After multiple attempts at kick-starting new trilogies of films have failed, the live-action Terminator film series is, understandably, taking a bit of a break… but the franchise is set to continue with an eight-episode anime series called Terminator Zero, which is coming our way from Japanese animation studio Production IG and the Netflix streaming service. Terminator Zero is set to start streaming on August 29th – and with that date a week away, the full 6 minute opening sequence of the show has arrived online! You can check it out in the embed above.
Terminator Zero is set in the established Terminator universe but centers on new characters. Mattson Tomlin, who worked on the screenplays for The Batman and its upcoming sequel, is writer and showrunner on this series, which has the following synopsis: 2022: A future war has raged for decades between the few human survivors and an endless army of machines. 1997: The AI known as Skynet gained self-awareness and began its war against humanity.
Caught between the future and this past is a soldier sent back in time to change the fate of humanity. She arrives in 1997 to protect a scientist named Malcolm Lee who works to launch a new AI system designed to compete with Skynet’s impending attack on humanity. As Malcolm navigates the moral complexities of his creation, he is hunted by an unrelenting assassin from the future which forever alters the fate of his three children.
Terminator Zero is directed by Masashi Kudō, who is best known for working on the anime series Bleach. Tomlin serves as executive producer alongside David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, and Don Granger of Skydance. The voice cast includes Rosario Dawson (Ahsoka) as Kokoro, “An advanced AI and Japan’s answer to Skynet, if brought online, Kokoro will be endowed with the same power as Skynet. Kokoro must calculate for itself: is humanity the plague Skynet believes? Or are human beings worth saving?”; André Holland (The Knick) as Malcolm Lee, “A genius computer programmer and father of three, Malcolm Lee is haunted by prophetic nightmares of an apocalyptic future. He’s spent the last decade creating a secret artificial intelligence that he believes will be humanity’s last hope.”; Sonoya Mizuno (Crazy Rich Asians) as Eiko, “Coming from a post-Judgement Day 2022, Eiko is a resistance fighter sent back in time to stop Malcolm from launching Kokoro.”; and Ann Dowd (The Handmaid’s Tale) as The Prophet, “In the future, the Prophet is the philosophical guide for the human resistance, a light shepherding survivors in the darkness of the unknown future ahead.” Timothy Olyphant (Justified) provides the voice of a Terminator.
August 29th was chosen for the release date because the Terminator films told us that the Judgment Day event occurred on August 29, 1997. Coincidentally, that was also the day Marc Randolph and Reed Hasting launched Netflix as an online DVD rental service.
On Tudum, Tomlin had this to say about the opening sequence: “I realized the first minutes of the show have to declare what it is. The way to do that was to have a sequence that had no dialogue, that was really planting a flag in letting everybody know this is going to be violent, it’s going to be dark, it’s going to be action-driven, it’s going to be horrific, and it’s going to be arresting. That’s just what it has to be. … I found myself thinking about a Bond film and how Bond films always have the cold open before the musical [credits]. The cold open has implications going forward into the story. It doesn’t usually work if it’s just an action sequence, and it’s the end of some other movie that we’re not seeing … It’s not just action for action’s sake.“
What did you think of the Terminator Zero opening sequence? Will you be watching this show on Netflix? Let us know by leaving a comment below.