Post Praetorian said:
Is this not possibly due in large part to the fact that the Terminator franchise deals with, at it’s heart, time travel…? So a re-casting of events seemingly falls almost entirely within the scope of it’s core narrative…
I suppose so, but if time travel as a plot element justifies mirroring an earlier film, I would argue that a plot about passing the baton to the next generation justifies that structure just as well, if not better.