Well fuck Batman it’s time for Titans y’all! Titans is the first of the DC Universe original series to premiere and since it’s first trailer it has shown itself to be heading for that hard R rating. The show seems to revel in its gratuity and give us a much darker version of the Teen Titans than we are used to. If you’re in to that, this episode definitely delivers (SO MUCH BLOOD). If you’re not, well, there’s moments of a show here that could be something good. There’s glimpses.
This review of Titans is coming to you on a Saturday, the day after the show was released for streaming on DC Universe. The show will continue to release installments every Friday, and this article will regularly appear on Mondays going forward. But enough of that, let’s dive in!
1. Blood, blood, blood
So if you’re in the camp of not being a fan of 300-esque levels of blood and violence, get out now. Very early into the episode, Titans makes sure you know blood will run. Raven’s mother gets shot in the head, which, ok, fine, it’s a comic book-related show, weird stuff happens. But, the camera makes sure to cut back to her body after Raven runs away from the house and you see a large pool and the bullet wound running red. The villain of the episode, the generic “warrior of God” or something, trying to kill Raven ends up throwing up literally all his entrails on the floor. The part that got me in that scene though was his head being shoved back into the door and there being a red smear. It just seems like too much. You can kill people without seeming to love the killing, especially in a show based on the Teen Titans.
I compare this to the CW shows, namely Arrow, as the darkest of them. People bleed, people die, people are killed, but there never seems to be an unnecessary joy in the killing on the part of the showrunners. Even the Marvel Netflix shows, which are even darker than the Arrowverse romps are violent, mature and bloody, but not ever in a way that grosses people out or causes them to go “ughhh.” It’s well choreographed and tasteful violence. Not violence for violence’s sake. Especially that final scene with Raven, I almost had to turn away a bit.
Some of you reading this might disagree with me, think I’m kind of a weenie or a prude, and maybe that’s true. But to simply kill people, and enjoy it, seems about as countercultural to a Teen Titans show as anything. At least six people died in this episode, four killed by “heroes,” and Robin definitely bloodily and seriously injures another ten or so in ways I’ve never seen before. Speaking of…
2.Looking up, glass, violence, and Dick what’re you doing?
So Robin absolutely fucks those drug dealing, child abusing, bad guys up. Like real bad. Like breaking a knife off in someone’s leg bad. Like scraping a dude’s face across a brick wall bad. Like breaking another guy’s car door window, dragging his face across the broken glass shards, and stomping his fucking head in bad. Does any of this sound very Dick Grayson-y to you? Didn’t think so. Now, I give him a little bit of a pass. He’s been without Batman a year, he’s pissed, he wants justice so he goes ahead and puts some dudes in the hospital. But man, there’s definitely a better way.
The worst part about this scene though, is that Robin shows up, jumps down, breaks a car, and everyone looks up looking for Batman and waiting for Batman to come get them. That’s a really cool moment, true to Batman and criminal’s fear of him, and true of most minor grunts easy dismissal of Robin. It’s a smart and clever choice. But dichotomized with more gratuitous violence just had me yelling “Come one!” There are little things like that in this episode that are awesome and super DC. Then there are the “Fuck Batman” things that you just shake your head at.
3. Kory Anders and the odd interlude in Vienna
Anna Diop’s portrayal of Starfire, or Kory Anders as we know her at this point, was solid. That costume that we’ve all kind of been shaking our heads at, makes sense here and looks really good and way better than any of the pictures have made it look. I just have no idea what any of her motivations are or what the heck she’s doing. She wakes up in the aftermath of a car crash in Vienna, has a penthouse, kills a man, is defintely implied to have ordered prostitutes to her room, and then also lights on fire and kills three more men. Now, the amnesiac sort of innocent, “I don’t know what’s going on,” seems pretty pure Starfire. This is mixed with the aura of “I could annihilate you in a heartbeat,” really well. It’s just that none her actions make sense. She has an American passport, kils a Russian named Konstantin Kovar (father of Russian hero Red Star in the comics) in Austria, and is seemingly going after Raven for some unkown reason. What motivation would an alien, amnesiac, princess have to get to a demon-possessed teenager? This B-plot only came together with the A-plot by virtue of Starfire hunting Raven, but that seems a weak thread. Nonetheless, I like Diop in the role, and her air with the character was really great. The costume will probably definitely change from what seems like a call girl, which is definitely for the better. I think Kory’s role can only go up from here. Which is promising.
Continued below4. But a glimmer
Here’s where I level with my, “I think this show has some merit,” claim.
There’s a scene in the middle of the episode where Dick is talking to his new detective partner Amy Rohrbach and she asks him what happened to his last partner in Gotham. We as the audience know he’s talking about Bruce, and he calls him a hero, says he solved all his problems with his fists, but that they had different ideas about how to do the job. It’s honest. We don’t exactly know what Dick and Bruce’s falling out in this universe was over, but the idea that they have different ideas of how to be vigilantes is true. Bruce wants people to fear him, Dick wants people to notice him. Bruce is a silent detective, Dick is a loud, quippy artist. They’re different. Dick said he left because he was becoming too much like Batman, which seems accurate to a comic book version of Dick, and probably true for all Robins.
Rohrbach, a character from Chuck Dixon and Greg Land’s “Nightwing” run who was Dick’s police detective partner in Bludhaven, runs with that. They make a connection and she realizes he has moments of not being an asshole. He smiles for the first time all episode. It’s a solid moment. It also sets up a possible romantic pairing of the two, which is typical Dick. This was the strongest part of the episode, and if we can get more of this going forward the show will be better for it.
5. Grunge, Hot Topic Horror, CGI Tigers and where do we go from here?
I have a lot of mostly random disparate thoughts so I’ll lay them all bare here. First, the music is real bad. Really, really bad faux angry grunge music. I can’t stand it when it plays. Second, all the Raven horror stuff is…interesting. They basically portray her as having an inner demon and second evil personality, which seems a way more simplified and weaker version of the character than the comic version. It’s also hella cheesy. It appears that this is what the rest of the season will center around. If that’s the case, boy this conflict is gonna be a slog to get through. They portray Raven as sort of “goth” and “edgy,” but Geoff Johns, Greg Berlanti, and Akiva Goldsman need to go back to the drawing board here. On the Johns note, why is this story set in Detroit? Probably only because Johns wrote it and he’s a Michigan guy. I looked up Traverse City, which is where Raven begins the episode, thinking it was a DC staple, and nope, it’s just a city in Michigan. This show is only gonna get more Johns’d. We’ll wait to see if that’s good or bad. Finally, we get a little Beast Boy at the end, robbing an electronic store in his CGI Tiger glory. It’s not great CGI, and I’m hoping Beast Boy is more than just a shitty, petty thief. But we’ll see.
So where do we go from here? Well, next episode we get Hawk and Dove, and maybe expand some more of the DCU connections beyond that. The international trailer of this show, the one for its Netflix debuts not in the States, made this show look somewhat more lighter and fun. I want that. I’m ready to get there. Otherwise you’re gonna listen to me be negative for thirteen weeks.
Have some more thoughts? Disagree with me? Head on over to the comments section, and come back next Monday as the DC Universe experiment continues.
