Share this
This review was made possible by advance screeners of Terminator Zero. All episodes of Terminator Zero premiere on Netflix on Thursday, August 29th.
Artificial Intelligence is certainly a hot topic in today’s zeitgeist. Whether your thoughts on it are positive or negative, it’s a massive lynchpin of current conversations. When The Terminator hit theaters in 1984 no one could have predicted how relevant it would still be today with the constant evolution of AI or the fact that it would spawn a franchise ongoing to the present day.
Terminator Zero is a fresh animated take within the apocalyptic, time traveling franchise that serves as a perfect entry point to anyone not familiar with anything Terminator related. For those unfamiliar, this series takes place in 2022 in a dystopian time where machine eradicated most of the human race. The AI entity known as Skynet has been at war for decades with the human survivors, with their endless army of robotic soldiers, aka Terminators, tipping the scale against humanity.
In an attempt to stop Skynet from taking over the world, Eiko (Rosario Dawson) is sent back to 1997 to protect a scientist named Malcolm Lee (André Holland). Malcolm is working on his own AI to compete with Skynet and prevent their impending attack on mankind. But Eiko didn’t come to the past alone, Skynet sent a Terminator (Timothy Olyphant) back in time to hunt down Malcolm, which in the process puts his three kids, Kento, Hiro & Reika, and their nanny, Misaki, in danger.
With any story that heavily lies on kids being a central part of the plot it can lean towards the side of annoying if written a certain way. I’m going to be honest in the first half of the series I couldn’t decide if the kids were insanely in fact annoying or just being… kids. Nevertheless they are a focal point of the show, with Eiko protecting them against the relentless robot assassin and Misaki having her own awakening as a protector in her own right. As the show progresses and the pieces of the puzzle come into place, that feeling of annoyance became fleeting as the bigger picture became more clear.
While his children and their new protectors play a cat and mouse game with the deadly Terminator, Malcolm wages his own war with his AI creation Kokoro (Sonoya Mizuno). Even though this battle is a philosophical one, the stakes could not be higher as Malcolm tries to prove that humans are worth saving. Kokoro is the only possible defense against Skynet, but being exposed to the entire history of humanity it questions whether or not a clean slate might be the best path forward. Are we our own worst enemy?
While poking fun at the franchises past attempts to save the world, the series breathes new life to the IP giving fans new and old a new cast of characters to root for in a completely new medium. Topped with sleek anime action and a very concise explanation of time travel rules, there’s a lot to love about Terminator Zero, but what I can’t commend enough is the writing. The way the series pulls you in the deeper as it progresses is truly astounding. It’s definitely not a slow burn with an eight episode count, but last half does definitely pack a bigger punch.
Terminator Zero takes what works from past stories while holding it’s big plays close to the vest. Instead of an immediate explosive Skynet Judgement Day the series is sprinkled with twists and intricate philosophies about the nature of self destruction. Without the weight of legacy characters the series is free to do it’s own thing while injecting the familiar time travel journeys to save humanity that ultimately begs the question: is humanity worth saving?
