I had always thought it would have been interesting to see what happened after Connor had the power (even if might have been a most different story), but completely agree that would have been better than any of the trash in the sequels.
The real problem was that when the wrote this it was a pure story with an absolute ending.no one was thinking about what to do with the next movie. Hard to flash back to previous times when you are left with only one and none of the old characters can logically show up in the present.
If anything thought the TV series did it best just go with what made the original so good.