20 Great Movie Franchises That Became Unwatchable

Now from one of Arnold Schwarzenegger's biggest films of the 1980s to another. Three years before appearing as Dutch in Predator, the megastar played the T-800 in what is even now arguably his most iconic and appreciated role, though even he couldn't save Terminator: Dark Fate.

This is an example of a movie studio so desperate to milk a cash cow for all its worth, regardless of how good the actual movies are, that said cash cow gets run into the ground and destroyed. This, after having an incredible start followed up by one of the consensus greatest sequels of all time, is incredibly disappointing.

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines wasn't terrible, but it did suffer from the expectations of following T2: Judgment Day. The issue was that it completely undermined the message of what came before it - that fate is what you make of it - and from there, the franchise just seemingly didn't know what to do with itself.

Across Terminator Salvation, Terminator Genisys, and Terminator: Dark Fate, it felt as though it was a case of throwing enough at a wall and seeing what stuck. Retcons, different timelines, multiple variations of John Connor, as well as the return of Arnie and Linda Hamilton in 2019's Dark Fate, were all peddled out to audiences, and you could argue that things genuinely got worse with each one.