10 Movie Sequels That Pointlessly Took Away Things Fans Loved

6. T2's Hopeful, Optimistic Ending - Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines

Terminator 2: Judgment Day is a rare sequel which successfully changes-up the series' tone and absolutely succeeds, vaulting from horror to outright action.

The visually stunning tentpole concludes with Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) and her son John (Edward Furlong) quite definitively defeating Skynet and erasing any possibility that Judgment Day could actually come to pass.

In the film's fantastic final scene, the battle-hardened Sarah declares that she's actually hopeful for the future, neatly tying off her terrific character arc between both movies and effectively bringing the franchise to a close.

But no hit movie series ever stays dead for long, and some 12 years after T2 hit screens, a third film was finally released, albeit without the involvement of James Cameron, who quite understandably felt that he'd told precisely the story he set out to.

And while Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines was a relatively solid sequel for the most part - especially compared to what followed it - it also inherently betrayed the entire "the future isn't set" thematic of T2, with its brutally grim ending suggesting that, in fact, Judgment Day is inevitable.

Though there is certainly an affecting bleakness to the film's shocking climax, it also flies in the face of everything Cameron wanted to say with T2's ending, and was ultimately a cynical way to crowbar open the series' franchise prospects forever more.

Worse still, with Terminator: Dark Fate recently spinning its own dark retcon of T2's ending, it all feels doubly insulting.