It’s no secret the Terminator franchise has been chasing the high of Terminator 2 for decades. The film was the saga’s first (and last) brilliant subversion, as it took the concept of evil AI and murderous cyborgs and turned it on its head. Subsequent sequels have essentially been new takes on that one idea, but while they’ve introduced new wrinkles and timelines where applicable, they haven’t really offered anything new.
The latest Terminator story, the animated Terminator Zero, is also building on established ideas. Its trailers tease a story that combines elements of James Cameron’s original Terminator, T2, and Terminator: Genisys, but unlike its predecessors, Zero brings the franchise into a new medium. Animation may be the shot in the arm the franchise needs: after decades of circling the same premise, Terminator Zero is introducing a new element to the saga.
The premise of Terminator Zero will be familiar to any Terminator fan: SkyNet wants to destroy humanity, so it sends a murderous cyborg (Timothy Olyphant) back to 1997 to prevent a future Resistance from forming. The Resistance, of course, sends their own warrior from the future, but in addition to facing off with a T-1000, our hero, Eiko (Sonoya Mizuno), is also tasked with another mission. A solitary scientist, Malcolm Lee (Andre Holland), has been quietly working on a benevolent AI. Eiko has been sent to stop him, even though his program, Kokoro (Rosario Dawson), may be the only thing protecting humanity from SkyNet.
Terminator Zero makes a gutsy choice in distancing itself from any John Connor figure. There’s no clear-cut, human savior here; instead, the series seems to be building to a conflict between one AI and another. That, aside from its unique medium, could be its smartest idea. Zero is produced by Japanese animation studio Production I.G, the same studio behind the influential Ghost in the Shell. That grim cyberpunk aesthetic finds a perfect home in the Terminator saga, but I.G’s animation style also reclaims the horror genre that once defined the franchise.
Terminator is mostly a story of the apocalypse, but it began as a sci-fi slasher. Both Terminator and T2 flirted with horror tropes, from the idea of a final girl to visceral body horror. Terminator Zero brings those ideas back with clear homages, but in animation it all feels fresh again. It’ll be exciting to see how the series pushes the envelope, but its teasers have already done more to evolve the Terminator franchise than years of tired live-action sequels.
