Titan’s review: It’s a love letter to the weirdness of comic books spattered in CGI bloo

“Fuck Batman.” As introductions go, it’s a strong one. This line, featured heavily in the trailers for the DC Universe streaming service’s first home-grown production,Titans, the first of DC Universe’s live-action original shows, is complete.

We’ve had a little time to sit on it and think about it. Titans is an interesting show, for sure, but it is at odds with itself, representing the best and worst of what DC TV can do.

Culturedemandsgeeks had a good time watching it, but DC has a lot of work to do for the second season to both be good and feel connected to this show.

This first season did a lot of work in trying to establish where Titans could go, introducing us to four birds, a space alien, a little green man, an Amazonian, and a whole separate show. That’s a lot to fit into one season.

While the show is about the Titans as a group, this season really belongs to Raven and Robin. The former is just coming into her own at 14-years-old and it would be a stretch to even call what she has powers. It’s just darkness lashing out from her. Robin – Dick Grayson – meanwhile, has expert combat training, mental conditioning, and even the tolerance to resist drugging. And yet, he’s not that far off from Raven. When the mask goes on, he can barely control his rage, and anyone he perceives as a criminal is simply a target for him to unleash his violence on.

Titans has one messed up Dick. Detective Grayson, as he calls himself these days, is estranged from his adopted Bat-father Bruce Wayne and working as a detective in Detroit and donning the rubber-suit in the night fighting a trove of bad guys.

Dick’s day job leads him to Rachel (Teagan Croft), a raven-haired young girl whose mother is murdered by a doomsday cult. (We watch two sets of parents die within the first ten minutes of the pilot. Titans, baby.) The cult isn’t so much interested in Rachel as they are her inner demon alter-ego, who chides Rachel in mirror reflections and car windows, occasionally bursting out of her body in moments of fear or rage.

Rachel’s tragic life events that set up Titans‘ noir detective genre leanings. After being outed as “special,” she soon finds herself in the mildly empathetic crosshairs of Detective Dick Grayson. The meaty comic hook with Dick is that he’s no longer in cahoots with Bruce Wayne or Batman, and directs quite a bit of residual indignation and ill will at his former mentor.

Meanwhile, in a completely different show, Koriand’r wakes up bloodied in a car outside Austria with no memory of who she is other than A) She has the ability to become the living flame, burning people to a crisp, and B) She is searching for Rachel.

The major players are all here – Dick Grayson’s Robin, Raven, Beast Boy, Starfire, even the Donna Troy Wonder Girl. Coming along for the ride are Hawk and Dove, the Doom Patrol, and the Jason Todd Robin, in eleven episodes of furious action and intense drama.

Titans serves as an origin tale for a group that – and this is no real spoiler – doesn’t even become a group by the season finale, but that puts all its pieces on the board, ready to move them into position for almost forty years of continuous Titans – Teen or otherwise – storytelling, ripe for on-screen exploitation.

As good as Titans have been during its first season, and I do believe that the balance of these episodes has been very good, with moments that approach greatness, it really hasn’t done itself any favors. From the first trailer, Titans have been a little…confusing.

That early footage made it seem like the series was going to lean into the worst instincts of the early DCEU, or that the show was trying far too hard to distinguish itself as a piece of “adult” television, along the lines of the Marvel Netflix shows.

The awkward first episode aside, and accounting for a misstep here and there, that isn’t the case at all. In fact, Titans have been a surprisingly character-focused affair, with perfect casting.

The show was developed by big-time DC comic book writer Geoff Johns, Arrowverse-alumni Gregg Berlanti, and veteran movie screenwriter Akiva Goldman (who won the Golden Raspberry for his Batman & Robin script, but don’t let that put you off).

The eleven episodes are written by a mixed writing team with plenty of TV experience and helmed mostly by untested directors with a background in cinematography. But its problems, notably an inability to stay on track with its main story for more than an episode at a time, and its occasional reliance on shock value violence to drive home its point.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

If you’re a fan of the characters from the comics or—maybe even more likely—the animated series Teen Titans or Teen Titans Go!, I can’t see you enjoying Titans! But DC Universe’s dark flagship series Titans, however, delivers an enjoyably bizarre genre mash-up of moody noir, psychological horror, and bloody-knuckle action. gritty down-to-earth series, then this show is for you!

4/5 STARS

STARRING: BRENTON THWAITES, ANNA DIOP, TEAGAN CROFT, RYAN POTTER| EPISODES REVIEWED: 1 – 11 (OF 11) | WHERE TO WATCH: NETFLIX | RELEASE DATE: JANUARY 11TH