It looks like the movie is fallen into the "why we needed this again?" category. It is medicore. And to be honest after reading and hearing what Cameron and Miller planed for the franchise I am very very happy that this movie looks like a fail. Cameron even go against his own view...and do what he hates. He just does not care about his own creation anymore clear as a day. It is sad...big twist at the beginning of the movie and the hole rehashed same old, same old movie...Switching names unnecessary just for the sake of whatever...they destroyed everything we loved about the first 2. I am glad to see that this one is in the same line like T3, TS and T5.
One chance is the prequel future movie from now on. But I am not sure we will get the opportunity for this...and I do not want to think about the quality of that movie after 4 failed attempts. They should just stop finally. It is embarrassing.
When you look at what Matt Reeves did with those Planet of the Apes movies, yeah, it should have been possible to do a good Terminator 2029 movie to close the franchise in a perfect loop leading back into T1 and T2. But studios don't want to do that because that'd be drawing a line under it and saying it's finished. No, they want it to just go on and on hence the constant soft rebooting for a new trilogy and rehashing the exact same format over and over.
What I don't get about those early reactions comparing Dark Fate to The Force Awakens - particularly the comment ''if it aint broke don't fix it'' - is that Terminator 3 Rise of the Machines already pulled a Force Awakens way back in 2003 and people rightly didn't like it. So why should we like a 2019 film doing exactly the same thing? Because they've put more women in it? Because they renamed Skynet to something else? Sorry guys, I don't think you've quite put your finger on why people haven't enjoyed these last few movies. They keep taking the wrong lessons from their failures.
Another case in point - Terminator Salvation - 'oh, well, we can't go into the future because they didn't like Salvation' - No! We didn't like that because it
wasn't the future from the Cameron movies (it was set in 2019 actually if memory serves); you changed stuff unnecessarily - you just couldn't resist having a new good-guy Terminator even though it totally diminishes the threat of the machines and the novelty of the reprogrammed Uncle Bob; you made John Connor an idiot who tells everyone who'll listen who his parents were (like anyone would give a crap) and that he's the 'prophesied' leader of the resistance (they'd just think he was a loon or has a weird sense of entitlement); you made the T-800 ridiculously overpowered and invulnerable - fortunately for John they also made it as idiotic as him. It has numerous opportunities to kill him instantly, including one time where it literally has John by the throat and could crush his neck with one hand and punch into his chest with the other - but instead he just throws him around.
Lastly, Salvation writer(s), you left out all the meaty stuff - John/Kyle Reese development, the final battle and the time displacement machine - because you were saving it for two more movies because everything has to be a trilogy because money. Sigh. To paraphrase Critical Drinker - **** off movie studios.