Terminator: Zero - Netflix's Anime Spinoff Brings Fresh Perspective to Iconic Franchise

Terminator Zero review: "The franchise makes a welcome return to terror in this Netflix anime"

Why you can trust GamesRadar+ Our experts review games, movies and tech over countless hours, so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about our reviews policy. "I'll be back," wasn't just a throwaway line in James Cameron's original Terminator movie. Ever since Skynet first sent time-traveling robots back to solve that pesky human problem, the Terminator franchise has returned time and time again with various evolutions that shift and change like a T-1000. Recent entries have failed to match Cameron's early success though, despite a reboot and even the return of Linda Hamilton with Arnold Schwarzenegger in tow as the original Terminator himself. Five years on from the muted response to Terminator: Dark Fate, Netflix is returning back to where it all started with Terminator Zero, an anime series developed by Mattson Tomlin, co-writer of Robert Pattinson's The Batman 2. The aptly named Terminator Zero is largely set in 1997 just days before Judgement Day itself, the moment when Skynet became sentient and destroyed humanity in a nuclear holocaust that paved the way for machines to take over. Except, this time around, the story isn't just limited to the US. Judgement Day was a global event, after all, so in Zero, we're introduced to a scientist named Malcolm Lee who's developed a different AI named Kokoro to stop Skynet before the apocalypse begins. As you might expect, it's not long before he and his three children are pursued by a Terminator as well as a soldier named Eiko from 2022 who's traveled back in time to stop it. It's not just the '90s we've come back to though. With Terminator Zero, the franchise also makes a welcome return to the terror of Cameron's first movie, which was essentially a horror in all but name (albeit in a sci-fi setting). The new Terminator this time around is another unstoppable villain in the vein of Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees while Eiko is our new Sarah Connor, embodying the final girl archetype in her battle against AI (a more relatable fight than ever in this day and age). Terminator Zero wastes no time in establishing this horror. Via a cold open set in an apocalyptic 2022, Eiko watches the Terminator casually crush a person's head underfoot in search of her hiding place. Dead bodies are stacked up everywhere and the body count doesn't let up once we reach the 90s either. Necks snap, limbs tear, and skin melts away throughout all eight episodes of Terminator Zero, channeling the original's R rating when it comes to both gore and tension. One scene even goes so far as to recreate the iconic police station assault where the first Terminator, played by Arnie, decimated an entire squad of cops in their place of work. Yet aside from this and the scares that movie brought, Terminator Zero is also evocative of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, a deeply underrated show that expanded the usual chase into a longer narrative, just as Tomlin does here. The result is a deeper dive that thematically explores new territory for the Terminator franchise, such as the idea that Skynet might be onto something with the extinction of the human race. As the Kokoro AI points out while discussing our fate, humanity's greatest achievements always prioritize people over the planet, and they each end up being used as weapons in some shape or form, regardless of their original purpose. Philosophical quandaries such as this and questions around what it means to be human have always been a part of Terminator, but with more time to tell the story, there's also more scope to develop these discussions further, especially in the back-and-forth Malcolm shares with his new AI creation. Production IG Studios, the team behind Zero, are no stranger to such concerns. In fact, this metaphysical approach to sci-fi forms the synthetic backbone of their entire Ghost in the Shell series, one of the most influential anime franchises ever made. Terminator's obsession with robotics and the nuclear holocaust are a natural fit for anime given Japan's preoccupation with both. In hindsight, it's strange that it took so long for a Terminator story to end up here, so it's reassuring that Zero incorporates the specificities of Japanese culture in organic, meaningful ways that are so much more than just mere window dressing. Malcolm's apocalyptic nightmares draw direct parallels to the real-life atomic bombings that Hiroshima and Nagasaki endured at the end of World War II. And it's no coincidence that Hiroshima's A-Bomb Dome, ground zero back in 1945, briefly appears when explosions begin to light up the sky above Japan. Reference is also made to 1995's Tokyo subway sarin attack where 13 people died in an act of domestic terrorism, providing a real context to the state of the world, and Japan especially, in 1997. Beyond this uniquely Japanese perspective, Terminator Zero also toys with other new elements such as the multiverse and even the supernatural, which sits surprisingly well alongside the regular building blocks that have come to define Terminator as a sci-fi saga. It's a perfect blend of the signature elements fans have come to expect alongside new ideas that reinvigorate the franchise in ways we've never seen before in live-action. The unexpected also arrives in the form of multiple plot twists that will knock you sideways faster than a T-800 barreling down the highway. Some are minor, little surprises to keep you on your toes, while others build on earlier twists, snowballing into a climax that leaves zero room for air. They're genuinely quite surprising too, although a rewatch will certainly reveal clues laid out in the open for you to spot early on. There's a lot happening then, and by the end, Terminator Zero can verge on being too convoluted, much like the Terminator timeline at large. But the characters go a long way to ground all this grandiose sci-fi horror, including Eiko's stoic time traveler, an increasingly desperate Malcolm, and the enigmatic housekeeper, Misaki, in charge of Malcolm's not-too-annoying kids. The main Terminator this time around isn't as charismatic as past incarnations, although we're basing this off the work of the original Japanese voice cast (who are otherwise excellent throughout). For those keen to hear these characters speak via English dub, you're in for a treat with heavy hitters like The Mandalorian's Timothy Olyphant, Ahsoka's Rosario Dawson, and The Handmaid's Tale star Ann Dowd all working their magic in the booth. Visuals are especially important in animation, and for the most part, Terminator Zero is just as impressive on that front too. The action sequences are alternately chilling and thrilling, pushing the gore in ways live-action often holds back from, while gorgeous character design, especially when it comes to Kokoro's physical manifestation, lend the series more visual flair than Terminator fans are used to seeing. Transitions between the past and the future are also inventive in scope, although occasional moments where the CGI jars will pull you out thanks to some surprisingly ropy animation that'll have you wishing for more traditional artistry at times. It's easy to forgive these little blips though, because this is the first time since Cameron stopped directing these films that The Terminator has made us truly excited for where the franchise is heading next. That's especially true following the show's final sequence, which simultaneously wraps things up while still hinting that there's more story to tell. And that's a story we absolutely want to see more of. As John Connor once said, "The future has not been written," but with Tomlin keen to make a second season, let's hope he starts writing new episodes soon because more than ever, it's time for the Terminator to fulfill that eternal promise and come back again.

'Terminator Zero' Review: Netflix's Anime Spinoff Gives a Classic Franchise a Promising New Look

'Chimp Crazy' Review: 'Tiger King' Director's HBO Docuseries Explains Why Owning Chimps Is Bad, and the Answer Won't Surprise You The somewhat unlikely blockbuster success of Terminator 2: Judgment Day -- a high-budget sequel that upended the entire plot of a low-budget original released nearly a decade before -- led Hollywood to learn the wrong lessons. Rather than attribute the box office to James Cameron's creative versatility, the industry decided that audiences must have an insatiable appetite for all things Terminator. So Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, cursed to be a thoroughly decent sequel to two far superior movies, was followed by Terminator Salvation and Terminator Genisys and Terminator: Dark Fate -- three movies that were talked up as the starts of potential trilogies, but that yielded, in total, zero sequels. Though each has sparks of creativity and token nods to the originals, they're so collectively indistinct that I require online assistance to answer big questions like, "Which films had Arnold Schwarzenegger and James Cameron's involvement?" or "How many of these films featured Jai Courtney?" or "Is there a colon in the title or not?" The franchise's best follow-up, if you ask this TV critic, was Fox's Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which had a doomed two-season run between Terminator 3 and Terminator Salvation. It's the only Terminator offshoot that felt like it was telling a story, rather than attempting to blackmail audiences into underwriting a tale that might eventually be told. Netflix's new Terminator Zero -- no colon and less immediately self-explanatory than the former title Terminator: The Anime Series -- is my favorite franchise entry since The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Boasting a distinctive look courtesy of Japanese animation studio Production I.G. and a solid vocal cast ostensibly led by Timothy Olyphant (with no Jai Courtney in sight), the series is still in that frustrating holding pattern of spending an entire first season putting the pieces in place for what will presumably be its ongoing narrative. But it's a promising enough holding pattern. Entirely written by Mattson Tomlin and directed by Masashi Kudō, Terminator Zero begins in the future -- that would be 2022 -- with a high-octane action scene pitting resistance soldier Eiko (Sonoya Mizuno) against an unnamed cybernetic killing machine (Olyphant, except that he says nothing in the first episode and has no more than a half-dozen lines in the entire show). Quickly, thanks to the wonders of time travel, everybody is jumping back to late August of 1997 -- a destination that lets franchise fans know that Judgment Day is coming. Attempting to prevent the upcoming apocalypse is Tokyo-based scientist Malcolm Lee (André Holland). Malcolm ... knows things. He has nightmares about mushroom clouds and robot rebellions, but that's only the start of Malcolm's prescience about what's about to happen with Skynet. His strategy for preventing the human genocide relies on a complex AI model that he's been developing, named "Kokoro" and voiced by Rosario Dawson in several forms. With the clock ticking, Malcolm has to lock himself into a room and determine if Kokoro is ready to be put online. When both the Terminator and Eiko arrive in 1997 determined to stop Malcolm, chaos ensues. Understanding why these two entities with very different agendas both think they want to terminate Malcolm requires the usual franchise noodling around issues of fate and free will -- as well as new musings on the time travel paradoxes that the past three or four movies have turned into a jumble that's either delightful or infuriating, depending your degree of investment. One indisputable thing is that you can't just use "Time travel!" as a Terminator Get Out of Jail Free card like you could in the first two movies. A lot of Tomlin's mission here is reconciling/justifying/ignoring what viewers thought they understood about what happens if you send assassins and soldiers to the past with a singular objective. As good as the opening action scene is, and as solid as several set pieces are throughout, long stretches of Terminator Zero are just talk, delivered in the weary, wise tones of Ann Dowd as a spiritual leader or the warm cadences of Dawson, whose Kokoro includes several different types of consciousness. I'm not convinced that eight episodes (each under 30 minutes) of explanation were required to get the plot where it is by the finale, especially since there are two or three surprises that almost every alert viewer will have anticipated several chapters earlier. Still, there are fresh elements here. Resetting the narrative in Tokyo allows it to move away from yet another blandly messianic coronation of "John Connor" as humanity's last hope. And it's a relief that (spoiler alert) the reliance on occasional Easter eggs doesn't stretch as far as any character saying something dumb like, "Sure, you can call me Bandit, but when I was born, my name was Kyle Reese." This is a new set of characters loosely tailored for the anime genre -- especially Malcolm's kids Kenta (Armani Jackson), Reika (Gideon Adlon) and Hiro (Carter Rockwood), left under the watch of their nanny/housekeeper Misaki (Sumalee Montano). They manage to be likable and energetic, but not overly cutesy. Terminator Zero introduces an entirely different cultural approach to robotics -- in this version of 1997, Tokyo is overrun with benign 1NN0 models, while the hottest toy on the market is an AI-equipped cat -- and, especially, to weaponry. Time travel still requires arriving muscular and naked in the trademark kneel, but while heavy artillery was always easy to come by when your average Terminator or soldier arrived in Los Angeles, guns are harder to come by for heroes and villains alike in 1990s Japan. That forces a bit of ingenuity in Tomlin's approach and lets Kudō stage action with a welcome intimacy, while keeping the violence and gore within the franchise's generally soft-R-rated trappings. Initially, I went back and forth between the "original" Japanese audio track with subtitles and the English dubbed audio, before settling in with the latter because I appreciated Holland's stern wisdom and Mizuno's confident pluck. When his Terminator talks, Olyphant makes him a bit of a plucky Midwestern everyman -- more Robert Patrick than Ah-nold -- though I caution again that this is a particularly terse Terminator. Olyphant completists would be better off rewatching Santa Clarita Diet once they're on Netflix. Two things of note regarding the different audio tracks: I noticed that the English audio includes occasional, but not aggressive, swearing that isn't in the subtitles that accompany the Japanese dub. Also, there are specific references in the subtitles but not the English dub, including the only "I'll be back" and "Come with me if you want to live" nods. That's not evaluative in any particular way. Just a footnote! Regardless of which language you watch it in, and despite the small expositional lags and the anticlimactic reveals, Terminator Zero sets a solid framework for an ongoing story that is, like the best parts of the franchise, as much about very human choices as it is about spectacle. Given the brand name and Netflix's clear success with anime properties, it should be the start of an interesting multi-season run, rather than yet another one-and-done dead end.

'Terminator Zero' creators find fresh life in sci-fi franchise through hand-drawn anime

Welcome to Thanks, I Love It, our series highlighting something onscreen we're obsessed with this week. In the 40 years since a low-budget action film from a relatively unknown filmmaker and crew blasted onto film screens, the Terminator has proven to be an incredibly resilient, if not relentless property. James Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd's creation has spawned five sequels, including the iconic Terminator 2: Judgement Day, the TV series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, as well as numerous books and graphic novels, and countless parodies. With all this, one might wonder if there's any life left in this franchise. But if we've learned anything from this science-fiction series, it's that you can't keep a good Terminator down. Set in 1997 Tokyo, the new Netflix series Terminator Zero embraces hand-drawn animation to tell the story of a brilliant scientist named Malcolm Lee (voiced by André Holland) and Kokoro (voiced by Rosario Dawson), the advanced AI system he has created to decide the fate of humanity. Nuclear war is merely hours away. Can Malcolm convince Kokoro to stop Skynet? Meanwhile, a soldier (voiced by Sonoya Mizuno) from the post-apocalyptic year of 2022 has traveled back in time to save the scientist's children -- and maybe the world -- from a Terminator (voiced by Timothy Olyphant). The story itself is compelling, as the scientist tries to justify humanity's existence and avert a nuclear apocalypse. However, it's the emotionally engaging and visually stunning animation that makes Terminator Zero a must-see. To learn more about how Terminator Zero was built, Mashable reached out to the series' showrunner/writer Mattson Tomlin and director Masashi Kudō, who shared insights into the design of their Terminator, the real-world history that informed the series' hardest-hitting imagery, and why it matters this animation is hand-drawn. It just so happened that Mattson Tomlin was just the guy for the job. His feature-length directorial/screenwriting debut, Mother/Android, is a live-action sci-fi thriller about humans fighting to survive after their robotic helpers turn against them. "Ironically, I was walking around town saying, 'This is not my audition for Terminator,'" he told Mashable in a Zoom interview. "And I got a call on set. 'Hey, they're thinking about doing Terminator as a series, and it's going to be animated. Do you want to meet about that?' And I said, 'Absolutely, I do.'" Given the talent involved, it's perhaps no surprise the series is visually stunning and narratively engaging. The real revelation is how wrapped up we can get in the perilous fate of characters who are, after all, drawings. Netflix had already partnered with the Japanese animation studio I/G Productions for the project, as Tomlin explained. "They had all the pieces set up, and they were looking for someone with a fresh take." He added, "I said, 'This is what I want to do [in terms of the story], and this is how I want to do it.' And everyone just said, 'Yeah, man, sounds good. You should do that.' It was a remarkably smooth development process." Tomlin found the use of anime further freed up the narrative "because you can do anything." He explained, "When you're doing something live-action and you write 'EXT. Night,' then suddenly this is a night shoot. One hundred or 1,000 or 3,000 people are going to have to turn their clocks around. And [if it's a scene with rain], you need a rain machine, and the actor needs a wetsuit. [With anime,] all of that just goes away." The challenges, Tomlin said, came "around performance and emotion. You take a traditional film like Alfonso Cuarón's Roma, in which you have a lot of static shots -- a lot of it is wide [shots], characters at a distance. And then, when you finally have the face, you are just absolutely compelled by that face." With animation, Tomlin acknowledged, "It's a little difficult in terms of performance, because you're not looking at a real human being." So, when his writing called for big emotions, Tomlin had to ask himself: "How long can I push this scene with this kind of emotion before I break my own spell?" That's where director Masashi Kudō came in. Translating the Terminator to anime was a challenge that the animator embraced. Kudō, best known for his work on the anime series Bleach, found Tomlin's storytelling was less dialogue-heavy than many Japanese anime scripts. "[This meant] the human emotions needed to be conveyed through their actions," Kudō told Mashable via email, "which is a style I appreciate." He felt the use of hand-drawn "detailed expressions and performances" could drive the story and engage the viewer. A simple image in the first episode -- a young girl sitting alone on a couch, her eyes shimmering with unexpected tears -- is so compelling that you'll keep watching just to find out what happened in her mysterious past. The design work is perhaps most vivid when Kokoro appears to Lee through colorful avatars. The word "Kokoro" roughly means "heart," but in Buddhism it connotes our spiritual essence, tying together mind, wisdom, feeling, and aspiration. To reflect these inspirations, Kudō said, "[My team] incorporated the look of goddesses or heavenly maidens from Japanese mythology. My aim was to give the viewers the impression of a higher spiritual being that humans are in awe of." Through the work, Kudō's team found that "it was a joy to challenge ourselves by doing something visually interesting, such as making the Kokoro room transform into a fantastical space during the dialogue scenes between Kokoro and Malcolm." Another challenge was translating the iconic Terminator into an anime character. In Terminator Zero, he is Japanese in appearance and less muscular than his predecessor Arnold Schwarzenegger, but no less frightening. Kudō said of his Terminator: "I wanted to create an eerie, unsettling vibe that creeps up on you... For the design, we wanted to go for a reptile-ish image with an expressionless face characterized by its small, widely spaced pupils." Many of us will never forget how terrifying the images of nuclear war were in Terminator 2: A playground full of children incinerated, while a nuclear blast rolled over Los Angeles, obliterating buildings and freeways, and leaving us breathless. Terminator Zero's portrayal is just as visceral and immediate, and just as gravely serious, despite -- or perhaps because of -- the limitless nature of animation, as well as the story's setting. The idea of nuclear war resonates differently in Japan, the only country ever to experience the devastation of nuclear weapons. As an American, Tomlin was determined to make clear to his audience that "nuclear war is not fantasy. It's the killer cyborgs at the moment that are kind of a fantasy. But, [nuclear war is] real. And it happened. And it happened there... This is a story that takes place in Japan... [So] there was definitely a desire to take it seriously and not have it feel fun or thoughtless." Tomlin entrusted Kudō and his animation team "to imbue [the images of nuclear devastation] with that kind of horror because [nuclear war] is still a very vivid concept in Japan, whereas over here in the States, a little bit of it is kind of like it's an idea." Kudō shared via email, "Most Japanese learn about the horror of nuclear weapons from childhood. The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum has numerous exhibits and documents vividly documenting the devastation. I believe this shared knowledge within the team helped us create an animated representation with a strong impact." As the Terminator franchise focuses on the fear of humans being overtaken by computer tech, the hand-drawn animation in Terminator Zero underscores the central message about the value of human creativity. "We definitely wanted it to feel like humans made it," Tomlin said. "[The animators] are at the top of their game, and I knew they would make it look great. On the writing side, the job was to imbue it with emotion, a real sense of purpose, and stake out why it needs to exist." With AI moving from science fiction to our everyday life, Tomlin's goal is more relevant than ever before. We live in an era in which the threat of AI launching a nuclear war is not so immediate. Yet, many creators believe that generative AI apps "devalue human art" by producing a cheap imitation without the craft of human hands. Hollywood writers fear they will one day be hired simply to refine AI scripts, for little pay, rather than developing their own ideas. Voice actors fear their performances could be replicated by an AI program, which would then replace their labor and destroy their source of income. Already, AI programs are being trained on visual artist's copyrighted work "without credit and compensation." Musicians, as well, have argued that AI's widespread adoption "threatens the livelihood" of working artists, by replacing their voices and musicianship with a digital simulation. Dazzled by the novelty and power of AI, we now risk casting off and forgetting the wonders that the human imagination can achieve when creators have a chance to develop their own talents and express their emotions. And so it's especially thrilling to see how Terminator Zero puts real storytellers and their craft front and center. An emotionally driven narrative along with vivid, hand-drawn animation, enhanced judiciously with digital technology, makes a strong and compelling case for trusting human creators to use their skills and imagination with total freedom. The results can be absolutely stunning, as they are in Terminator Zero, revealing what human imagination and human hands are capable of building.