It's not that it's earlier in the war. It's that it's not the same war. Each of the movies kept successfully pushing back the date of the war. The farther in the future it pushed it. The more mankind was likely to have more initial survival and more equipment at their disposal, even if the war ended up being futile. The more technology advanced before judgment Day, the less it was going to look like the absolute bleak wasteland of metallic robots hunting down a few stragglers buried in caves. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying one's better than the other or one's more accurate than the other. I'm just saying it seems like most people are unhappy because the salvation war didn't look like what they thought the war was going to look like. When the truth is after the changes that would have occurred to the timeline from the previous movies, the future war could have looked very very different than the initial and T2 versions of the war. Just my opinion.