I didn’t catch Tim Miller’s Terminator: Dark Fate in theaters though having recently seen it I’m okay with that.

As I discuss in my video, the greatest problem with the Terminator films is by my reckoning not that they all have the same story but they obviously have the same story.

And that’s not unusual. The Alien movies are essentially the same as well, but they at least try not to look it while the Terminator movies just switch minor details–the gender or ethnicity of the Terminator or the actors playing various characters, and that’s about it.

Terminator: Dark Fate does exactly the same thing. Skynet becomes Legion, the Terminator become Rev 9, and those are the only changes worth discussing.

Dark Fate also has a bit of a feminist slant, and while that’s an interesting change–at this point any change is welcome–it’s not enough to make a difference.

Another problem is that it cost $185 million to produce–while the original Terminator cost just $6 million ($6,400,000) in 1984.

Now if we were talking about a Marvel movie I could see a studio spending that kind of money because your return on investment is almost assured.

A Terminator movie? Not so much.