A new trailer for Terminator: Dark Fate has dropped

Seemingly ignoring the events of the previous three films, the new trailer picks up in the wake of 1991's Terminator 2: Judgement Day, when Skynet was set to become self-aware in 1997 and hunt humanity almost to the point of extinction. Clearly, though, something else went down in the meantime..

Directed by Deadpool’s Tim Miller and produced by James Cameron, Dark Fate sees the return of screen legend Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor as she protects the young Dani Ramos (Natalie Reyes), who is being hunted by a hugely strong, modified liquid alloy cyborg (Gabriel Luna).

• Modern Terminator sequels have been "forgettable" says original star Linda Hamilton

The pair are joined by series newcomer Grace; a half-human, half-machine hybrid played by Black Mirror's Mackenzie Davis.

Arnold Schwarzenegger returns as The Terminator, now teaming up with Connor once more – but it’s clear there’s no love lost between himself and Connor, as she threatens to kill him once their partnership is over.

Frankly, it's a confusing trailer - while the Terminator and Connor were initially at war with each other in the original film, the pair aligned with each other for Terminator 2, before the Terminator chose to melt himself to help protect humanity. So how's he back now? And what happened since to turn Sarah against him again?

While we're still getting our head around the wavy timeline, Cameron explained that Dark Fate was now a “blank slate” for the Terminator franchise, with the film hoping to launch a new trilogy.

“When I talked to David Ellison about it his vision for this was basically to go back to basics and do a continuation from Terminator 2, which is one of his favorite films,” Cameron told Deadline. “He’s always believed in the potential of Terminator but he really felt that his own film, Genysis — and he was quite honest with me about this — fell short of the mark and didn’t really do what he had wanted it to do.

“So he said, ‘Let’s start with a blank slate and take it back to Terminator 2.’ And that idea was intriguing.”

He continued: “We rolled up our sleeves and started to break out the story and when we got a handle on something we looked at it as a three-film arc, so there is a greater story there to be told. If we get fortunate enough to make some money with Dark Fate we know exactly where we can go with the subsequent films.”

Terminator: Dark Fate is released in UK cinemas on 23rd October. Check out our guide to watching the Terminator movies in order.