If a Terminator When the story explains up front that you’re watching events in 2022, it’s easy to wonder exactly which 2022 we’re talking about. Is it five years after the events of Genisys? Four years after Salvation? Is the villain Skynet or Legion? Or, since we’re watching this in 2024, is it the actual 2022 we experienced?
Let’s just say we can probably count on Legion never being mentioned again, much like Genisys. But as for the other questions, the answer is yes and no – a fictional 2022 is an oft-visited future timeline here, while most of the story takes place in a version of 1997. Terminator Zero, on the other hand, while remaining in one timeline for the duration of its own story, acknowledges the multiverse and makes virtually every Terminator story canon, just as the planned sequel to Genisys was supposed to do, arguably breaking the rules of the original trilogy, in which the same timeline remained linear and malleable no matter how many Terminators came back over time.
Infinity Future War
Zero follows Marvel rules – every time someone is sent back, a new timeline is created. That way, many of them can end the same, while still embracing the fact that there is no fate except the one we create. If that sounds like cheating, let’s just say this: Terminator Zero has arguably the most well-thought-out plot of any Terminator media adapted to film to date. The comics were often pretty clever; as far as movies and TV go, this is the cleverest. Most Terminator movies provide the premise and then set the action scenes in motion. For once, this 8-part miniseries keeps you guessing, even though it relies on all the cliches that would normally lead to a predictable finale.
There’s a lot of nostalgia at play here. The Japanese-made Terminator Zero taps into not only audiences’ love of James Cameron’s original films, but also ’90s notions of what anime could (and should) be. There are gory scenes, ample nudity, and enough spiritual philosophizing and paradoxical talk to make audiences feel clever. Terminator and Ghost in the Shell have always been closely linked, and here they’ve finally come together, along with a healthy dose of Holy Trinity metaphor. Visually, though, this is very 2024, with digital and hand-drawn designs as thoroughly integrated as flesh and metal on a Cyberdyne Systems 101 model.
Tokyo Story
Just so we’re clear: Judgement Day in Terminator Zero still takes place in 1997. This is an alternate timeline revolving around a futuristic Tokyo where humanoid robot servants called ENOs are commonplace. The Miles Dyson-esque Dr. Malcolm Lee, voiced by Moonlight’s Andre Holland in the English dub, has been anticipating the deadly day for some time and is working on a supposedly benevolent AI named Kokoro (Rosario Dawson) to counter the Terminator factory of the future, Skynet. The only problem? He can’t be absolutely sure that it won’t consider humanity just as worthy of extermination once it comes online. So he spends his days in his Tokyo version of the Vegas Sphere, brooding as he tries to understand it.
Note: Dubbed and subtitled versions are available on Netflix. Given the star-studded cast of Dawson and Timothy Olyphant, it seemed more worthwhile to review the English version here. If you’re an Olyphant fan, however, be advised that his Terminator makes Arnold Schwarzenegger’s appearance seem downright talkative until the final episode.
Apocalypse…then?
Since Japan has been the only victim of nuclear war so far, it seems obvious and overdue that artists there should make a Terminator film more interesting than many of our own. The nuclear fears captured by the Japanese animation team, led by director Masashi Kudo (Bleach), seem so concrete that they become clear when they show the famous Hiroshima Genbaku dome, the last building standing after the 1945 bomb. In fact, the assumption that every country except Japan could be attacked by nuclear weapons if all goes well feels like a twisted kind of karma.
While Dr. Lee tries to perfect Kokoro as an adversary to Skynet, his children are being pursued by a new Terminator (Olyphant) whose field healing techniques make him seem more bizarre (and, let’s face it, more toy-like) by the year. The story is also set in the ’90s, and practically every Japanese cop is depicted smoking constantly. (In any case, we must note that it’s not what kills them.) Meanwhile, in a distant future a few years behind our own, we see the circumstances that led to resistance soldier Eiko (House of the Dragon’s Sonoya Mizuno) being sent back on the latest protection mission.
Sanrio Grande
Along the way, the story lovingly satirizes Japanese cultural obsessions like cute toy robots and Hello Kitty, while also throwing in enough brutal chases and gunshot executions to satisfy even the most bloodthirsty fans. In between such moments, we can speculate about the parallels between the mind-body-soul dichotomy and the father-son-holy-spirit trinity, wonder whether computer programming could be read as biased pro-slavery speech, and ponder what constitutes a soul. The final episode comes dangerously close to not resolving, instead offering a potential cliffhanger for season 2, but without giving too much away, we can say that it wraps up its own story arc well enough that the amount of potential teasers for a sequel feels just right, rather than like a cop-out.
There’s no Sarah Connor in Terminator Zero, but that doesn’t rule out her existence either. It’s just a very different story with a genuinely new point of view, albeit with the obligatory trappings of a killer, a post-nuclear, time-traveling cyborg, and all that entails. How it took so long for someone to snap is a mystery, but with the right mix of ’90s nostalgia and genuine thought, this anime miniseries proves to be exactly what the Terminator franchise needed. It takes the best elements of the recent theatrical sequels without all the crap that held them back, and hints at a future where every single conflicting timeline up to the present day will be integrated into one grand plan if sufficiently desired.
Rating: 4.5/5
Terminator Zero is now streaming on Netflix.
