It’s been 33 years since recent Supa-Star Robert Patrick first went hunting for a young John Connor, but in many audiences’ minds the Terminator franchise has never quite surpassed the explosive action of 1991’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day. For decades Hollywood has attempted to recapture the magic of James Cameron’s first two movies with varying degrees of success, but somehow never quite managed to live up to Skynet’s initial attempts to eradicate the future leader of the human resistance.
All this seems set to change, however, as Netflix looks to bring the Terminator-verse into the world of anime via their forthcoming Terminator Zero series. Set to launch on August 29, 2024 (a direct homage to the prophesied date of Skynet gaining sentience), Terminator Zero has been produced by the iconic Japanese animation studio Production I.G, who are responsible for such classic anime films as Ghost in the Shell and Neon Genesis Evangelion: Death & Rebirth and The End of Evangelion.
Penned by Matt Reeves’ The Batman – Part II co-screenwriter Mattson Tomlin, and directed by Bleach’s Masashi Kudō, Terminator Zero cleverly bypasses much of the baggage from some of the franchise’s later outings, and will instead take audiences directly back to 1997, two years after the events of Terminator 2. Leaving Sarah and John Connor behind, this latest series will instead introduce a new protagonist in the form of Malcolm Lee, a Tokyo-based scientist responsible for developing his own AI system intended to compete directly with Skynet.
Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, Tomlin explained his surprising decision to move away from the Connors, whose legacy has been at the heart of every Terminator project to date.
“I think that it’s time to go into new characters and not burden myself with another John and Sarah Connor saga,” he explained. “There’s been a run at that a couple of different times. There are a lot of callbacks to the other films. Fans who really know the movies are going to be doing the Leo meme from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, but it’s not going to be as direct as John Connor walks in, because John Connor does not walk in.”
That’s not the only surprising deviation from what fans might expect, however. Being set in Japan, a country that actively forbids anyone from possessing firearms other than the police or military, Terminator Zero will instead trade guns for swordfights with a Terminator that possesses blades for arms. It was a shift that originally came as some surprise to Tomlin, whose original script had Tokyo residents pulling out handguns in response to violence breaking out across the city.
“It was just such a stunning moment for me,” he recalls as he received feedback from his Japanese animators “Like, ‘Oh, wow, I am an American’.”
Of course, there are far more familiar franchise elements still at play, and Terminator Zero’s Malcolm Lee will also find himself hunted by a time-travelling cyborg assassin and protected by a mysterious soldier from the future. The intent, however, is to lean more heavily into Cameron’s original horror aspect rather than the gun-toting, sci-fi action of the later movies.
“There’s a completely valid version of the Terminator franchise where the Terminator is synonymous with Jason [Voorhees] and Freddy [Krueger],” Tomlin explains. “Where he is this unrelenting serial killer. There’s a little bit of Friday the 13th in here. There’s a little bit of Michael Myers in here.”
As for who is behind that new, horrifying killing machine from the future, Justified and The Mandalorian’s Timothy Olyphant has been confirmed to be providing the voice of Terminator Zero’s titular cyborg. Meanwhile Ahsoka herself, none other than Rosario Dawson, will be supplying the voice of Kokoro, the Japanese AI deemed to be Skynet’s new rival. Other cast members include House of the Dragon’s Sonoya Mizuno and Moonlight’s André Holland.
All eight episodes of Terminator Zero will arrive on Netflix on August 29, 2024.
