10 Diabolical Movie Mistakes You Won't Believe They Made TWICE
6. Retconning The Earlier Movies - Terminator: Genisys & Terminator: Dark Fate
Considering how excellent and groundbreaking James Cameron's first two Terminator movies were, it's almost impressive that most of what came after has been pretty atrocious.
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines wasn't brilliant and Terminator Salvation was more memorable for Christian Bale's on-set outburst, but at least those movies didn't muck about with the continuity of the first two films. Yes, Rise of the Machines undid Judgment Day's happy resolution, but it didn't actively undermine its timeline or immediate ending. That was left to 2015's Terminator Genisys and 2019's Terminator: Dark Fate.
The whole premise of Genisys is that Kyle Reese, Sarah Connor's saviour and baby daddy from the first movie, discovers that Skynet has beaten him to the punch and that his charge is now being guarded by a reprogrammed T-800. As for Dark Fate, that goes completely off the rails within the first few minutes, as a second version of the T-800 tracks down the young John Connor and blows a hole in him.
By making retconning a key part of the series, all the newer Terminator movies did was drive old fans even further away. Why bother carrying on with a franchise that's going to keep erasing all of your favourite parts?
It didn't help that neither Genisys nor Dark Fate were particularly strong on a technical front, but they didn't help themselves by getting mired in the weeds of continuity.