Showrunner Mattson Tomlin: 'Terminator' anime series makes case for human survival

NEW YORK, Aug. 29 (UPI) -- Writer-producer Mattson Tomlin says he had no trouble attracting a top-notch voice cast for his new Netflix anime series, Terminator Zero, because the stars were all eager to explore a thrilling, post-apocalyptic world, as well as important issues that might resonate with viewers.

Featuring the voices of Timothy Olyphant, Rosario Dawson, Andre Holland, Ann Dowd and Sonoya Mizuno, the eight-episode series premieres Thursday.

It is set primarily in two timelines in Japan: Skynet robots gain self-awareness and begin their war against humanity in 1997 and the few human survivors of a decades-long war continue trying to end the conflict in 2022.

"Everybody just kind of said: 'Terminator? I'll come play.' They were all so generous with their time and with their talents. I'm so excited for people to hear what they did," Tomlin told UPI in a recent Zoom interview.

"I just had a month and a half of just being in the vocal booth with Rosario and Sonoya and Tim and Andre and then a whole bunch of other people that haven't been announced yet," Tomlin said.

"The animation is the animation and it's beautiful. It's wonderful. It's great, but then there's this thing that happens when you get an actor in there and they breathe life into it."

Anime allowed Tomlin to tell a complex, visually stunning story for less money than a live-action TV show or film would cost.

"That [1990s] period very quickly becomes extremely expensive and that's not even getting to the killer robot part of it," Tomlin said. "So, some of it is budgetary."

But that wasn't the only reason to use animation to continue the Terminator franchise, which started with the first of many Arnold Schwarzenegger-led, live-action films in 1984.

"It just felt like there was an opportunity to tell a generational story about a family and, in particular, these children, and to -- over as many seasons as I can get Netflix to agree to -- watch them grow up in this war, and then to throw time travel into it. So, they have their older self talking to their younger self," Tomlin said.

"You can kind of go in every which way, as this whole spaghetti of time starts to unspool around us," he added. "The potential of that -- the fact that you could have children become adults, then go back to being children -- just meant kind of going on this wild ride."

Tomlin wanted to tell a fresh story while also honoring the legacy of the films that came before.

"These stories exist and all of this exists, but those stories are over there," he said.

"They're taking place on the U.S.-Mexico border at these various times, and also they're live-action. I'm animated, and I'm over here in Japan in 1997, so it just allowed me the freedom to not have to worry about stepping on the toes of other artists who worked very hard."

Tomlin said he watched the other installments in the franchise to fully understand what defines a Terminator story.

"What do fans expect? What do they want? And, then, what aspects of that can be bent? What aspects of that can be broken? What can't be broken?" Tomlin asked rhetorically. "That was kind of the math that I had to go through."

Terminator Zero continues discussions begun by its predecessors about war and tech dependence because these are still relevant topics in 2024.

"I am not the first person to dip my toes in this world and, so, a lot of things have been said already, and a lot of them have been said really, really well," Tomlin said.

"One of the constructs within the [Zero] story is this character, Malcolm (Holland), has given birth to a new AI that is kind of the answer to Skynet," he added.

"He's trying to program Kokoro (Dawson), but not by zeros and ones, not by if-then statements. He's trying to program Kokoro through a conversation, by treating Kokoro like it's two people having a conversation."

Writing those scenes was challenging, but fun, Tomlin said.

"The characters get, to ask things like If Skynet wins, what do they want? What happens then? And questions like, humanity is so dug in on surviving, what's so good about you? What is good about the human race?" he said.

Olyphant voices the titular Terminator, a seemingly unstoppable robot sent back in time to stop Malcolm.

One could make the case that the extinction of people is better for the rest of the planet, Tomlin acknowledged, but said he doesn't like thinking that way because he is a humanist who believes in the good of mankind.

"I believe in human decency, and I want to be telling stories that propagate the fact that life is beautiful and we all have a part to play here," he said.

"How do I do that in the face of the robot apocalypse? So, just getting the opportunity to set the stage, to have deep philosophical conversations like that, hopefully, are really visually interesting, fun, and don't bore the audience."