Well I think the direction they took this movie is what they should have done in the first place...well after the 1st terminator of course. Every time they'd flash to Reese's future memories i'd always be like "why the fuck don't they do a movie in the future where mankind is on the brink of destruction"
I've also read a few cool terminator books that deal with events leading up to John starting up the resistance. Pretty cool stuff about how they reverse engineer some of the terminators weapons so they could use them for themselves and such. Good material.
I'm just glad its not another story about protecting Connor from the 8 million robots that get sent back in time. 1st time it was great and fresh, 2nd one was just meh imo, 3rd I wish never even existed.