Despite receiving the best reviews the series had gotten in decades, Terminator: Dark Fate's story made the rest of the franchise seem pointless. Nearly three years removed from Dark Fate's release in theaters, it's truly a shame what happened to it at the box office. While not without its flaws to be sure, Dark Fate felt more like a worthy Terminator movie than any entry had since Terminator 2: Judgment Day, no doubt partially due to creator James Cameron returning as executive producer and being heavily involved with the creative process.

Terminator: Dark Fate was also the first installment since Terminator 2 to include original stars Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton and feature them interacting onscreen. As cool as that was to see though, Dark Fate's setup was about as close to a full reboot as is possible without resetting the timeline and characters, and did draw criticism from some for arguably being the Star Wars: The Force Awakens of its franchise. In many ways, Dark Fate is almost a remake of Cameron's original 1984 classic, but with different pieces in play.

Related: Terminator 3's Twist Ending Is Great (But It Betrays Judgment Day)

While many viewers understandably found it hard to get past the shocking murder of John Connor in Terminator: Dark Fate's opening minutes, John's death has implications going far beyond merely being unpleasant. Dark Fate establishes that via their actions in Judgment Day, John and Sarah Connor had indeed prevented Skynet's rise, and saved humanity. Yet, with both John killed and Skynet defeated, the timeline essentially cloned their dynamic with the rise of a new evil AI, Legion, and a new human savior in Dani. Beyond being creatively derivative, this development effectively renders every prior movie pointless.

Gabriel Luna as Rev-9 and Arnold Schwarzenegger as T-800 in Terminator Dark Fate

The main thrust of the first three Terminator movies is that John Connor's birth and survival is absolutely essential to humanity prevailing over machines. This extends to Kyle Reese impregnating John's mother Sarah and protecting her in the first Terminator. Yet, Terminator: Dark Fate makes clear that without John in the picture, a new person became destined to lead the human resistance—in this case, Dani Ramos. After five movies that were in some respect about the Connors, Dark Fate reveals that the Connors were essentially nothing more than replaceable pieces in a chess game.

Along those same lines, the main thrust of Terminator 2 and Terminator 3 is the desire of Sarah and John Connor to try and alter the course of history by preventing Judgment Day and the emergence of Skynet as a world power. While Dark Fate ignores Terminator 3, it canonizes the idea that Sarah and John did indeed prevent Judgment Day, even if a stray T-800 already sent back was able to find and kill John. Then it immediately makes all their efforts to do so for naught by having Legion emerge in Skynet's place. In other words, the Terminator timeline is apparently destined to always lead to a war between humans and a malevolent A.I., and a human savior will always emerge. If that's the case, everything that happened in the five Terminator movies prior to Terminator: Dark Fate was basically pointless wheel-spinning.

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