The creator and showrunner behind Netflix’s now critically acclaimed Terminator anime series, Mattson Tomlin, has gone to bat for one of the most-maligned installments in the beloved sci-fi franchise: Terminator Salvation. After revealing that his favorite Terminator movie is the 1984 original in a conversation with Discussing Film, the writer declared that he “really” loves Terminator Salvation and the way that the movie still tricks his experienced filmmaker brain and makes him wonder “how’d they do that?”
“I really love Salvation. I think people were a little tough on that movie. and you look at it, you look at the physics of it, the gunfire, the explosions, you know. Anytime that there’s a Terminator that, you know, there’s the skeleton, it really feels like it has weight in this way that I’m like, ‘wait how?’ It’s one of the few movies and now being a filmmaker, making movies, you kind of know what the tricks are. And so, it’s still a movie that I look at and I’m like ‘how’d they do that? What’s the sauce there? What’s going on?’”
Released in 2009 and directed by McG, Terminator Salvation is the first movie in the franchise set solely during the war between humans and machines. Starring Sam Worthington, Anton Yelchin, and Bryce Dallas Howard, with Christian Bale as John Connor, Salvation explores the post-apocalyptic conflict as man tries to take back the Earth from Skynet.
Plagued with production issues, including both Bale and Worthington suffering injuries, writers dropping out, and last-minute rewrites – including a major change to the movie’s original, controversial ending – Terminator Salvation received largely negative reviews from both critics and audiences alike. Intended as the start of a new trilogy, Salvation instead led to the even worse reboot, Terminator Genisys, in 2015. While the sequel did reasonably well at the box office (though perhaps not for a Terminator movie) grossing over $371 million worldwide, the movie left the production company, the Halcyon Company, bankrupt.
In spite of all this, Tomlin clearly finds much to enjoy in Terminator Salvation. The way the movie depicts both the literal and the metaphorical weight of the machines and the warfare they bring is something that he can deeply appreciate despite the movie’s faults. Which is perhaps a lesson for us all. Even in movies with major issues, there is always something to enjoy and appreciate.
Mattson Tomlin Has Reignited the Terminator Franchise With His Netflix Anime Series
Tomlin’s favorite Terminator movie, though, is the first. And it’s all thanks to the “low budget horror movie” vibe. A vibe that he has successfully continued with his own Terminator project, the anime series Terminator Zero, which now holds a rating of 92% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Created and executive produced by Mattson Tomlin (The Batman Part II) and executive produced by Skydance Animation by Production IG Studios, you can check out the official synopsis for Terminator Zero below.
“2022: A future war has raged for decades between the few human survivors and an endless army of machines.
1997: The AI known as Skynet gained self-awareness and began its war against humanity.
Caught between the future and this past is a soldier sent back in time to change the fate of humanity. She arrives in 1997 to protect a scientist named Malcolm Lee who works to launch a new AI system 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.”
Terminator Zero
is now available to stream on Netflix.