If you have been following this blog, there are two properties that I have been extremely critical of in the past few months: the first being Sony's new Spider-franchise film: Venom and the second being the first original show to be debuted on the DC Universe streaming app: Titans. While my qualms with Venom prior to release were, in my opinion, provent to come true, it's a bit of a different story when it comes to Titans.
The pilot of Titans was released this past Friday, the 12th of October on DC's new premium streaming app. Since it's release I have watched the episode twice and came to the same conclusion after both viewings. The pilot definately has it's ups and downs, but there are definitely more ups in that journey, making it at the very leasat an intriguing pilot that has convinced me to invest my time into watching it and giving it a chance. That being said, while it is a decent pilot, I did find the representation of the Titans, whether you compare it to the books or the animated series, to be wanting.
The Good
What exactly did I like about Titans? well for starters the narrative flows fairly decent, which, for a pilot on a super hero team show, is a fairly difficult task. They do a decent enough job of introducing characters and put them on the path of coming together. This is a team show, but they have not formed the team yet so there is a compelling story there. What I really makes the story strong is that while Rachel (Raven) may be the catalyst that seems to be driving everyone together, the heart of this team is Dick Grayson who has since left Gotham for over a year and is a Detective in Detroit. This leads me to my second point, which is how they portray Robin.
Robin is honestly the absolute BEST part of the series so far. If you couldn't tell that before by the fact that his design is actively the only one it looks like it had any effort put into it, you definately will be able to tell when you watch the show. Now if you hadn't noticed, I am talking about Robin here, not necessarily Dick Grayson, and I will get to that here in a bit because I do want to differentiate. Moving on though, watching the Robin fight scene was fairly enjoyable, however it shows that whoever is incharge of the marketing for this show is either a complete idiot, or is the biggest genius on the face of the planet as in the marketing campaign Robin is shown murdering several people in this fight, when in all actuality he kills noone at all (that being said I did find his fighting style to be a bit too brutal in this, but again, we will get to that more here in a bit). What I found most impressive though was that the ever infamous "Fuck Batman" line is actually fantastic in context.
Now before I move onto the bad I want to say two things, first off this is a pilot for a show listed to have well over 20 episodes, so there is not a lot of material I can really work with here. It is also important to note that the episode primarily focuses on Robin so that really comes to save the day for it's enjoyment, so keep that in mind while I talk about the bad.
The Bad
I think the most on the nose thing in this show that sticks out is the poor budget and lack of cinematic quality. I realize that on the CW and shows on television you have a pretty restrictive budget, but this is one of the HUGE advantages of doing a show on an internet streaming service. Marvel's Daredevil on netflix has set a gold standard of what Superhero shows SHOULD be and especially on premium platforms. This show feels cheap. Slow motion special effects from the Matrix era of films come back and dear god do Robins "R" shuriken look terrible in his fight against the thugs. Even the props look bad, when Robin extends his staff to take out two thugs at once it looked cheap. While I do realize that this show's effects budget probably cut into stuff like that because of Starfire, Beast Boy and Raven, the physicality of the show is where you can really suspend some disbelief. However, they drop the ball there. Then there is character portrayals.
Now as I had mentioned previously that I wanted to differentiate between Robin and Dick Grayson. This ultimately is why. The show's greatest sin so far lies in how it treats these characters. Now I can't say much about Beast Boy, as he is barely in this pilot at all, I have more than enough to say about the other characters, so since we are on the topic, let's talk about Dick Grayson. While I understand that Dick is clearly in the transition between Robin and Nightwing, I hate that he feels so joyless. Sure there have been dark periods for Dick, where he has displayed bouts of angst, but that has never stopped him from cracking jokes and having a wry smile. Then you get into the sheer brutality he displays as Robin. This no longer feels like Dick Grayson.This feels like Jason Todd's Red Hood. The other characters are even worse off. Rachel who is supposed to become Raven, has been written horribly and the girl who portrays her accompanies the terrible writing with an even worse performance. It's sad because in the books and the show Raven is this Phoenix like character that is able to control her abilities, but in order to do so she has to exhibit immense ammounts of control over her emotions. Titans has reduced her to a hot topic poster child of instability and that really sucks. Then there is Starfire. Poor Starfire suffers worst of all as they took this charming character with such a rich and badass backstory and use literally none of it. Instead Korriand'r is Korry Anders and her whole plot feels like a cheap imitation of The Bourne Identity as she is on an amnesia fueled search for who she is and what exactly she is doing in Central Europe. Sadly it seems they spent about as much time trying to write this character right as they did try and give her a decent looking design.
The Overview
It's important to remember that this episode is a pilot and as such there is a lot of room for it to go either way from here. I have said a lot about this show recently, most of it negative, but after watching this pilot I do hope the show develops these characters into truer representations of what they are in the books. Ultimately the fate of this show will depend on how these characters develop throughout the season. As it stands, it's a far cry from perfect and I am of the opinion that this should have been a Red Hood and the Outlaws show instead of a Teen Titans show. Ultimately though, it will all be determined as the series continues throughout the year. I give the pilot of Titans a 7/10, and I to any who are looking at potentially watching this series or invest in the DC Universe streaming app, I'd wait until there are more episodes. As for me I will continue to watch the series as it releases a new episode weekly and will give an update after I have watched 10 episodes.
This has been another edition of Comic Relief! I hope you enjoyed and we will see you again soon!
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