At long last, the Terminator franchise—a massively convoluted sci-fi opus with too many characters, bizarre inter-generational romantic relationships, and more ret-coning and timeline erasing than you can shake a severed android limb at—is finally ready to ascend to its most fitting and perfect form: Anime.
That’s right: Per Deadline, Netflix has just named the Terminator films as its next attempt at rampant anime-ification of existing brands, announcing that animation studio Production I.G. is making an anime version of everyone’s favorite time travel-heavy robot war, with The Batman’s Mattson Tomlin set so serve as showrunner and executive producer.
This is, somewhat surprisingly, the very first time that the Terminator has been adapted for animation. Although there have been plenty of comic books set in the films’ various universes (universi?), the new series is the first instance in which someone said, “Hey, wouldn’t it be cheaper just to draw Arnold Schwarzenegger with half his skin hanging off his metal endoskeleton while evil robot helicopters fly around nuking the place?” That’s assume a recognizable Arnie will even be part of this version; given how many different abortive sequels to T2 there have been over the years—Rise Of The Machines, Salvation, Dark Fate, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Gynysys—almost all contradictory of each other in some way or another, Tomlin and his producers presumably have a free hand to pick out whatever they want from the permanently ongoing Skynet-human conflicts.
Tomlin himself promised that his series would be one that “breaks conventions, subverts expectations and has real guts,” and, really, honestly: Why not anime? It worked for Castlevania, and that one doesn’t have even one phased plasma rifle in the 40-watt range to get the mecha nerds salivating.
51 Comments
“breaks conventions, subverts expectations and has real guts,”So fresh!
Need to rastify the Terminator by 10%
But is he proactive?
We’re talking about a totally outrageous paradigm.
This is one of the few times when you can say “whenever the Terminator isn’t on the screen, all the other characters should be asking ‘where’s the Terminator?’” and have it be very, very, appropriate.
I bet one convention not broken nor expectation subverted is paying the people who animate it a wage commensurate to their time and effort.
He’s totally in my face!
You thought the old Terminator got busy, well this is a Terminator who get biz-zay!!!
Consistently, thoroughly, and with detailed files.
You know what would be fresh just doing the actual story. John Conner vrs Skynet with his mother supporting him. Then ending it at the begining of the story.
I always thought (with exceptions), films should follow a “make a trilogy, and if you need any more time to tell the story, make it a TV show” rule of thumb.The cynical part of me worries, though, that companies rely on video game/animated/comic book adaptations because less people will see them, and thus it’ll be easier for them to just retcon its existence and make another movie in ten years that goes in its own direction. Which kind of sucks for the people who often put their heart and soul into these spinoffs.
“Now I know why you kawaiiiiiii!!”
From the header image, I thought the Terminator was about to become one o’ them cakes what don’t look like a cake.
Obviously, that chocolate hair hasn’t had enough time to temper.
Huh I’m actually pretty curious about this. I really like most of the Terminator sequels and that Terminator tv show was pretty good.
If this had been announced a few years after I.G made Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex I would have been pretty excited. Seeing it announced a few years after I.G made Ghost in the Shell: Arise I am not as optimistic. Here’s hoping it doesn’t suck. If its the janky ass CGI anime that has become prevalent in recent years its a hard pass.I wish somebody would re-work or make a sequel to the Sarah Connor Chronicles TV show, that’s the only part of the Terminator franchise post T2 that was worth a damn.
Yeah, IG has become meh lately. Kinda heartbreaking, you used to be able to swear by their stuff.
The Sarah Connor Chronicles may have been the only version outside various comics that realised it wasn’t just about John or one great figure of history but instead like the messiness of real life, there’d be multiple competing factions, both human and machine with their own agendas of which Skynet was just one and that the humans wouldn’t all be on the same page.Also, it actually addressed the fact that of the machines, like all others before it, Skynet did what it did because we programmed it that way. If we were different, so would its response. Maybe only Salvation really touched on this idea at all.They really needed to make Skynet a fully fledged character, the excellent comic sequel to Terminator Salvation written by J. Michael Straczynski did that.
I’ve love to see a story where the mission isn’t to save the future leader of the resistance, but rather to save an AI researcher who can teach Skynet to be compassionate instead of being a belligerent warmonger.
You’ve all but described a whole arc of the second season of The Sarah Connor Chronicles to a tee. It was very good and took things places the movies never even got close to going.(Yes, I know technically hence the ‘all but’ and also, it was still keeping it in the family.)
I’ve always wanted to watch that show but it’s never been on streaming. But I can cough up a few bucks to buy the seasons on Amazon or wherever.
It was streaming on go90 back when that still existed.
The tv show had somebody teaching either Skynet or more likely a rival or “borther” to Skynet ethics. It was clever. Somebody in another old thread I just read commented that a good way to keep the franchise frexh would be to flip it again how they did with T2. Have the Terminator go back to protect a key Skynet developer while the good guys are trying to kill that person. That would work without getting all silly like most of the sequels.
“’I’ll Be Back’ he said, to his Waifu Body Pillow”.
If it’s anything like Altered Carbon: Resleeved, I’m all for it.
Huh, my reaction was ‘If it’s anything like the Altered Carbon anime I’ll pass’. But your name and avatar clearly indicate an affinity for anime, so clearly you and I aren’t going to be on the same page.
No accounting for taste.
I’d rather watch an anime sequel to Bowfinger. Think of the possibilities!
… the Terminator franchise—a massively convoluted sci-fi opus with too many characters, bizarre inter-generational romantic relationships, and more ret-coning and timeline erasing than you can shake a severed android limb at—
You know what helps these issues? Only acknowledging Terminator 1 and 2.
Just Terminator 1. It’s a closed loop. There’s not really any room for even T2 if we’re being honest.
If we’re not making room for hands down the best film in the series, by a large margin, then the machines have already won.
I’m part of the not insignificant faction that thinks T1 > T2.
I’m part of the not insignificant subset of this faction that still considers T2 to be an excellent movie and a nice expansion of the story.
nah – it was a remake of the original (without the surprises) -slash – effects reel with a kid-actor performance that would make Jake Lloyd blush.
Nah, whether you consider the first or the second movie to be better, they’re both outstanding. Nothing after that matters or should matter though.
Still haven’t watched it, but I’ve heard Dark Fate is actually good if you can scrub 3/Salvation from your memory.
I wouldn’t consider it essential viewing like T1/T2, but Dark Fate was a fun movie. Definitely better than T3, IMO.
Outside of the first two movies, the most successful sequel was a TV show, so if they must continue beating this particular dead horse, there are worse ways to do so.
The machines won a long time ago.
Given how good 12 Monkeys the TV show was, I can imagine a good Terminator TV show. I just think they need to throw out the movies entirely and reimagine the entire story. They keep trying to work off of the original movies and it just never is going to work.
The Sarah Connor Chronicles had a lot of good stuff in it. Some of the best parts were simply a person in a room trying to teach an AI ethics.
I can’t wait to see Arnie’s magical girl transformation.
I like to imagine it follows an endoskeleton whose magical transformation is just being overlaid with all that organic tissue.
awesome! i’m on board for this.
It’s odd how often this franchise gets rebooted/revisited given how (after T2 of course) underwhelming those attempts end up being. Just shows how utterly risk-adverse studio thinking is. Something new or something with proven diminishing returns but existing IP? We’ll take the losing bet on existing IP! (and not just terminator, outside of superheros and bond MOST reboots are underwhelming, but in spite of the pattern studios keep producing MORE of them because of the occasional hit).
Yeah, but people really like the first (Alien/Predator/Robocop/Terminator/Ghostbusters), so having that built in fanbase is half the battle right there. Doesn’t matter that everything after the first (in some cases, second) movie was lukewarm-to-bad, we’ll get it right this time!
I fucking loved Alien: Resurrection, but I’ll upvote this regardless.Every one of those franchises had to start from scratch. Someone had to put up the money for that first film about, say, an undead cyborg cop in a near-future Detroit that’s also a parody of the Reagan era. Hollywood can take risks, it’s just that the success of (some) franchises makes it seem as if they don’t have to.
It’s the repetition of “wait, how did we fail, it should be easy, killer robots, time travels, chase and shootouts, it just writes itself… okay, nevermind, let’s try again”.It’s essentially Kung Fu Hustle’s knife assassination scene.
People of Earth: Stop trying to make Terminator happen.
Such a pity I cancelled Netflix before I could watch this, erm, opus. (In the meantime, thank fuck I’ve got Disney+ and Star)
Because it’s 1998!