The Terminator Zero Staff Talks With Anime Herald

Note: Due to the time-sensitive nature of our coverage, this article will debut on the main Anime Herald site on May 6. We apologize for the inconvenience.

• Author: Seth Burn

• Editor: Samantha Ferreira

Unknown Outlet: So, what can fans and new viewers, people new to the franchise expect from Terminator Zero?

Mattson Tomlin: For people who have not seen any Terminator movies ever, if those people are out there, they can expect something that is colorful, thoughtful, violent, visually arresting, well-directed, and hopefully a great story with great characters. For returning Terminator fans, it is a fandom that is extremely passionate, and sometimes a little bit angry, so I hope that they will find a show that doesn't make them too angry. And for some of them, it just makes them go “Oh, this feels good.”

Masashi Kudō: For the fans new to the series. It's going to be fresh, novel content. So he's looking forward to wowing them with something new. And for the returning fans, they can be tough critics, but our series is slightly different from anything else that's been done, in a slightly different direction, and so we hope that they'll be receptive to the challenges we're taking on.

Poppers: I know that the rest of the Terminator series inspired Terminator Zero, but what other anime have inspired Terminator Zero?

Mattson Tomlin: For me, my gateway into anime was The Animatrix. That hit when I was twelve years old, and it introduced me to a lot of directors and kind of a whole genre that hadn't been on my radar in the first twelve years of my life. Any time that I go to make anything, I have to try to make it personal and try to connect to it in some kind of primal way, which is usually connecting to my childhood. And so a big one for me was just, not even as a visual reference, not even as a story reference, but just kind of like wanting to get that same “fuck yeah” feeling back from the first time that I saw The Animatrix.

Masashi Kudō: As my career was getting started, I was really mentored by Director Tomino of the Gundam series. And so that is definitely that work is at the core of me as an anime creator and person living in the anime field. It's Gundam director Tomino.

The Mary Sue: When you are doing a story in The Terminator franchise, even though it's not about the Connors, you still get to have those elements that are very, very much the Terminator series. For you guys, what was the most exciting one that you got to put into Terminator Zero?

Mattson Tomlin: As far as an element of the franchise?

The Mary Sue: Yeah.

Mattson Tomlin: When I got the job to work on this. You know, you get those jobs and you go “Fuck, now I've got to do this.” I went back, and I didn’t just watch the Terminator movies. I actually watched all of James Cameron's movies, because I felt like, “Why is this genius always knocking it out of the park? Like, what is going on there?” And for Terminator, yes, it's killer robots. Yes, it's nuclear apocalypse. Yes, it's time travel. It's great visual effects; it's, it's all of that stuff. But it really, and I could say this for any one of his movies, and especially the ones that have gone off to make billions of dollars. 

It's really great characters and stories about families and so, once I kind of distilled it into that, “Okay, I know the things that need to be there in order for it to feel like Terminator.” But there is this other component, which is “This needs to be a story about those primal relationships between husband and wife, between mother and son, or in this case, it's parents and children, and the way that work gets in between how a family unit operates, then eventually how a war can get in between how how a family unit operates.

Masashi Kudō: I think Mattson covered the story elements already. In preparing for this role I took the time to study and fully digest James Cameron's T1, T2, and I felt that was the beginning and what I needed to understand deeply, so that I could subtly bring in different elements that may be very subconscious, but those elements are blended into the direction.

Anime Herald: I am deeply familiar with the first two Terminator movies. They were part of my childhood. The first being almost a horror and a thriller movie, and the second one being, at the time, the supreme action movie that had ever been released. Which direction would you like for the animated series?

Mattson Tomlin: There’s a version of this franchise, that if Arnold Schwarzenegger didn't become one of the biggest movie stars in the ‘90s... you get to the end of T1 and the last twenty minutes, Arnold Schwarzenegger ain't in it. It's a stop motion puppet. You can't do that when it's a movie star, as evidenced by the fact that in T2 they make the side of his face look cool, but it's him. And so the fact that Terminator 2 became the action movie. It set the franchise on this course where now Terminator is synonymous with 100 million dollar plus blockbuster action films. For me, I saw the first film, first when I was eight years old, and it scared the shit out of me. It really gave me nightmares. And so when I got the job, and it was time to go do this, again, back to the whole like I have to connect to it in a primal way. Terminator, for me, is not synonymous with action. It's synonymous with “I'm scared.” And I always go back to that great Kyle Reese quote, “this thing, it cannot be bargained with, it can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity or remorse, and it is going to never, ever stop until you are fucking dead.”

That, to me, it doesn't get better than that. I keep using this word, I'm so sorry, but it's so primal. People want action. It has action. We're doing our Judgment Day. We're doing all of that stuff. But at its core, the thing that I was very, very excited about, was to go back to what that franchise could have been had it not become one of the major action franchises of the last forty years.

Masashi Kudō: It really depends on the scene and the moment during the story. It'll be more horror elements, you’ll see more action elements. You’ll also see the human drama elements. So this is not just one influence, not just one direction, but really a combination of all of the elements that have made the Terminator franchise so successful. But without any spoilers, there may definitely be more feeling of horror in the beginning that you see, but there's definitely action as well.

Anime Corner: Looking toward the characters and the actual families you mentioned before, this is one of the few projects that didn’t center on the Connors. How does that aid the construction of the project or change the way you execute the series?

Mattson Tomlin: For me, it frees me from some franchise baggage. Because, all of the stories so far in the Terminator live action movies have been about this Connor family. When I got hired, I was the last piece. Skydance and Netflix had already partnered. Production I.G had already partnered. I was already told we want to do not just an animated series, but we want it to be an anime. It was presented to me as “You can do whatever you want, but we would love for there to be some Japanese component to this show.”

I think that the soft pitch was kind of, “Have a Japanese character.” I thought, well, he's the one that has to execute this by directing it, and Production I.G and all these wonderful artists are going to be in Japan for years making this. There's so much experience and perspective and knowledge. That I could harness by not saying, “Let's do another story on the US Mexico border,” but to go to Japan.

It's kind of those two things. It's the location and going, “We've had six Terminator movies, but they're all focused on this one part of the world. What's going on on the other side of the planet?” That was very freeing and allowed me to start to daydream about what a story could be.

Look, I'm just one guy. I'm certainly not smarter than James Cameron. I don't feel like I'm smarter than any of the other filmmakers who have been in this franchise and come before me. I don't feel like it's my place to go, “Just pay attention to these movies, and fuck those ones.” I don't think that that's my job here. And so instead, “All of that's fine, all of that's valid. Take what you want, leave what you want.” I'm over here and trying to do something that is a love letter to the feeling that you get at the highest highs of watching this franchise.

Masashi Kudō: The thematic backbone is still about family. It's not the Connors, it's a different family, but it's still a story about a family. The spirit definitely lives on in that sense. Because it's an illustrated animation, the feeling of acceptance that it is a different family and it's okay to have a different family, may be easier for the audience to recognize and accept, and love a new family because it is not a live action situation. It's a different feel, different media. And so we hope that you'll love our family just as much as you have loved the Conners in the past.

Unknown Outlet: Do you think audiences in the West are engaging more with shows like Terminator Zero? Non-comedy animation for a mature audience.

Mattson Tomlin: I hope so. Here we are. If the show works, people show up for it, I get to do more seasons. I would love that. I can say that I've had a lot of conversations with people who have been in that mindset, “Cartoons are for kids.” And then they look at something like Terminator and they go, “Well, Terminator, that's for me.” And then, when the trailer came out and they saw, “Oh, it's not the kid version, it's still pretty adult.”

I think that we are one of, as you say, many that are happening right now, that are animated. It doesn't necessarily have the connotation of Saturday morning cartoons. Somebody smarter than me knows the overall global position that we're that we're in, as far as the tide turning. I can only say that for the people who haven't been watching any animated work. Work like this can be their gateway drug. And if somebody else was the gateway drug, and this is their follow up, I'm happy with that, too.

Masashi Kudō: It’s up to Netflix. (Laughs)

The Mary Sue: What are you most excited for fans of this franchise to see when they finally get to see Terminator Zero?

Mattson Tomlin: These characters. They're real to me. I've lived with them for a long time. We have lived with these characters for a really long time. In the same way that the characters from the original movie mean a lot to me, the way Matt Smith means a lot to you. For me, the hope is that there will be some people that fall in love with characters that we've created to the same degree. I have my favorite character, and I really hope that that character, once the show is out in the world, I'd love to come back and see people cosplaying as characters that we've created. lThat, to me, is very exciting. Because the gateway for me was to make these characters as real as possible, to tell an emotional story.

Masashi Kudō: We've been able to turn the screenplay that we've received into life. We've turned it into life, we've brought it to life, we've given it energy. We've given it all the elements that make a story into a world. That's what we're most proud to present to the audience. It's that: all of the elemental horror, action, the drama, the humanness of everything. It's really expressed as a world to present to you.

Anime Herald: How much do you plan to anthropomorphize the robots in your Terminator animation?

Mattson Tomlin: The series, in large part, is about this scientist named Malcolm Lee. Malcolm is haunted by prophetic dreams of the future, where he believes that Judgment Day is a thing that's going to happen. In order to try to stop Judgment Day, he decides “I'm going to create a weapon that can fight against Skynet.” It’s going to be another AI, it's going to be this AI, Kokoro. Kokoro is voiced by Rosario Dawson. It's her character. It was a really interesting journey to create a face for her and to figure out what that avatar was going to look like. It was very much a collaboration between the two of us. Kokoro, that name, it connects to the ideas of the mind, the heart and the spirit, but all being as one. And so it was director Kudō’s idea to take this character that was just one character, and kind of split her into three that were these three avatars representing these three parts of a person. And so we came up with something that is a kind of ghostly, spectral. It feels like imagery you've seen in Terminator before, but not quite. We ran with it from there. I think that that's part of the answer.

And then the other part of the answer is that in the movies, there is a kind of innate humanity to Arnold Schwarzenegger, and particularly in T2. The relationship that he has with John Connor, where it really flips the whole idea of just these are killing machines on its head. Suddenly it's like this. Sarah Connor says it in one of the voiceovers “ I'm looking at this machine, the face of my killer years ago, and yet, right now I see a guy who's going to be a better father to my son than anybody I could ever be, so what the what do I do with that?” That instantly injects a certain amount of humanity into the machine side as well. I'm very excited for people to watch the show, because I was not on a war path to tell a story that said “robots equal bad.” That's actually not what I think the original movies were trying to do.

Masashi Kudō: Not only is there this humanizing of robots, but there's the aspect of recipients, as we have a dialog. Even right now, in theory, we tend to humanize who we speak with. And so yes, it's AI, yes, it's just algorithms, but in the process of dialog, we as humans humanize our partners, our machines or robots. And so aside from what we may intend as creators in terms of whether or not these robots are humanized, the viewers may feel that because there's dialog, there's humanization.

Anime Corner: Were there any acts for the show you felt were particularly aided or impeded by the animation format as opposed to live action?

Mattson Tomlin: As far as what's aided? I write this, write all the scripts, and then it all gets sent to Production I.G, and then there's about a year where they are doing character designs and building the world and starting the animatics. But I'm not seeing any of that. So, we're having meetings. Sometimes I'm getting little updates. Lots of lots of long Skype conversations between the two of us. But a year goes by of me just kind of holding my breath, hoping something good is happening, and having no idea. And then the first animatic came in, and the animatic is very rough. It's black and white. It's pencil sketches. It's crude, and yet, in the crudeness, you can see what it's going to be. And the second that I saw anything move, I just went “I'm saved,” because he is just gonna make it fucking awesome, and he's just gonna make me look so smart.

And so, as far as anything visual, as far as anything with action, with the production design, with all of it, there's something that happens when you watch something animated where it doesn't look like our world, so then you buy into the reality of that world. And so I think that you're instantly invited into this world. He makes it very easy to come into that world.

As far as what's challenging, when it's live action, you have the benefit of looking at the most interesting thing in the world, and that is a human being's face when they are going through something emotional. A great director and a great actor in the right moment, you could hold on somebody's face for six minutes straight. As they tell you their life story, or as they have an emotional moment, and you won't want to look away. It'll be just as compelling as any moment of action. That’s harder to do when it's animated. I want to be able to hit high highs and low lows as far as the emotional character, human register, but an animated character crying, that's hard to do, and it's hard to do it in a sustained way.

They do it. They do a great job, but it's also my job as the writer to not ask more than the medium can support at the same time. And so, I think that for me, that was the biggest challenge. Of knowing I want there to be moments where characters are crying. I want there to be moments where characters are upset, where characters are afraid, and making sure that I wasn't asking too much of both the medium, and then also the people who actually have to execute it. To instead, not get us to the point where we're watching an emotional moment and then kind of like, “Oh, I'm watching a drawing cry. You never want to get to that point. so making sure that that's not what I was ever asking them to do.

Masashi Kudō: In animation, in live action, the difference of what you can and can't do is blending a lot. I mean, you can even make Arnold look younger now through CG. Anything's possible. But there is something unique to hand drawn illustrations, and it's really to make the audience step back a little bit more and accept the world they're seeing. So, this is based in Japan, but you don't need to know Japan to get invited to our world, our hand drawn world of Japan. It is a very isolated world where you don't need a background, you don't need to relate in order to relate to the reality of Japan, in order to live in our world of Japan in the hand illustrated version. 

And so we feel that that's an aspect that's different from live action. In illustration, hand drawn illustration, you step back from reality and accept the world, but you're seeing through the hand drawn images. As far as what you can't do, it's a little bit hard to say, but it's really the humanness, the human expression similar to what you were saying. And there we really rely on the voice actors to bring that primordial core of emotion. And so emotion is driven by the acting of the voice actors.

Anime Herald: Thank you very much.

Terminator Zero is currently streaming on Netflix. It has been renewed for a second season.