Terminator is one of those film franchises from the 80s Hollywood just can’t seem to leave alone. Every couple of years there’s a new movie coming out, and basically every time people hate it. Which is why I never bothered to watch any of them apart from the first two, which are, of course, fantastic. So what compelled me to watch Terminator Zero? I’m… not sure. Well, ok, co-writer of The Batman 2 (2026) Mattson Tomlin being the showrunner might have been one part, and Production I.G. animating might have been another. Regardless, whatever might have compelled me to watch this Terminator sequel over all the others, I’m not too mad. Terminator Zero is not bad.
So let’s lay some of the groundwork. Terminator Zero is a new anime from Netflix produced in cooperation with Skydance Media and Production I.G. and created by Mattson Tomlin. It’s a story made up of two halves. On one hand, there’s the very classic terminator chase. A terminator (Timothy Olyphant) and a human named Eiko (Sonoya Mizuno) are sent back in time, the terminator to kill a target, Eiko to protect that same target. The resulting action scenes are fun, and in a cute twist to previous iterations of this, both the terminator and its human counterpart need to be a little more inventive with their weaponry this time around. After all, Terminator Zero isn’t set in America, where you could get a gun at every other corner, but takes place in Japan instead.
The other half of Terminator Zero feels more fresh, as scientist Malcolm Lee (André Holland) has had visions of Judgment Day and, in an attempt to prevent it, has created an AI called Kokoro (Rosario Dawson) meant to take control of Skynet and, by doing so, prevent the apocalypse. The problem is that once he connects the AI to the internet and therefore gives it endless amounts of information about our history, Kokoro starts to question if humanity is even worth saving. Maybe Skynet was right to try and terminate humanity; maybe Earth is better off without them. And so starts a series of philosophical musings between a scientist and his AI to try and prove that humanity does deserve to be saved after all, that it’s not all bad.
“Humans were the real monsters all along” is in no way a new concept, but it is an interesting one. Especially given how it sits in stark contrast to Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), which Terminator Zero seems to be in direct conversation with. That movie frames humanity as a vessel of hope, to the point that even Arnold Schwarzenegger’s T-800 can become good by finding the humanity within himself. Terminator Zero dispels any such notion. Here humanity is a symbol of destruction and death, whose only meaningful evolution comes through more and more deadly weaponry. Frequently, the show will take existing concepts and terms from the franchise and deconstruct them for a new, usually darker, meaning.
The problem with all of this is that Terminator Zero, and by extension its writer, Mattson Tomlin, are not nearly as smart as they seem to think they are. More than a few moments here could be placed into the I’m 14 and this is deep subreddit (is that still a thing?) and many of its moments of recontextualization of the old text are stretching meaning. At the same time, the show is about as subtle as a terminator with a mission to kill, presenting ground that has been retread hundreds of times as meaningful discoveries. It’s a cute idea that could make for a nice thought experiment, but the execution is frankly a bit embarassing.
As the names that have popped throughout this review should’ve indicated already, the voice acting in the English dub is more than solid, with a great cast that do their best to find real meaning in the lackluster writing. And with Production I.G., you naturally have a level of animation that can hide some of the flaws in writing with nice images. While the overall style is definitely reminiscent of that Netflix anime house style, which I’m not a huge fan of, the uses of color and lighting more than make up for that. I would almost say the show has a cyberpunk vibe in its visuals with the way it uses neon lights (in addition to the transhumanist themes inherent to the premise). But maybe the biggest standout visually are the scenes of Malcolm Lee and Kokoro discussing humanity’s worth. What could be boring and lifeless scenes between a scientist and a voiceless body become beautiful montages of striking imagery thanks to its location. The two are confined within something akin to a holo deck that allows for beautiful, abstract visualizations of the topics at hand.
But the strongest aspect of the show is the music composed by Michelle Birsky and Kevin Olken Henthorn. Here is where the cyberpunk vibes are evoked even more strongly. Grungy electronic music that’s dark and apocalyptic but also tinged with hope and a very real humanity when needed. The main theme in particular is a real standout that I will continue to listen to outside of the show.
Terminator Zero is a flawed show with writing that lets down everyone else who’s worked on the project. It’s just not nearly as profound as it wants to be. Nevertheless, it makes for a fun couple of hours of thrilling terminator action, solid animation, and a fantastic score. And from what I can tell, that puts it above many of the other Terminator movies.
