Terminator Zero, which streams all eight episodes of its first season at once, also arrives on Netflix on August 29, or humanity’s “Judgment Day” in the parlance of James Cameron’s first two Terminator films. It’s one way Zero nods to the traditional elements of that universe, which includes a total of six films and two seasons of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. (Lena Headey was really good in that show!) But while it respects tradition – Skynet, robot-human warfare, temporal pincer moves – Terminator Zero developer, showrunner, and writer Mattson Tomlin (with Matt Reeves, Tomlin co-wrote the upcoming The Batman – Part II) has brought some new energy to the franchise, including an entirely different sentient AI program for humanity to worry about. The English-language dub of Terminator Zero features the voices of Timothy Olyphant, Sonoya Mizuno, André Holland, Rosario Dawson, and Ann Dowd.
TERMINATOR ZERO: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: Surrounded by her dead comrades, a soldier stays concealed as a terminator trains its gatling gun on the room. Eventually she blows off half of its human tissue overlay, revealing the cyborg’s steel skeleton and glowing red eyes. And still it keeps coming.
The Gist: As the impressive, lengthy, and completely dialogue-free sequence that opens Terminator Zero reveals, things in humanity’s future are similar to what we already know. Once the artificial intelligence Skynet became sentient, it began its systematic takeover of the world, and created the cyborgs known as terminators to take out the last of us. In 2022, soldier Eiko (Mizuno) manages to overtake the terminator tracking her and pilfer valuable intel from its memory banks, which she gives to shrouded resistance leader The Prophet (Dowd). It’s just one battle in a war humanity is losing, and it’s about to take another turn, because Eiko and the Prophet have learned about Skynet’s plans to beat back the resistance for good with the use of time-travel.
In the past, it’s 1997, and Tokyo-based scientist Malcolm Lee (Holland) can’t spend time with his three children because he’s obsessing over nuclear fire and humanity’s destruction. His play to reverse the inevitable and stop Judgement Day? Kokoro (voiced by Rosario Dawson), a sentient computer system separate and apart from Skynet that Malcolm believes could save the world. “The path has not been decided for us,” he says to Kokoro in the AI’s vast, spherical operating space. “Humanity still has a chance to fight.” But as the all-knowing computer points out, it’s a pretty wide gulf between faith and evidence.
There are familiar contours as Terminator Zero gets going. It will be Eiko who the Prophet sends back in time to pursue the terminator (voiced by Olyphant), which Skynet sent to go after Malcolm Lee, his children, and their nanny Misaki (Sumalee Montano). But notably absent from this scenario in Zero is anything having to do with old Terminator hands John Connor and Sarah Connor. As Malcolm’s work with Kokoro progresses, so too will the terminator’s efforts to stop him, and Eiko’s effort to stop the killer cyborg from stopping him. And maybe when it’s all over, the Terminator franchise will be fresher, and humanity’s future will change for the better.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Film franchises are finding their way into animation everywhere. Jurassic World: Chaos Theory will drop its second season on Netflix this October, and the familiar Batman origin story gets a noir-ish facelift in Batman: Caped Crusader, which recently premiered on Prime.
Our Take: The future Terminator Zero imagines for us is definitely still bleak. Not quite the treads of autonomous battle tanks crushing piles of human skulls like in the 1984 film, but Terminator Universe stuff nonetheless. Like when a human-skinned cyborg infiltrates a haven for refugees, his laser cannon hidden under a cloak. Or in another interesting reference point, Michelle Birsky and Kevin Henthorn’s music for Zero, which channels the percussive churn of the original Terminator theme while updating it with stalking horror movie vibes. It’s intriguing, this blending of established lore with new interpretation, which in recent years is pretty much exactly what Terminator projects have had a lot trouble doing.
But don’t count out Zero’s version of 1997. It’s not just “the nineties.” Instead the story acknowledges the advance of technology and artificial intelligence into everyday life, with robots programmed to stock shelves and assist seniors across the street, or powering the latest fun toy for kids. “Get that robot out of here right away,” Malcolm Lee tells Misaki when he sees the cutesy computerized cat the nanny purchased to amuse his children. Malcolm’s worry might seem trivial, but the scientist knows the social encroachment of technological sentience threatens the fabric of humanity’s existence. In an early scene, Malcolm imagines the friend-coded oblong face of a consumer bot turning and staring at him with the evil, red-cast eyes of a terminator. Give the machines an innocent inch, and they could very well take a disastrous mile.
Sex and Skin: In 2022, inside a Skynet production facility, we see hundreds of terminators, with the attributes of male and female humans, all ready and waiting to be pointed in the direction of destruction.
Parting Shot: The intel recovered by resistance fighter Eiko will be crucial to the movement’s efforts against Skynet. But they better hurry, because the machines are already firing up their centrifugal time travel device.
Sleeper Star: André Holland is very good in the English-language dub of Terminator Zero as Malcolm Lee, the workaholic scientist who loves his kids but also can’t get the whole preventing Judgement Day thing off his mind.
Most Pilot-y Line: “If we forget how things work,” Malcolm tells his son Kenta, “we will be powerless. Knowledge is power. If you have knowledge, you can resist domination…”
Our Call: STREAM IT. Terminator Zero takes a fresh crack at the most familiar stuff from the Terminator franchise – twisty time-travel hijinks, machine-born sentience, human-cyborg conflict – and lends the story new direction and life, as well as a distinctive, animé-inspired new look.
Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.
- animation
- Netflix
- Stream It Or Skip It
- TERMINATOR ZERO
- The Terminator
