About the John Connor situation
Okay for those who haven't seen Dark Fate or heard what happens in it, turn away now.
For those who have seen it and kept up with spoilers, you'll know John Connor dies in the opening scene. This has caused a split in the fanbase. Who else besides me was not bothered that this happened? I have seen every Terminator movie and the TV series, and I just viewed it as natural progression. I'll address the common complaints about this and put my 5 cents into it.
"This made T1 and T2 meaningless" - How so? John's destiny was to stop Skynet. Skynet never existed due to the events of T2. Now that Skynet is gone, John is no longer needed. So how did this make T1 and T2 meaningless? This isn't even touching the films post T2 which I'll get to soon.
"John was the heart/most important thing about the franchise" - No he wasn't. I was born in the 80s and grew up throughout the entire Terminator craze. If you ask anyone who's their fave character or fave part of the Terminator films, John Connor was likely going to end up near the bottom of the list. The dude was just a plot device to get the characters people actually care about something to do.
"But the Terminator films are about John" - No it wasn't. The Terminator films are as much about John as they are about future war and purple lasers. The Terminator films are mainly in my opinion about the every complex relationship between humans and machines and the destinies the two of them are locked into. If this franchise is about John, I shouldn't be watching the TV series and Salvation and think this franchise needs to get the hell away from the Connors in order to properly flesh out.
"Dark Fate basically did to John what Alien 3 did to Hicks and Newt." - Speaking of that, for the REAL Terminator fans out there aka the people who actually remember the movies, anyone remember that little alteration from T3 to T5? The one where it's revealed in T3 that changes to the timeline not only made Skynet more powerful than ever, but it actually successfully murdered John? That was the reason T-X didn't even care to search for John when she originally came back and mainly was concerned about safeguarding Skynet and killing some 2nd in commands along the way? Then in T4/Salvation that destiny was brought up again when T-800 seemingly fulfilled it's destiny in killing John until Sam Worthington gave him his heart? Then in T6/Genysis John not only got killed by Skynet again, but kind of got killed twice in that movie? Yeah this isn't the first time Skynet killed John.
Furthermore unlike Hicks and Newt, John had 3 movies and a TV series about him after his introductory film and each portrayal was wildly different from the others. Hicks and Newt had 0 after their introductory film. That should tell how little writers actually knew what to do with John as a character. That they had to change his destiny into being murdered by Skynet and have his portrayal be different in every outing just to try and make him interesting.