It's a sad day when an empire falls, but as history reminds us, often the fall of an empire has been in the works for some time — it's only the headlines that feel sudden. In this case, the empire is the "Terminator" sci-fi franchise. The tragedy is that we knew the fall was coming when "Terminator Salvation" was released in 2009.

The latest, "Terminator Genisys," opened in Japan last week, 31 years after the first "Terminator" was launched in 1984. During that more than three-decade run, a total of five movies were made in addition to a spin-off TV series called "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles." It has been a long and memorable haul, but it looks about time to pack it in.

"Terminator Genisys" feels both like a funeral and a humorous eulogy, read out by the deceased's close friend. Director Alan Taylor ("Thor: The Dark World") is clearly comfortable with the fanboy MO as he hits all the familiar signposts and never fails to reverse back and hit them again. You almost expect to hear Arnold Schwarzenegger spew the line from "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" that made action movie history: "Hasta la vista, baby" — but you don't. Instead, the newest (and much duller) Terminator catchphrase is, "Old, but not obsolete."

"Genisys" spends a lot of time hanging around in '84 — that legendary year in which Los Angeles waitress Sarah Connor had her first full-on collision with a killer cyborg (in "Terminator") from the future. She was also impregnated by human time traveler Kyle Reese and then discovered she's to be the mother of John Connor, aka the savior of the human race. That was the original version as directed by James Cameron. In "Genisys," Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) — John's father — is sent back from the future to protect Sarah (Emilia Clarke, who plays Daenerys in "Game of Thrones") from the Terminator all over again, but wait! Upon arrival, Reese realizes he's inside an alternate timeline with a different reality from the one he was told about. Sarah Connor is already a trained soldier with an arsenal capable of starting the Gulf War. She already has her guardian Terminator (Schwarzenegger) whom she fondly refers to as "Pops." The killer Terminator (Lee Byung-hun) is now Asian with sleek, plastic-looking hair. This time the end of the world is slated to be October, 2017.

Sarah, Reese and Pops must dodge the killer and make it to 2017 to stop Skynet (a warmongering artificial intelligence) from destroying most of humanity with megascale nuclear explosions. This time around, Sarah and Reese go into the time machine thingie together, and they have to strip completely to withstand the impact of the time warp. Cute and embarrassed dialogue ensues, which goes something along the lines of, "I promise not to look at you if you promise not to look at me!" Yeah. "Genisys" has nuggets of regrettable moments like that, in the vein of many eulogies and marriage speeches. Most damaging of all is that Sarah and Reese rack up a total of zero chemistry together and the smooth skinned Reese, with excellent muscle tone, is totally unconvincing as one of the last survivors of the human race — come on, he has supposedly been battling machines since the age of 10.

Often, the movie seems disoriented and confused in spite of itself. The alternating timeline scenario clashes constantly with Taylor's efforts to segue with the first two installments of the "Terminator" franchise, and then he tries to pass it off as something that makes sense. Don't think too hard about it though, because after about 40 minutes in you stop caring much about what happens or why. Sarah and Pops keep insisting that reality is always interchangeable and there are several different versions of the same occurrence. But if nothing is consistent and everything can be redone, then surely someone or some cyborg would have figured out that it's the time machine they need to destroy first, before sending soldiers and cyborgs to protect or kill Sarah and her offspring?

Having said that, I feel like I owe much to the "Terminator" series.

"Terminator 2: Judgment Day" — arguably the best and most charismatic work out of the franchise — did for me what "Annie Hall" did for an entire generation of boyfriend-shirt loving, white wine drinking, East Coast hippettes. "Judgment Day" was my secret style bible and Linda Hamilton was my idol. I had a small drawer stacked with cargo pants and military tank tops. I dreamed of having dirty blonde hair, streaming in the California desert wind. I worked on my upper arms, in the event that I would suddenly be called upon to wield an AK-47 and save humanity from Skynet. (Sarah was a waitress, I was a waitress — we had that in common). I wore a dusty leather jacket and dated a guy who rode a Harley-Davidson bike like Arnie. The only thing I didn't do was adopt Edward Furlong as my son. Believe me, I wasn't alone. Back in the 1990s after "Judgment Day" came out, leather jacket maker Schott carved out a sizable market in Japan, and I'd suggest that was thanks in part to the success of "Terminator 2." Harley-Davidson dealers cropped up in the Tokyo area around the same time, and every boy I knew wanted to ride a big bike just like Schwarzenegger.

That was then, and "Genisys" is now — or is it? Already the movie feels like a distant memory, receding into a manufactured past that was recycled before it ever happened. As Sarah says at one point: "It doesn't have to be this way" and unwittingly, she was speaking for the whole franchise.

In an ideal timeline, Sarah decides she deserves a long break from the cyborgs, buys a ticket to Bali, and humanity manages to fend for itself — probably with the aid, literally, of a new "killer app."