11 Upcoming Movies That Have Ignored Massive Mistakes
5. Trying To "Fix" A Franchise Nobody Cares About - Terminator: Dark Fate
The Mistake
The sixth Terminator movie is yet another attempt to "fix" the iconic sci-fi franchise, which now features as many bad entries as it does genuinely great ones.
Yet with the last half-way decent Terminator movie releasing back in 2003, it's safe to say that all but the most hardcore fans have basically lost interest, with the series increasingly, desperately dining out on nostalgia across its two previous films.
But the hideously-titled Terminator: Dark Fate is different, producer James Cameron will tell you - Linda Hamilton's back and Tim Miller (Deadpool) is directing...a script penned by the woefully inconsistent David S. Goyer (Batman Begins, Batman v Superman).
After the last two films tried to pivot the franchise in a new direction which didn't take with fans, this third attempt to kick-start a new trilogy runs the risk of arriving upon deaf ears from fans and casual audiences alike. It's not like that first official image (above) really won anybody over.
The Lesson(s)
Ignoring Terminator Salvation and Terminator Genisys themselves, Transformers: Age of Extinction tried to repair its series' duff reputation by switching out Shia LaBeouf for Mark Wahlberg, but by then the damage had already been done (though Bumblebee did successfully course-correct things late last year).
Elsewhere Alien: Covenant saw Ridley Scott promising he'd fix the issues raised by Prometheus, only to further derail things by introducing even more logical issues and having his protagonists act even more moronically. Alien fans, having largely lost their patience with the series, barely turned up at all for it.
There are rare instances where smart filmmaking has been able to save an ailing franchise - Fast Five rescuing the Fast and the Furious series for one - but usually these Hail Mary passes to reignite an IP's box office juice end up falling flat with audiences who couldn't give a damn.