Whenever some pop cultural hallmark gets a shiny new Hollywood remake or reboot – and make no mistake; they’re coming for all of them – the Internet’s response is always the same, to the point that you might as well give it its own key on the keyboard: "They’re destroying my childhood!"

In all cases, it’s complete hyperbolic fanboy instant reaction spazzing – all, except for maybe the case of "Terminator: Genisys" (the bonus y nicely echoing my main line of thought while watching the movie). The new sequel/reboot/remake literally goes about erasing the first two beloved installments of the franchise from existence. "Did you like those movies?" it asks. "That’s nice; they didn’t happen anymore. Now here’s old Arnold fighting Arnold from the original like PS2-rendered fan fiction. Enjoy!"

Hey, points for at least taking a risk, Paramount – one that could’ve paid off had the studio gone about resetting the series with something exciting or at least interesting. Unfortunately, the dull and thoroughly lackluster final product lands far from qualifying as anything close to those adjectives. Instead, the movie itself plays like a Terminator – a lifelike exterior barely hiding the cold, soulless machinery underneath. "Genisys" is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t know excitement or entertainment or fun. And it absolutely feels like it won’t stop, ever, until you are dead – or at least dead-eyed.

In its attempt to start on a new clean slate, "Genisys" ends up adding even more clunky knots to the series’ already tangled time travel saga. The movie starts up in 2029, with the human resistance winning its battle with the Skynet, only to lose the war when the machines, as their final Hail Mary strategy, send a terminator back in time to kill Sarah Connor. Human leader John Connor (Jason Clarke, "Zero Dark Thirty") sends Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney, "A Good Day to Die Hard") back to 1984 to protect his mother – and, unbeknownst to Reese, bring John into existence. So far, so standard – or at least as much as that word can apply to this pretzeled pretzel of a timeline.

When Reese arrives in the rather niftily recreated world of 1984, however, things have changed. Sure, there’s the hobo getting his pants stolen and mohawked punks messing with naked Arnold. But there’s also a liquid metal T-1000 cop (Byung-hun Lee) hot on Reese’s trail and an older T-800 (Schwarzenegger) serving as the new shotgun-wielding pro-human welcoming committee for his original self. It turns out another Arnold was sent back decades earlier to protect and raise Sarah (Emilia Clarke), who, thanks to her robo-dad, skipped over her helpless waitress phase and is already on her way to becoming growling badass Linda Hamilton circa "Judgment Day."

Sarah and her Terminator "Pops" (groooan) even built themselves a time machine in their free time, planning to head to 1997 to stop Skynet before it even gets started. Reese, suddenly graced with a whole new timeline of memories, instead diverts them to 2017, where the robot apocalypse never happened, but Skynet is still on the prowl, now developing as a sexy new super-OS called Genisys. It’s still up to Sarah, Reese and an even greyer Arnold – "old but not obsolete," the script insists – to stop its new form and its creator, who winds up being a very, very familiar face.

Between that big twist, gooey T-1000s messing with Kyle Reese in 1984 and Arnold getting into fist fights with himself and his former ward, the whole movie plays like a "Terminator" fan fiction jamboree – but unfortunately without any of the fun that implies. Instead, it transforms its predecessors’ knotty but slick timeline into a dense and convoluted clump, flavorlessly served up to the audience via drab voiceover and gunky exposition.

Even with all of its jumping around and crazy scenarios, the result is a stiff slog – one its own marketing did no favors. I’m not here to review marketing campaigns – the actual filmmakers often have no control over that aspect – but man, did the team behind "Genisys" do everything possible to wreck almost every major twist here. Arnold’s early arrival is at least a first-act number, but the big bad guy is a major mid-film reveal that somehow landed smack dab right in the middle of the poster and slathered across its trailers. 

Even if you go into "Terminator: Genisys" unspoiled, however, it’s hard to appreciate or have fun with just about anything under the thick layer of blandness smothering the movie. Leading the charge is the "NCIS:LA" of blockbuster actors Jai Courtney (Sam Worthington is the original "NCIS," and even he left more of a mark in his "Terminator" installment). It’s not just that he doesn’t convey any of the weary, exhausted grit of Biehn’s original performance; it’s that he doesn’t convey, well, anything. His performance leaves the viewer with nothing; save for one hilariously melodramatic yelling of "He’s a KILLER!", it’s not even memorably bad. He’s just a handsome but utterly charisma-free blank, a void where the supposed core of the movie is supposed to be.

Surprisingly, neither of the talented Clarke tandem really fares much better. Emilia may visually fit Sarah Connor to a tee, but her performance feels like a child cosplaying as Hamilton’s signature role. Her attempts at sounding rough and tough sound hollow, utterly unconvincing and borderline shrill. As for Jason, he pulls off neither of the John Connors – the military hero or the altered timeline version from 2017 – presented in "Genisys." Both Sarah and John should be strong characters, but both come off flimsier than a terminator made from paper mache.

Then again, they’re all working with a miserable script from Patrick Lussier and Laeta Kalogridis. When they’re not saddled with dreary exposition, Courtney gets stuck with a ton of eye-rollingly lame quips and jokey grumbles that bring back all the worst memories of "A Good Day to Die Hard," while Emilia Clarke, well, she has to call the terminator "Pops." No wonder her rendition of Sarah Connor feels so deflatingly defanged. If that’s not enough, she and Courtney tediously bicker most of the movie like mismatched lovers from a bad rom-com. By the end, you’ll probably yearn for the days of Edward Furlong coaching Arnold on ’90s slang.

After bringing Asgard to nerdily convincing life in "Thor: The Dark World," director Alan Taylor – who seems to be really hating his time with big budget blockbusters – struggles to find a pulse amongst the beige and just plain bad. The first "Terminator" was a gritty, grimy sci-fi horror flick whose unrepentant ’80s-ness gives it even more techno-dread, while "Judgment Day" mixed its horror, sci-fi and noir influences in with modern era James Cameron ’90s bombast. Here, there’s no flavor and no texture; it’s just modern franchise filmmaking at its most generic.

At least the lesser chapters "Rise of the Machines" and even "Salvation" offered some strong action beats. Here, the basic action numbers are uninvolving – set in a lot of empty backstreets, grey-lit halls and, of course, a metallic factory – and hindered by some chintzy special effects that would’ve embarrassed themselves five years ago. Retro Arnold looks like an unfinished CGI doll, while basics like explosion effects and even the freaking robots the franchise is named after look plastic and cheaply rendered. It doesn’t help that the big sequences are conceptually silly to begin with, like a physics-testing helicopter chase and an absurd multi-flip rollover bus crash that somehow leaves everybody in pristine condition.

Hey, at least scenes like that – or, say, the climax, which features all of our heroes repeatedly shooting the same pesky hologram over and over and over again like digital wack-a-mole – manage a laugh, something the script’s attempts at humor can’t claim. This is a movie, after all, that thinks a montage of mugshots set to the "Cops" theme needed to make the final cut. That’s some next level "Battleship" chicken burrito-esque buffoonery.

For the most part, however, "Genisys" is not as much a trainwreck as it is a train that broke down before even getting out of the station, less a crazy burning disaster and more simply a boring non-starter. Explosions go boom, guns go bang and robo-Arnold makes some quips. In fact, Arnold is easily the best part, stepping back into his most famous role and at least trying to have some fun – and occasionally even give some weight – with the poorly scripted efforts. But what does that say when the soulless robot mercenary is the most charismatic part of your blockbuster?

I’d be willing to call "Terminator: Genisys" passable if it was remotely fun on a base action movie level, but it’s just such a dim, dull and impact-free ride. It has one programmed objective: re-franchising itself, undeterred by the likes of energy, creativity or personality. But when the movie's final voiceover ponders that "the future is not set," it might as well be referring to its sequel odds.