The Frightening Relevance of Terminator Zero

The showrunner of Netflix’s Terminator Zero, Mattson Tomlin, tells us about how modern AI struggles helped influence the show, the decision to make it an anime, and why there’s not an animated Arnold Schwarzenegger in it.

This episode of Does it Fly? is presented by Netflix, the exclusive home of Terminator Zero, starring Timothy Olyphant, Rosario Dawson, Sonoya Mizuno, André Holland, and Ann Dowd. Terminator Zero is now streaming only on Netflix.

We’ve got a special episode of Does it Fly? for you this time around. Consider this one a little bonus after our recent episode on The Terminator, because now we’ve got an inside look at Terminator Zero, Netflix’s brand new, lushly animated anime series (with an impressive voice cast, to boot) that adds a previously unseen dimension to the entire Terminator franchise. 

We sent one of our hosts, the brilliant Tamara Krinsky, to talk to Mattson Tomlin (The Batman, Mother/Android). But Tomlin is currently the showrunner of Terminator Zero, and those familiar with the thoughtful, gritty nature of his other screen work won’t be disappointed by the rigorous knowledge and intensity he brought to this show. And with our pop culture expert, Tamara, asking the big questions, Tomlin unpacks a lot of the central themes of the impressive new show. 

Check it out here or on our YouTube page. Oh yeah, and let us know what you think! If you want more interview style episodes of Does it Fly? where your favorite creatives tell us HOW they make your favorite sci-fi, horror, and fantasy projects work, drop us a line in the comments or on our socials!

Check out a few of our favorite points from the interview, which we feel offer a nice parallel to our usual episode structure. But this is a pretty in-depth exploration of Terminator Zero with the showrunner, so don’t take our word for it, listen to the episode!

THE SCIENCE

DOES IT FLY: I’m curious, as you were putting the pieces of this together, did you do any research? Did you talk to scientists so that the audience would watch this and say, “yeah, this flies. This works for us.” 

MATTSON TOMLIN: Yeah. Probably not to the degree that the PhD guy would be happy with me, but definitely a lot of reading about Turing tests today and about what the capabilities [of AI] are. It’s kind of one of those things where, as far as we know and what the public facing information is, we’re not quite there yet … I think that the jumps [in capability] are exponential. So there was still a level of invention. It’s a sci-fi show, so you’ve got to make some stuff up, but we also made  sure that it never felt like it was fully beyond the bounds of what’s actually happening out there today.

THE STORY

DiF: When was the moment during production that you as a writer, as a showrunner, felt like, “yeah, this thing has wings. This thing can fly.” 

MT: There’s a couple of different answers to that, because it comes in stages. I feel really proud of the show. I think that there are stages … For me, the first time that that happened was while I was writing, and I got through episode four [and then] once I started writing episode five, it’s like, “oh, now the plane has taken off, and now we’re at altitude, and now, actually, I have to think about landing.” Having these four episodes, and I can I can read that 100 or so pages and go, “I stand by this, this is working now I just need to land the plane.” It’s not that I felt like, “oh, I’ve got this.” But I felt like there was enough material that there’s a story that is being told now that feels worth telling. That was kind of the first time. 

The second time was definitely once art started to come in from [anime studio] Production IG, and seeing the level at which they were executing and [knowing] this is going to look beautiful. I think then the third time was certainly the working on the score and working with [Terminator Zero composers] Michelle Birsky and Kevin Henthorn and finding a sonic identity for the score that felt like Terminator, and at the same time, does its own thing. We didn’t just want to be playing the same stuff, it needed to feel inherently its own.

THE VIBE

DiF: Why was the decision made to do this as an anime?

MT: From a creative standpoint, you’re just able to do things that haven’t been done before, because if you’re making a movie and a movie that’s in a franchise like Terminator, then there are certain expectations, certain beats that it has to hit. And, you know, those movies are $100-200 million movies. A [movie of that scale] is going to be a certain kind of thing. And this isn’t that. Not only because it’s animated, but because it’s an anime. So it creates these variables … It’s an opportunity to kind of breathe a lot of new life into it …it was kind of driven by story and an opportunity to just do something the franchise hadn’t done before.

WANT MORE FROM DOES IT FLY?

We also took a deep scientific look at the paradox that so much of the entire Terminator franchise revolves around. Check it out here.

The Crow remake is in theaters now, so we recently took a look back at some of the science surrounding the magic of the original film. Watch it here.

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