Terminator Zero a spiritual sequel to James Cameron’s iconic movies

Terminator Zero is the latest major animated series on Netflix and feels like a reset post-Terminator 2: Judgement Day. In my interview with its creator, Mattson Tomlin, we talk about his love for the franchise and how this anime came to be.

The most present timeline of Terminator Zero takes place in 2022 many years after an apocalypse initiated by an AI called Skynet. In this timeline, humans are in a constant fight for survival against machines that have taken over Earth and will stop at nothing until we’re all extinct.

Check out the Terminator Zero trailer below!

In the first episode of Terminator Zero, a soldier named Eiko is sent back to the year 1997 to stop a Terminator from assassinating scientist and inventor, Malcolm Lee to prevent a certain future. Malcolm Lee plans to launch a new AI system called Kokoro to compete with Skynet. However, he does not intend to compete with Skynet on a commercial level. Troubled by premonitions of apocalyptic Judgement Day, he is hellbent on making sure that future never comes to fruition.

If that all sounds familiar, that’s because Terminator Zero takes place around the events of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, one of Tomlin’s favourite movies of all time and the inspiration for the Netflix anime. “I love Terminator 2. I think it's one of the greatest action movies ever, and I know I'm not the first person to say that,” Tomlin exclaims. “It's also the first movie to scare the crap out of me, it really got under my skin.”

It’s fair to say that after the second Terminator movie, the series had arguably lost its way. The Terminator movies have always been packed with action but at least for The Terminator (1984) and Terminator 2 (1991), it wasn't short of horror, something that Tomlin was keen to resurrect in the anime.

Skydance Television/Netflix Animation

“I wanted to create something less blockbuster action and more horror,” Tomlin explains. “And one of the things that stood out to me is we've never lived Judgement Day in the movies. There was something for me about Judgement Day that lured me in and I decided not to do just flashbacks (or flashforwards). Let’s not postpone Judgement Day, let’s go to August 1997, when the apocalypse happened, boots on the ground.”

Set in 1995, Terminator 2 features a character called Miles Dyson, a scientist believed to be in some part reasonable for Skynet initiating Judgement Day. Malcolm Lee shares some similarities to Miles Dyson but one major difference is, Malcolm is not blissfully unaware of what the future may hold.

“Malcolm Lee is the Steve Jobs of the Terminator Zero story. I liked the idea of having a technological futurist who is haunted by prophetic visions of Judgement Day who knows that this catastrophic event is going to happen, but he desperately wants to derail the apocalyptic ticking time bomb,” says Tomlin. “There are some Sarah Connor parallels with the Eiko character, but a huge part of the story is about Malcolm Lee and his three children, whom he is desperate to protect.”

“There’s also a part where the Kokoro AI asks “If Skynet wins, what does it want and what then?” and that’s a tough and compelling question to answer. The conflict is easy but the result on the other hand is harder to articulate. Then if we ask that question, we’ve got to ask “If humanity is fighting so hard to save itself, what good are we and what have we done on this planet that justifies our existence?”

Skydance Television/Netflix Animation

Kokoro was created to save humanity, to stop Skynet and to prevent the apocalypse. However, the AI has grown very powerful and very self-aware, and now Malcolm has to convince it that Skynet should be stopped and humanity is worth saving.

“Both Malcolm Lee and his AI are trying to explain who’s good, who’s bad, who’s worth saving and who should die. Then when you consider his children, who are the heart of the story, things get a lot more complicated for Malcolm,” says a passionate Mattson. He goes on to say that if Terminator Zero were to continue for more seasons, he wants to see the children grow up, live through the war and battle machines or even have relationships with them. “That’s my dream,” he says with a smile.

Despite the Terminator franchise being created by James Cameron, Mattson was not able to work with the famed creator but has benefited from a prosperous relationship with the owner of the property, Skydance Media. “James Cameron was busy working on Avatar. So I worked with Skydance and they were the purveyors of what’s cool to do and what’s not,” he explains. “There's very little red tape or hoops to jump through. I explained the emotional story that I wanted to tell, and this is how I wanted to do it. And they said, “Yeah, sounds great,” and they let me do it.”

All eight episodes of Terminator Zero are available to stream now on Netflix.