“Titans” Trailer – Review

Hello interweb, Nate here.  So I technically have time to do a full on review and explain segment on the recent Titans trailer, but I’m just too lazy to do it and I don’t care that much.  If the trailer looked any good and sparked any degree of passion in me, I might’ve dedicated more time to make this a good, strong, solid review and explain complete with a link to the video and scene-by-scene analysis…but it just looks so bad and I have very little good to say about the series.  So, Imma just rant for a bit and leave it at that.

 

My general impressions of the trailer just left me thinking that whoever is in charge of the series just doesn’t understand the Titans.  They don’t understand what makes the Titans in the comics good, they don’t understand what made the original cartoon any good, and they don’t understand what makes the team interesting with a dedicated fan following.  They think they can just slap poorly designed characters in a super edgy series and call it a day.  Most of the characters look way off or act completely out of character.  Plus, I’m not even sure what the story is or what the villain is going to be.

Robin is the only character who has a decent looking design.  The actor is hot as hell, which is good since he’s playing Dick Grayson, and the entire outfit looks like the classic Robin outfit but with darker colors and no pixie shorts.  The one issue I did have with Dick’s portrayal is that he was trying way too hard to be edgy.  Like, is this really suppose to be Dick or is this Jason Todd they’re trying to portray?  Now, I adore Jason Todd and he’s one of my favorite DC characters, but Jason and Dick are two different characters and this Robin is being written strangely more like Jason then Dick.  He straight up just yelled out “F*** Batman” when fighting some thugs.  Ah yes, f*** Batman.  Ya know, the guy who took you in when you’re parents died tragically.  The guy who raised you in his mansion and gave you access to millions of dollars.  The guy who trained you to become a motherf***ing SUPERHERO!!!  Yeah, f*** him!  Like, is this really Dick Grayson????

Starfire by far has the worst design.  I’m honestly perfectly fine with the actress and don’t really care that a black woman is playing the character (Starfire’s freaking orange, if you have an issue with a black woman playing the character…why?????  You can’t race bend a character with no human race!) but, to say this bluntly, she looks like a prostitute.  That coat, that dress that dress, those boots.  She looks like an actual prostitute.  Now quite frankly I don’t really want to get into any debates about the morality of sex workers and crap like that, but regardless of how you view that occupation, it’s clearly out of character for Starfire.  In the comics, she had an innocent sense of sexuality and even helped Dick Grayson with his sexual awakening since Marv Wolfman’s The New Teen Titans series did a lot of coming to age type things with Dick’s transitioning from Robin to Nightwing.  But Starfire’s quite an innocent character and I hope they don’t actually turn her into a prostitute in this series.  Like, why is it that when writers thing “woman in dark and gritty story”, they think prostitute?  Frank Miller did it with Catwoman in The Dark Knight Returns (and I’ve heard in other books).  Besides the prostitute thing, I don’t like her hair and I do wish they gave her green alien eyes and made her skin orange.  Like, I get it that people want more racial diversity in media and I’m fine with that, and I am fine with a black woman playing Starfire, but Starfire is orange in everything and it just feels disappointing to me that they didn’t even attempt to make her skin orange because a black woman is playing her.

Beast Boy just looks off to me.  In promo images, his skin looks normal but I think he did have green skin in the trailer.  So that I’m fine with, but here’s my concern…I’m worried that they won’t have the budget to turn Beast Boy into actual animals.  Instead, what I think they might do is turn Beast Boy into Vixen or Animal Man and make it so he can use the abilities of animals without actually turning into animals.  Which would be so lame considering how cool Beast Boy’s powers actually are.  Which is cooler?  Being able to turn into a gorilla, or gaining the strength of a gorilla?  Yeah, duh!

Raven…looks dumb.  Like, she barely resembles any previous versions of the character.  She reminds me more of like a 13 year old goth girl going through her occult phase instead of the Raven we know and love.  The whole horror-themed special effects are fine and I get where they’re going with it, but Raven’s usually not portrayed in that type of style so idk how I feel about it.  I also dislike how she’s actually 13.  Like, age her up guys!  WTF?!

I never liked Hawk and Dove so I don’t care about them.  No opinions.