10 Biggest Ever Movie Franchise Mistakes

If there's a very strong argument to be made that the first two Terminator movies are so perfectly executed as to make any further sequels pointless, there was at least potential for more stories to be told within this space.

The problem, inherently, has been the infuriating lack of internal consistency with regard to the storytelling, which has been retconned numerous times in an attempt to jolt the flagging franchise back to life.

While not strictly a retcon, Terminator 3 got the ball rolling by undoing the neatly tied-off ending of T2 and surmising that Judgment Day was in fact inevitable. At least it had the courage to commit to its brilliantly apocalyptic ending, though.

Terminator Salvation largely avoided doing much to disrupt the established continuity, but fifth film Terminator Genisys decided to ignore the events of Salvation and basically soft-reboot the series by having Skynet alter the existing timeline.

Genisys either remixed or wiped out the events of the first two films in the hope of creating a launching pad for a new trilogy, but its commercial disappointment sent the producers back to the drawing board.

And so a few years later Terminator: Dark Fate arrived, which once again tinkered with the continuity by forgetting most of the sequels and instead operating as a direct sequel to T2.

However, the ill-advised decision to kill off a young John Connor (Edward Furlong) in its opening scene immediately soured many fans on the rest of the film which, honestly, could've been worse.

Much like Star Wars, the lack of a plan really hurt Terminator, but rather than try to fix the existing scenario, the producers insisted upon continuity-negating reboots that quickly eroded audience investment in the franchise.

With Dark Fate sinking like a stone at the box office, it's looking likely that the movie series might actually, finally, be terminated itself.