August312024

Streaming Sleepers: In TERMINATOR ZERO, An Essential Reboot For A Franchise That Desperately Needed One

Lee B. Golden IIIReviews, Stream This, Televisionfilmcombatsyndicate.com, masashi kudo, netflix, terminator zero0

Stream Terminator Zero on Netflix.

Forty years since the Terminator universe took off, the franchise saw some of the highest highs and equally low points. It became a multimedia marvel and entertainment staple within the first two films, followed by four more encompassing the universe in which heroes find themselves battling an oncoming robot/cyborg invasion on both sides of an apocalypse.

The latter several are hit or miss depending on where you get your sci-fi takes, although I think it’s fair to conclude failed to live up to the property’s grand potential. If that were the case, the John Connor saga wouldn’t have faltered as it did, and the legacy star power added to the last live-action effort from director Tim Miller might have borne fruit. Perhaps its even more adequate to assert that if the creators on hand were more open instead of purblind to just condensing the story down to a kerfuffle to protect the next “savior,” Terminator could still flourish on the big screen.

That’s kind of why I wish McG’s Terminator: Salvation stuck, but it’s also one aspect of why Production I.G. and Skydance’s Terminator Zero works. Animation vet Masashi Kudo shepherds this eight-part adventure from a script Mattson Tomlin who takes the universe to what feels like an enriching and fresh new level of evolution. The story is transplanted to Tokyo, but the characters are brand new, as are the ideas that permeate around our heroes and villains this time around. It’s a story that imposes some much stronger nuances in its progression between episodes, peppered with a deeper, soulful blend that inspires both condemnation and sympathy in viewing the story from the perspectives of man and machine.

Indeed, Skynet still wants to destroy mankind, and it is rebel soldier Eiko’s mission to stop them by any means necessary. That’s all her mind can – and must – focus on. What she doesn’t know are the pitstops she’ll find herself at along the way as she tracks the arrival of a Model 101 to Tokyo, targeting Malcolm Lee, a widower and father to three children and ward to their caretaker, Misaki. What Eiko also doesn’t know right away is what Malcolm knows about Skynet, and how far he has come in developing the artificially intelligent software needed to stave off its coming attack.

To add, however, what remains to be seen is how far Malcolm’s program, Kokoro – in its full self-awareness – will go in exercising its free will to decide on its own if mankind is worth saving. As Malcolm fights to make his case for humanity, it’s up to Eiko to stop the Model 101 as much as she can with whatever tools are at her disposal, while Malcolm’s own children battle their way through the enigmatic mystery of the threat hunting them.

Some of the biggest and key things about Terminator Zero how it does more than more of the same this time around. It’s an actual world-building vehicle that doesn’t recycle what the franchise’s old guard already employed. What already worked the first and second times around didn’t necessarily need rehashing, with the addition of new characters, an entry of a new line of non-related robots in the “Terminatorverse,” and a deeper scope into the concept behind the mystery and philosophies that culminate what Terminator is, here and now in 2024. It’s a story that centers itself into Malcolm’s family with the added enigma that is Misaki, and the beleagured Eiko and what awaits her in the life (and mission) beyond what she knows.

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The flashbacks aren’t as teething here as they have been in other animes I’ve seen, which is especially a plus for a show like Terminator Zero which, in its execution, needed all the forward movement it could get. The characters are layered and complex, and where child characters tend to be a hinderance to the story, the young characters here are written with a poise and brilliance to couple with the angst of tackling trauma and tragedy.

Par for the course is the action. There is a highway battle of sorts. There are wartime scrimmages. There are the obligatory fisticuffs between man and machine. There is a final epic battle. Amid these ingredients included in Kudo’s treatment, however, is a viewer-friendly revisal that makes it all the more exciting. I love how the lack of easy firearms access forces the Model 101 and Eiko to tool up in other ways for weaponry, using anything from standard police firearms to sticks and pipes, chemical bombs and collapsible gauntlets to shoot deadly darts. The big guns don’t come later, but by then, the violence and spectacle are already hitting harder than you thought it would, especially when it comes to Misaki and the role she will play in how this story pans out.

Terminator Zero does proffer a fascinating after thought on the subject of coexistence with A.I.. Cameron is probably still laughing his ass off and watching people ignore four decades of warnings just to see how far they can go in their creations from a grotesque Will Smith munching away at ridiculous tons of spaghetti to whatever concoction they can muster via Chat GPT or some odd whatever A.I. program whose makers haven’t been sued yet. I suppose time will tell how the chatter on that end recapitulates, while on the entertainment front, when it comes to any suppositions there were about Terminator Zero, color me goddamn surprised and delighted.

I nary find myself writing about anime, as I can literally count on one hand how many animes I’ve reviewed on this platform. Terminator Zero is one of the few and proud exceptions I make for a franchise I grew up with, and its continuance with a show imbued by creators who finally took this franchise where it truly needed to be, thus showing audiences that perhaps the Terminator franchise’s own fate is not yet sealed.