boring, over-CG’d rehash featuring Mexican female John Connor. But, as is the case with many of our beloved film franchises today, Terminator is no longer driven by director-auteurs who want to tell a new story, but by film studios who use market research and focus groups. The franchise now only serves to function at the whims of greedy executives, riding on its successful past in order to kill its future.

As of today, Terminator: Dark Fate is doing terribly at the box office, and surely its creators and the backers at 20th Century Fox, Paramount, Skydance and Tencent (yuck) must be wondering what went wrong. The truth is that Terminator succeeds when it doesn’t think like a mass-market action blockbuster, but a deep, richly nuanced science fiction story that wears the skin of a major action blockbuster. The vast majority of fans who would have turned out to see this movie are people in their early 30s to late 50s; guys who fell in love with the originals as kids and have matured into moviegoers who demand some creative honesty in a Terminator follow-up. This is not a franchise you can just “Marvel” up with Chinese backing and mass-marketing; this is a franchise that can only succeed when it is led by a director who just wants to make a damn good movie and story, and not give a fuck what some film executive asshole thinks or how many people turn out to watch it. Unless James Cameron gets bored of the dozen Avatar sequels he’s making, or a director like Christopher Nolan takes the reins, it’s doubtful this franchise will change the fate that’s been made for it.