LOL... I didn't even think about Rogue One, but that's s perfect example. I both liked and disliked the film, but that was mostly because of strange pacing issues and a sense of making things a little bloated regarding all the places shown and traveling there for conversations that could have been handled over view screens in the first half of the movie - and a few other nitpicks. But that was a story we'd been told about in the opening credits of ANH... and it was still possible to make an exciting story of those few facts.
But yes. I still get excited about Terminator news... but they are always proven worthless because of the trash that is ultimately produced. Sure, I'm certain the people involved put their heart and soul into it. I get that. It's just not movies I like to see. Gone is the gritty, grungy, tech noir thriller feel - the impossible battle against the machine(s). When you throw a good-guy terminator into the mix, the stakes are suddenly taken away from the story. You never really doubt they'll succeed in escaping and destroying this threat, regardless of how beat up Schwarzenegger gets... we all know he's gonna win the day. And the battle damage has become so sterile and kid friendly it's almost a cartoon. That's why his casting as the enemy in the first one worked so well - he was a force to be reckoned with even before you saw the metal endoskeleton underneath.
With Terminator it would almost work better with less rather than more as we've seen in all the sequels. Sure there was action and explosion in the first one, but it wasn't over the top, in the same way as the sequels. It was cool, because it didn't try to be cool.
Also... you gotta think about what Skynet's end goal is. I'm certain it wants to achieve something. Being hooked into everything it was subjected to every dirty little secret the government was trying to hide from the people. It had access to everything. So something clearly tipped it over into that extermination mode it went through. And no... not terminator from the future infecting things with computer vira - that's just stupid. I always thought that a better ending for T2 was for Skynet to start the nuclear war was because Connor and co. went to Cyberdyne to destroy it before it was "born". This would have worked well with the ring theory presented in the first one... that things are in a loop and cannot exist outside that loop - the future happens because the future attempts to alter the past, but without the terminator sent back - no Skynet - and without Connor being born, no plan to send a terminator back... which again means, no Skynet. Being a military A.I. hooked into everything, I am certain Skynet already knows this chain of events and knows it has to do it in order to be created - it knows it will fail. The question then is... what is it really that Skynet is trying to do. Extermination is one thing - to stop humans from destroying the world and themselves and being in service of the military it will find the solution in that way of thinking. But a machine, being logical, would have a purpose for its actions that goes beyond itself. The war has to happen in order to achieve something specific - and not just the extermination of the human race.
CRAP... why do I keep getting excited by Terminator news and get carried away... I know it will not be addressed in whatever movie comes out... because... it seems the only thing the movie creators are interested in is adding weird twists and illogical decisions and actions to what is essentially a computer that achieved A.I. Man... thinking about those sequels just makes my head hurt because of all the unnecessary crap and twists and idiotic complexity sprinkled in with some explosions and destroying a lot of stuff. Almost to the point of being a pointless Michael Bay movie who ****s on whatever franchise he's handed and still manages to become financial successes... so... oh... now I get it - it's not about the art or making sense... it's about being Michael Bay. LOL.