From the first trailer, something seemed wrong with the fifth installment in the “Terminator” franchise. In an attempt to reboot the series, Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) goes back in time to find that Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke) isn’t a helpless damsel, but a seasoned soldier with her own Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger is back) she calls “Pops” as a personal bodyguard and father figure.

Arnold Schwarzenegger returns in one of his signature roles in “Terminator Genisys”. (photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures)

Then the second trailer arrived, and now Sarah’s son, John (Jason Clarke), has somehow become a Terminator too.

This is like the second “Pirates of the Caribbean” when everyone basically becomes a pirate. Yo ho, yo ho, a robot’s life for me.

All signs pointed to slop, but then someone unexpected provided a seal of approval. James Cameron, the director behind some of the most popular films of all time and director of the original two “Terminator” films, recently claimed “Terminator Genisys” is the third chapter that never was.

If that’s true, I have no faith in Cameron’s next three “Avatar” films, which are on the way.

“Genisys” is even more mediocre than “Terminator Salvation”, and that’s saying something when you compare this to a film with a dirt bike sequence straight out of the blooper reel from last year’s X Games. Hardly unwatchable, it tries so hard to be something new while paying homage to the original.

At least it has explosives and some cool visual effects (airbrushing the “Governator” to look younger isn’t a high point though).

I’d love to explain the plotline, but it’s filled with more holes than Pops after most of the action sequences. The film begins at the end of the futuristic battle between humanity and Skynet, the artificial intelligence program that destroyed most of humanity back in 1997. Everything is set for Kyle’s journey through time back to the 1980s to protect Sarah from an impending assassination (all events of the first film), but something goes wrong.

Sarah and Pops quickly dispense with him, and even a T-1000. Apparently the “Star Trek” reboot set a new precedent for rebooting olds properties: just go back in time and reset everything. Nobody cares about those olds films anyway, right? “The Terminator” never happened. “T2: Judgment Day” is but a fading memory of a timeline no longer relevant.

And then things get weirder. I must warn you, what follows might seem like spoilers, but they actually transpire in the first 20 minutes.

Sarah plans to stop Judgment Day in the 1990s (the events discussed more in the second film) with a time machine she created with Pops’ help, but Kyle suddenly has childhood memories from an alternate version of himself. So they head to 2017 to take down Genisys, an all-in-one computing program that will control everything in everyone’s lives — like Apple on crack.

And then we finally meet the central villain, John Connor, who is somehow now a Terminator. So many questions.

Is this the original John or just a visual clone? And how did he go back in time?

Then there’s another mysterious character played by Matt Smith, previously popular as the Timelord protagonist on “Doctor Who”.

I’m shocked at how convoluted these films become when the recipe for success is far more simple. We’re on film five, and we still haven’t seen a full-blown robot war yet.

We got hints in the first two films and a tease of what’s to come in the third. Then “Salvation” arrived and turned a promising dystopian story into … well, I don’t what that was.

And then “Genisys” again teases the battle with a worthless montage sequence, and just as quickly exits that more interesting timeline for the two others with no intrigue to offer.

“Mad Max: Fury Road” showed us all a valuable lesson only two months ago: we don’t need an anchor to the modern-day world, we just need a good story that knows how to build a compelling world.

The “Terminator” world is remarkably compelling, but these filmmakers don’t have a clue how to construct a story as involved as the concept of artificial intelligence.

It’s a fun summer flick, but this franchise deserves more than mindless action. Hopefully the next film will be better. And yes, there will most assuredly be another.

Arnie’s back, Courtney is on the rise, and Clarke is the Mother of Dragons. Maybe next time hype, budget and worth will match up.