Terminator Zero’s showrunner knows Terminator is bigger than the Connors

Terminator Zero is unlike anything the franchise has done before, and that’s not even mentioning the fact that it’s an anime. The upcoming original series, co-produced by Skydance Television and Japanese animation studio Production I.G., is set roughly after the events of Terminator 2: Judgment Day and follows Malcolm Lee (André Holland), a Japanese scientist who develops an artificial intelligence to rival the franchise’s longtime antagonist, Skynet. When a Terminator is sent back from the future with the intent to kill both him and his family, a rebel fighter from the future named Eiko (Sonoya Mizuno) makes it her mission to protect them.

Terminator Zero is one of the few stories in the Terminator franchise that does not revolve around John Connor, the leader of the human resistance against Skynet in the future, or his mother, Sarah Connor, the militant self-taught soldier who raised John to fulfill his destiny.

While some may feel daunted by the idea of ​​creating a series featuring new characters in a franchise that is otherwise intensely focused on the actions and choices of a specific family, a la the Skywalkers in Star Wars, Terminator Zero Showrunner Mattson Tomlin wasn’t at all.

“Was it a challenge? No, not really,” Tomlin told Polygon in a press conference. “I think the movies have been working with the Connors for a long time, and with this show I really wanted to pay respect to the incredible artists who have worked on this franchise before me, and that goes from the first film to the last film.”

In honor of the creators who have contributed to the Terminator franchise in the past, Tomlin wanted to capitalize on the opportunities presented specifically by Terminator Zero‘s nature as not only the first animated production in the franchise’s history, but as an anime produced by Production I.G., the acclaimed studio behind Ghost in the shell And Psycho-pass.

“All of the movies are set in the United States,” Tomlin said. “They’re all set largely on the U.S.-Mexico border. And yes, it’s about this family and this saga, but I’m doing an animated series and that’s never been done before in this franchise.”

“Also, I work with partners in Japan and I wanted to leverage that power, so it suddenly dawned on me that we don’t know what’s happening in Japan. There’s no talk in the franchise about what’s happening elsewhere in the world. Okay, Russia is launching its nukes, you know… But what’s happening elsewhere in the world?”

To figure that out, Tomlin had to focus on the franchise’s core appeal, separate from that particular family’s specific saga.

“When I look at all the movies and think, OK, if I were to make a Venn diagram of what intersects them all, there’s definitely a killer robot from the future,” Tomlin said. “The fear and anxiety around nuclear holocaust, that’s another one. And then there are emotional stories about family. That became kind of the crux (for how I approached writing) for me. Terminator Zero), and I think that’s why 40 years later we still talk about Terminator media and this franchise with such reverence and respect.”

To that end, Tomlin sees the first two films as the blueprint for the franchise’s heart and deeper focus, as the best guide to what he hoped to achieve with Zerobut goes even deeper than that. In Terminator Zerowe see a family torn apart by tragedy and brought back together, with Skynet’s looming apocalypse inadvertently serving as the catalyst for their emotional reconciliation. Terminator Zero is as much a story about Malcolm Lee and his family as it is a story about what it means to be a family at all. How does a father weigh the fate of humanity against their estranged relationship with their children? How does loss affect the dynamics of a family, not just in terms of their interactions, but also their outlook on life?

“That first film is a love story about a man and a woman making a baby, because that baby is very important, but in the context of the film it’s just, Here’s a couple getting together,” Tomlin told Polygon. “And then that second film is a story about a mother’s love for her son, and meanwhile there’s this surrogate father who comes in, who has the face of the man who tried to kill her before, and she has to come to terms with what that means. And so I think, for Terminator Zeroit was important to make sure we had killer robots, nuclear apocalypse, and a family story that had real dramatic value. That to me is Terminator.”

Terminator Zero premieres on Netflix on August 29.