It did. But it also used a bunch of sets and effects from The Motion Picture.
Should they or shouldn't they? Who really knows? People could catch wind of a diminished budget and decide it better to just wait for the film on home video.
I think the likely best course, is to find the best story possible, then budget accordingly.
Sure, but I think they have to make some different moves from the ones they made in Beyond, if not, why would the results be different this time vs. last time? If it's just the same old story beats ''a villain wants revenge and threatens Earth or a place like Earth that is super expensive to recreate'', well they tried that already, maybe its time to try something new?
We have seen superhero movies with smaller budgets do well, like Joker, Logan and Deadpool, based on the strength of their writing.
I feel like sometimes movie producers think the more money they throw at the screen, the better the movie is and make the script an afterthought.
The new Terminator movie flopped, costing 185 million dollars, maybe that would have been better as a lower budget horror film vs. the giant action movie we got instead. The first Terminator film had a lean budget.
There have been lots of movies with huge budgets that did not make the money to justify that budget: Star Trek Beyond, Solo, Justice League, Terminator Dark Fate, etc. Frankly, I think sometimes a smaller budget makes filmmakers more creative, it's part of the reason I like Blumhouse films.
Just throwing money at the screen doesn't always help if the script is weak.