Titans Discussion

[BaneShake]

With the arrival of the first Titans trailer, I think it's time we start to discuss the show.

...and I'm not digging it so far. The violence looks like it wants to be Watchmen without understanding what Watchmen was trying to say about violence. Dick Grayson and Dove particularly seem to be out-of-character from what we get to see here; especially since the general public last saw Robin in live-action in Batman and Robin, this interpretation looks like it could very well just leave general audiences with another bad taste in their mouths towards him, which is the last thing anyone wants before the eventual Nightwing movie that's very early in development.

That being said, Raven's parts seem to be the strongest points in the trailer. I'm guessing the horror aspects involving her, and Trigon's demonic influence, could actually be decent.

[Space Police XVIII]

Leaving Starfire mostly out of it was a wise move.

 

it took some time to come up with something nice to say and I am proud of the results

[Master_Data]

Well...it's definitely a different take on the Teen Titans. Not sure they had this in mind when they first published the comic...

It might be good. It's DC's version of Marvel's Netflix universe. We'll see how it plays out - they can and may well will edit the show based on the initial reaction to the trailer. I'm more optimistic about it.

[samurai-turtle]

Can we talk about Teen Titans Go: The Movie instead? That is look surprisingly good for a kids movie. 

Now say something inappropriate Deadpool! 

[Agent Kallus]

Did they make this just to prove that ttg isn't the worst version of these characters. I still want it to be good but my hope is fading. Also Dick is acting like a dick or a badly make Jason Todd wannabe.

[BaneShake]

18 hours ago, Space Police XVIII said:

Leaving Starfire mostly out of it was a wise move.

 

it took some time to come up with something nice to say and I am proud of the results

Considering how most people are reacting to her visual design, I feel like this was intentional on their part. Someone in the process that would lessen negative response. I also appreciate your tiny words.

 

14 hours ago, Master_Data said:

We'll see how it plays out - they can and may well will edit the show based on the initial reaction to the trailer. I'm more optimistic about it.

That is fair. TV shows do often shoot stuff just for the first trailer (i.e. Legends of Tomorrow) and not for the rest. I feel like this is more official footage, but that could be a possibility.

 

10 hours ago, samurai-turtle said:

Can we talk about Teen Titans Go: The Movie instead? That is look surprisingly good for a kids movie. 

Ya know, if this turns out the way I think it will, I will be waaaaaay less harsh on TTG in the future.

 

4 hours ago, Agent Kallus said:

Did they make this just to prove that ttg isn't the worst version of these characters. I still want it to be good but my hope is fading. Also Dick is acting like a dick or a badly make Jason Todd wannabe.

I know. Seeing Dick killing a group of thugs feels more blasphemous than every time the movies always make Batman kill. Dick Grayson is supposed to be one of the biggest hearts and best uniting hero in the DC universe; he always says that Batman took him in so he could turn out better than Batman in response to his trauma. This is way out of line. #NotMyDick

 

Also, Hawk and Dove. Hawk would make sense with the slow-mo harsh violence, but Dove is supposed to be all about peace and pacifism when possible. Seeing her brutalize people just seems weird.

[NXS7]

14 hours ago, Agent Kallus said:

Did they make this just to prove that ttg isn't the worst version of these characters. I still want it to be good but my hope is fading. Also Dick is acting like a dick or a badly make Jason Todd wannabe.

The fact that the entire premise of the Teen Titans Go movie is that they want to prove they're worthy of their own movie, this series will do the Titans some good. Showing to (at least the adult fanbase) audience that they can be more than a terribly campy cartoon.

I was out at a fancy restaurant (KFC) when it dropped, me and my friends put it on, I almost chocked on my food when Robin said "@#?& Batman". I knew it would be dark, but I didnt expect that at ALL!

[x105Black]

Interesting.  Didn't really care for that depiction of Raven, I prefer her to be more sardonic rather than just sad like she is here.  Still, might be cool.

Doubt I will enjoy it as much as Teen Titans Go, though.

[Digger of Bricks]

Eh, the violence/gore/horror seen in this teaser just looks embarrassingly absurd, as if they're trying really hard to try and provoke some sort of shocked reaction from non-DC fans and general audiences as so to generate publicity, whether it be good or bad.  

[Robert8]

What's up wih "F*** Batman" thing???

Dick was like the coolest of all the Robins, right?

Why is he acting like that other not-so-cool Robin who became a murderer?

 

 

Also, that looks cheap AF. This almost looks fanmade, right? Like a bunch of cosplayers. Starfire almost looks like a streetwalker. Though I have to admit Robin looks pretty good. Both in costume and as a civilian

Edited July 21, 2018 by Robert8

[samurai-turtle]

23 hours ago, Robert8 said:

Also, that looks cheap AF. This almost looks fanmade, right? Like a bunch of cosplayers. Starfire almost looks like a streetwalker. 

That is funny, I heard cosplayers look better than this stuff. And frankly some of them do look like a better Starfire than what is shown here. Plus we should keep in mind that their budget is less than Hollywood's budget. 

I do think their is to much of a Michael Bay mind set with Hollywood. "People are going to watch it no matter what I do with the source material. So I can do whatever I want with this project, I was never a fan of the source material." That kind of mind set is going to start to bite them in back side. I do think it already started with movies like Justice League and Solo: A Star Wars Story. I also feel the next "victim" could be the Bumblebee movie. At first it looks cool but then the other Bayformers movie starts to come back into your current mind set. And those five movies are a giant mess. Part of me wonders, how so many of those movies were made. I have no desire to ever watch watch them again and frankly I can barely remember any of the "plot" or "story" of those movies. When I first seen the trailers for these movies I thought these are not Transformers. They look like giant metal messes. I was not expecting G1 clone stuff. But at the same time I like to look at them and guess on how they could change forms. Not scratch my head and be dumbfounded on how they change forms. 

P.S. Sorry for any tangent. But at the same time I do see an example of the Titans problem in my other example. 

[PicnicBasketSam]

I've never watched a single thing related to the Teen Titans except the trailers for Teen Titans Go! To The Movies, which honestly looks like it might be a lot of fun. This show looks absolutely dreadful, though. It's almost embarrassing how hard they're trying to make this look mature and edgy, with completely random, pointless, and over-the-top swearing and violence.  The character design is inexplicably terrible (and I imagine everything relating to Beast Boy turning into animals will have absolutely horrible CGI) and the dialogue is worse than anything Zack Snyder has ever written. It also looks really low-budget, as in, I think the trailer for Godzilla: King of the Monsters cost more to produce than this entire show did. I understand a TV series exclusively for a streaming platform can't have that big of a budget, but this looks like an Asylum Films knockoff of actual superhero media, even down to the text that appears in the trailer.

If this achieves notoriety when it's released I suspect it will be thoroughly lampooned by stuff like Deadpool or Teen Titans Go!

[BaneShake]

I predict this won't be too well-received. I have noticed that there have been a vocal minority defending it tooth-and-nail, however, and as someone who has been willing to defend Suicide Squad, I can at least appreciate that. Anyone who is looking forward to this, what are your thoughts on the matter? I'd love to see the opposite arguments here.

[NXS7]

11 hours ago, BaneShake said:

I predict this won't be too well-received. I have noticed that there have been a vocal minority defending it tooth-and-nail, however, and as someone who has been willing to defend Suicide Squad, I can at least appreciate that. Anyone who is looking forward to this, what are your thoughts on the matter? I'd love to see the opposite arguments here.

Im just looking forwards to seeing a live action Teen Titans. Maybe they don't look comic accurate, but I don't care, and I'm not going to say that this trailer looks bad therefore the series will flop. What I want to see is the Titans exist in this story, which doesn't have to be dependant on how they are in comics or other media, it is its own thing. The fact that its darker as well intrigues me, especially as the trailer shone on the horror aspect

[Kintobor]

The first five seconds of the trailer had my brother and I laughing hysterically. "This trailer has been rated MA-18" Oh, so it's going to be that kind of a show? 

I don't remember the Teen Titans being violent or edgy, so when that came up, I immediately knew that what I was about to watch was going to be hysterically missing the tone of the Teen Titans, and it did not disappoint! 

Job well done, DC, I haven't had a laugh that hard in awhile! 

[Ceroknight]

Jason Todd is going to be in this!

I'm looking forward to do this personally.

[BaneShake]

New trailer just dropped (for anyone wondering about the Netflix stuff, it's going to be on Netflix outside of the US and China).

This one is definitely put together better than the first one. I'm able to find a little more optimism than before. Granted, it's more of an "Arrow course-corrected into a better show after the first 3rd of season one" optimism, but hey, better than nothing. Some of the costuming still lacks, and some of the same problems about gratuitous violence are still unclear, but at least they didn't make this one look "edgelord" this time.

[Dr.Cogg]

After watching that new trailer, it still looks terrible .

[BaneShake]

Reviews are in. Metacritic has it at a mediocre 55 out of 100 average, and Rotten Tomatoes has a warmer 76% fresh with a 6.36 out of 10 average score. After the original trailer, I would have been surprised, but after most recent one I posted on here, it sounds about right. I don't have DC's streaming service yet, since I've been busy getting established in a new job, but (hopefully soon) I will be setting one up and going into my thoughts on here after each episode. If anyone wants to beat me to it, I'd certainly like to hear some opinions on here from you guys as well.

[NXS7]

9 hours ago, BaneShake said:

Reviews are in. Metacritic has it at a mediocre 55 out of 100 average, and Rotten Tomatoes has a warmer 76% fresh with a 6.36 out of 10 average score. After the original trailer, I would have been surprised, but after most recent one I posted on here, it sounds about right. I don't have DC's streaming service yet, since I've been busy getting established in a new job, but (hopefully soon) I will be setting one up and going into my thoughts on here after each episode. If anyone wants to beat me to it, I'd certainly like to hear some opinions on here from you guys as well.

I've watched it, I really enjoyed it and can't wait to see what happens next. Robin and Raven were the key characters, Raven is... well just a very scary child and Robin, both in and out of the suit is just (at least in my opinion) such an awesome interpretation. Robin is a badass while Dick is this humourous and charismatic cop, who's also a bit of megablock, but a loveable megablock

Starfire's story seems rather confusing, but this will obviously be picked up in future episodes, she's actually a cool interpretation. She seems somewhat so innocent, but also very powerful

The tone of the series isn't completely dark like the first trailer teased it would be, but there are some gory moments, particularly when Robin fights the guys in the alleyway. So it's not completely changing the characters to make them all dark, it's just an interpretation of the characters, but like with more blood and stuff

[BaneShake]

4 hours ago, Quicksilver838 said:

I've watched it, I really enjoyed it and can't wait to see what happens next. Robin and Raven were the key characters, Raven is... well just a very scary child and Robin, both in and out of the suit is just (at least in my opinion) such an awesome interpretation. Robin is a badass while Dick is this humourous and charismatic cop, who's also a bit of megablock, but a loveable megablock

Starfire's story seems rather confusing, but this will obviously be picked up in future episodes, she's actually a cool interpretation. She seems somewhat so innocent, but also very powerful

The tone of the series isn't completely dark like the first trailer teased it would be, but there are some gory moments, particularly when Robin fights the guys in the alleyway. So it's not completely changing the characters to make them all dark, it's just an interpretation of the characters, but like with more blood and stuff

Good to know. I'm always a little more eager to watch something when I've spoken to someone who liked it.

[NXS7]

2 hours ago, BaneShake said:

Good to know. I'm always a little more eager to watch something when I've spoken to someone who liked it.

Glad I could help, I just really hope that people don't judge a book by it's cover (judge the series by the trailer) and actually give it a chance

[BaneShake]

Finally got around to setting up my DC Universe account, and watched the first episode. All in all, I agree that it was actually a solid episode. Robin's fighting still seemed questionably brutal with an apparent neck-stabbing in the mix, but it was definitely made to look much worse back in that first trailer (the bit with the car window still made me actively wince, mind you). Still, I can see what the brutality was actually going for this time around.

My only hesitation currently is just how out-of-character Starfire seems right now; that being said, it may just be because she's currently amnesiac, but seeing her actively snap a beaten man's neck seemed unfitting. I'll wait to pass judgement until I know more, but sheesh. She seems a little psychotic.

All in all, though, I look forward to watching more. I definitely loved the horror getting played up the way it was.

[BaneShake]

Watched episode 2. All the focus was between Dick, Rachel, and newly introduced Hawk and Dove. Neither Starfire or Beast Boy show up, although as well-focused as the episode is, I can't complain at all. The storytelling was actually quite organic here, with many details left to implication instead of blatant exposition dump like a lot of shows lean on, which legitimately shocked me. 

A few thoughts:

Alfred('s voice) gets a small appearance, which is nice, since I didn't think we'd see anything Alfred related this early on. I approve.

Despite Hawk being all about fighting, per his character, we actually don't see a lot of him fighting onscreen, so that was interesting.

The villains here, the Nuclear Family, had quite a good introductory scene, although I was a little puzzled, because (without going into spoilers), they got information out of someone that I didn't think was supposed to have that information. Maybe that will get cleared up in the next episode, but I am currently perplexed.

A couple of times, especially in the flashback fight scene, some of the blood squib effects were not very believable. Later on is mostly better, but not 100%.

Still a very interesting episode though. They have my attention, which is good, because Black Lightning finally lost my attention earlier this season and I wanted something else to watch in its stead.

[BaneShake]

Through episode 3. Decent, although a lot of the first half of the episode feels like it was made of scenes I've seen done elsewhere, in particular a brief scene where Starfire beats up a guy and his thugs harassing the waitress in a small diner, which didn't really even add anything to the plot. Dick's childhood scenes also were exactly what we'd already come to expect, and though they did come around to connect to the present-day stuff with Rachel, they didn't really do anything they felt essential to the plot. The second half picks up the slack, though, with more (great) scenes involving the Nuclear Family, and every scene with the Nun were extremely compelling; both of these were highly strengthened by brilliant musical scores.

A few thoughts:

Garfield just sort of showed up, conveniently, to interact with Rachel briefly, only to do nothing else at all in the episode. I suspect it is so that later on, she can recognize him to bring him in to the fold more easily than if he knew nobody else in the main roster, but it still felt pretty out-of-nowhere.

Starfire still doesn't feel like Starfire should, I think. Now, for the role the writers want her to play, the actress is doing a very good job, and near the end there was a hint of a possibility that she'll be eased into what we expect her to be like, when her memories are back, but I still can't guarantee it.

Dick, even being in the dark place he is, definitely is feeling like a proper live-action Dick Grayson, no doubt on the strength of the actor himself. I wasn't as impressed by the kid actor of him in the flashbacks, but at least he looks plausibly like the older version, so I'll let it slide. I really like the dialogue-free scene of him just viewing the crime scene in this episode.

Ouch. That fork.

As before, the horror is reaaaally compelling, since we don't often get true horror played into Super Hero media. I'm so down for more.