Twenty-four years have passed since the last worthwhile Terminator film. Sadly, despite the release of a fifth film in the franchise - Terminator Genisys - we'll have to wait a while longer for the next.

The first hour of the film sees director Alan Taylor (Thor: The Dark World) recreating the set-up of James Cameron’s 1984 original, The Terminator.

The action begins in 2029. Judgement Day has happened: a nuclear annihilation that wiped out three billion humans. The remaining revolutionaries, led by the scarred and courageous John Connor (Jason Clarke), are at war with Skynet's killer machines, and on the cusp of victory. 

In a last-ditch attempt to end the human resistance, the machines send Arnold Schwarzenegger's T-800 back to the 1980s to assassinate John Connor's mother, Sarah (Game of Thrones star Emilia Clarke), before her son was ever born. When John Connor learns of this, he sends loyal right-hand man Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) to save her.

So far, so familiar. But this time round, something happens as Kyle is being zapped back. He arrives in the year 1984 to find the past isn’t as he expected it.

Sarah Connor is not the vulnerable waitress Kyle was told about. She knows who he is and why he’s come. Meanwhile an aged T-800 (human tissue ages normally, even though he's a machine) has become her father figure (she actually calls him Pops).

Although at this point Genisys lacks a sense of danger - it never captures the feeling of fear and dread that defined Cameron's originals - it's self-referential nature means there is at least something there for the fans.

However any sense that you are watching a Terminator flick is quickly lost - the action jumps foward to 2017 and Genisys spirals into a below-par action movie, the product of a risk-averse Hollywood lacking in imagination and vision.

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Emilia Clarke as Sarah Connor 

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An entirely new cycle of chases and set-pieces unfold - we see Terminator fights (Korean star Byung-hun Lee plays a T-1000), car crashes, helicopter chases, buses flying off the Golden Gate Bridge - but it all feels soulless, the majority of attempts at humour - endearing in the original Terminator films - are misguided and any parody increasingly lazy.

It's not helped by the fact both male leads - Clarke as John Connor and Courtney as Kyle - are nondescript, while Emilia Clarke lacks the edge Linda Hamilton brought the role of a Sarah Connor.

Elsewhere Dr Who's Matt Smith appears briefly as the embodiment of Skynet, while J.K. Simmons (of Whiplash fame) is underused as a downtrodden detective who encountered Sarah and Kyle back in 1984, and comes across them again in 2017.

As for Schwarzenegger - and, ultimately, this is Schwarzenegger’s show - any initial feelings of nostalgia and joy at seeing him back in the role also evapourate. As the film limps on it becomes almost embarrassing to watch him going through the same old motions: the robo-smile; the cheesy one-liners. It's like a greatest hits tour of an aged rock star. And not in a good way.

As an action film this is a failure, as a Terminator film it is a massive disappointment. Note to Hollywood: Just because you're throwing hundreds of millions of pounds at a movie, it doesn't mean you can't try to do something interesting with it. 

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Terminator Genisys is our in cinemas today (July 2).