They say some movies make you dumber for having seen them—this is one of them. The plot, a mind-mash of slurred nonsense, amounts to Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney)—the time traveling badass hero of the first Terminator, being sent back in time by John Conner (Jason Clarke) save Sarah Conner (Emilia Clarke) from yet another Terminator, a disturbing CGI de-aged Arnold Schwartzenager mean to look like he did back in the 80s. Only—plot twist—Clarke’s Sarah Conner is already a badass warrior, and it’s she, not Kyle Reese, who gets the iconic line “Come with me if you want to live.” The first 20 minutes or so are a shot for shot reinterpretation of the original Terminator, executed with the production value of a frat party with themed costumes. Everyone is miscast in their one-note roles, glossed up and looking pretty. The Terminator was all about grunge, grit, and a feeling of dirt under your finger nails. Michael Biehn as Reese and Linda Hamilton as Conner were allowed to look hurt, to look human. In a movie about man vs machine, this was a vital creative decision, but since Emilia Clarke and Courney are so prettied up, so glamorized, their characters scream fake.

A mysterious benevolent force from the future, conspicuously left unsolved as sequel bait, sent back Arny when Sarah Conner was just a kid–he’s old now and even has an in-joke catchphrase to make it okay: “I’m old, but I’m not obsolete.” He’s a father figure, Kyle Reese as the bantering fish out of water boyfriend, and if this sounds awkward and terrible, that the actors get an F in chemistry makes it unwatchable.

What this amounts to is a Star Trek style reboot by going into a totally new timeline, remolding and even erasing the previous four installments. J.J. Abrams made it work with his sparked direction and snappy storytelling, not to mention that seeking out the novel avenues of scientific discovery is inherent to Trek in its core. Genysis is the opposite and in every way. Star Trek is at least one totally new adventure per movie, Terminator is the same story refolded like origami into as many new shapes as the original design can sustain with four of five of these stories amounting to save one of the Conner’s while preventing the end of the world. If Terminator and Terminator 2 and were all about averting the apocalypse, each subsequent time the world is saved it necessarily means the last time—the last movie—was for nothing. Everything is an on the nose callback, from the plot, dialogue, to the action, and these reminders of better movies provoke a maddening realization you’re consuming off-off-off brand entertainment months after the recommended sell by date.