Terminator: Dark Fate (Tim Miller, 2019)

What a happy get-out clause the Terminator franchise has in already being based on the concept of alterable pasts, thereby allowing this umpteenth addition to do away with a whole three films and a TV series to bring back the superannuated stars of the first two films almost three decades later and resume proceedings as if nothing else had been committed to soil the memory of the series openers, which stood head and shoulders above the dross that followed them. So that makes it doubly imperative that the continuation of Sarah Connor/Arnie adds to the storyline.
With depressing predictability, it singularly fails to do that or even seem interested in trying. It's not just lines that are recycled knowingly, but entire scenes upon scenes, and making the target for termination a young Mexican woman this time around is just window-dressing. The few moments where Arnie gets to do Data from Star Trek by explaining how he's striven to become more human in the years since are a brief respite from the otherwise tediously incessant mega-action, and I swear I've never seen so many visual FX credits for any film, or so little evidence in the finished product for their need.

4/10