From the woefully misguided casting (just WHO keeps putting the unappealing and charisma-free Jason Clarke and Jai Courtney in summer tentpole movies?!), to the moment that terrible title was announced, through to the godawful marketing - posters that looked like GCSE Photoshop jobs, and a trailer that gave away the twist - it always seemed doomed, another example of a studio-dictated product, and no clear steer from any one creative individual.
The frustrating thing is, there's a good film in there somewhere. You can see moments where the director and screenwriters are trying, striving hard for something better than awful... and in all honesty, it isn't as catastrophic as some of the reviews would have you believe.
Yet neither is it anywhere near as good as Arnold Schwarznegger ("Dis movie is a perfect 10!") or his close friend James "What do you want me to say about it?" Cameron would have you believe, but just as it's hard to see a clear individual vision, it's difficult to point the boney finger of blame at any one person. It feels like a movie by committee. Specifically, a committee of people who said "Here's a billion dollar budget - so long as you spend it all on Arnold and make sure someone fires a gun every 30 seconds."