Sarah Connor has been present for most of the franchise. She's front and center in 4 of 6 movies and the TV show. Only 2 movies shifted away from Sarah.
I feel the movies may have fared better of they were more closely connected. For the longest time, it was just two movies. I remember how excited I was over the teaser for T3. Personally, I loved the movie. I didn't mind the humor, given that's a trademark of Schwarzenegger movies. Given the ending, it needed to have some light moments. A few years of gossip about a TV series that would take place between T2 and T3. When it materialized as TSCC, it ignored T3 with the intent to diverge and pursue a separate storyline from the sequels. T3 got followed up with Salvation. I like how it shifted away from Sarah or John Connor on the run from a Terminator with a protector from the future. This time, we get a full on war movie. There are parts that could be reworked, but overall, I loved it.
For me, Genisys is where things began to go wrong. Instead of building on the previous movie, we see the original future we flashbacked to in the first two movies. I enjoyed the movie overall, but I would have gone for some realism so our heroes didn't seem impervious to injury. I liked the idea of John Connor as a Terminator, but I feel like the audience deserved more of an explanation of how and why. I would have liked Judgment Day to be 2004 as a nod to T3. TS showed the future war, how John came to power, and how he found Kyle Reese. I would have liked T5 to build on that instead of ignore T3&4. Imagine if the T-800 that raised Sarah was Uncle Bob from T2, and Asian T-1000 was Robert Patrick from T2. Instead of being sent back to the 90s, they got sent back to 1973. In my mind, Uncle Bob and Pops are the same Terminator. I like to imagine that Matt Smith Skynet was from the Salvation timeline, after the war ended, but Skynet secretly escaped embodied as a T-5000.
Imagine if Dark Fate built on T5? During the end credits, we learn Skynet survived. Imagine that, Skynet further into the future, found a way to both time travel and hop backward to previous timelines. What if this embodiment of Skynet was the one to send multiple T-800's back? What if this Skynet created Legion instead of man?
Forgive me if that was disorganized. I just hate the fractured storyline and feel like the last 2 movies would have been better if they built on all previous films and not just the first two.
