When it comes to anime action, Netflix’s Terminator Zero teaser is no problemo

By Matt Schimkowitz  |  July 31, 2024 | 12:30pm
Courtesy of Netflix
TV News Terminator
When it comes to anime action, Netflix’s Terminator Zero teaser is no problemo

As established in Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines, there’s no preventing Judgement Day. There’s only delaying it. And in the new trailer for Terminator Zero, Netflix’s Cyberdyne-based anime series, Judgement Day gets a new would-be preventer. Based on James Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd’s iconic robot slasher, Terminator Zero takes a much-needed left turn away from the Connors. Though still the leader of the resistance against the machines, John Connor is nowhere to be found here. Nor is his mother, Sarah. Despite their absence, the series’ plot remains fixed in Terminator convention, with some slight and interesting adjustments.

In 2022, scientist Malcolm Lee (voiced by André Holland in the English dub) has developed a new AI system called Kokoro (Sonoya Mizuno) to hopefully destroy Skynet. Unfortunately, being that this is a Terminator thing, Skynet is on top of this and sends one of its killer robots (Timothy Olyphant) back in time to terminate Malcolm. To balance things out, a mysterious fortune teller known as The Prophet (Ann Dowd) sends a young soldier, Eiko (Rosario Dawson), back to 1997 to protect the scientist and save mankind.

The series, which looks like an action-packed and philosophically engaged Terminator adventure, animates some of the series’ most iconic moments, particularly the brief glimpses of the future from the 1984 original and an iconic nuclear attack. The trailer’s intense violence and CGI animation help give the series a stylistic edge over the rest of the series. This doesn’t look like any of the last four Terminator movies, and we couldn’t be more relieved.

Terminator Zero comes from showrunner Mattson Tomlin, who wrote the alleged Netflix movie Project Power. Tomlin’s directorial debut, Mother/Android, takes some cues from The Terminator, being the story about a mother and daughter traveling up the East Coast during an AI apocalypse. He has since signed on to write The Batman – Part II and Mega Man, so expect to see his name on many comic book and video game adaptations in the near future.

All eight episodes of Terminator Zero hit Netflix on August 29.

 
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