Terminator Zero | Expect 1984 ‘serial killer’ vibes from the upcoming anime series

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The soon-to-release Netflix anime series Terminator Zero will channel the slasher horror tone of the original 1984 film according to its showrunner.


Next month sees the premiere of Terminator Zero, an eight-part Netflix anime that will add to the Terminator series in ways that has already gotten us rather excited with the snippets we’ve seen so far. However, showrunner Mattson Tomlin has popped up to pique our interest further by stating that the anime is suffused with the same “serial killer” vibes as the 1984 film which set the franchise into motion.

According to CNET, the series will take place directly after 1991’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day and will ignore all of the films and shows that came afterwards, instead sending the franchise in a new direction. That reveal alone is enough to get us interested, but Tomlin’s quote (to Empire) that the series’ tone will channel the dark slasher feeling of 1984’s The Terminator is perhaps even more exciting.

Podcast: Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) and T2 Trainspotting (2017)

“I wanted to lean into that body-horror, serial-killer feel of the first film, which was almost like Friday The 13th or A Nightmare On Elm Street,” said Tomlin when describing his vision for the series, which has assembled quite the cast. Timothy Olyphant will voice the titular cyborg assassin while Ann Dowd will play The Prophet, the philosophical guide for the resistance. Rosario Dawson also joins as an AI system (uh oh) along with André Holland and Sonoya Mizuno.

Here’s the synopsis:

‘Caught between the future and the past is a soldier (voiced by Sonoya Mizuno) sent back in time to change the fate of humanity. She arrives in 1997 to protect a scientist named Malcolm Lee (André Holland) who works to launch a new AI system (Rosario Dawson) 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.’

Sounds exciting, doesn’t it? Netflix’s record of tie-in anime is pretty strong, with the platform having produced series that expand the lore of popular video games especially. Castlevania, Tekken and Cyberpunk 2077 have all gotten the anime adaptation treatment in the past and earned acclaim, but a Terminator series that picks up after the events of the first two films and captures the darker tone of the 1984 original could yet be the pick of the bunch.

Terminator Zero will stream on Netflix from the 29th August.

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