but there’s none of the genius that was present in terminator, aliens, the abyss

T2 was just the start, beginning with the morph CGI.

The big studios want to do away with animatronics, stop-motion animation, miniatures, physical VFX and prosthetics, believing them to cost so much to shareholders, and spend on and scale up CGI but at the expense of enthusiasts wanting suspension of disbelief over realism.