Titans: "Titans" (Review)

Titans (2018)

So I fully embraced my millennial status the other week and decided to drop $7.99 per month on DC Universe, DC Entertainment's new video on demand service. My decision to do so was made primarily out of nostalgia, as the service offers on demand streaming of some of the cartoons of my childhood, like the groundbreaking Batman: The Animated Series, as well as Teen Titans, Batman Beyond, and Justice League. I knew that DC Universe was going to feature its own live action shows, à la Netflix, and the first of these shows, Titans, recently launched. I had an hour to kill the other day and decided to give the first episode (also titled 'Titans" because reasons) a shot.

I had no real expectations going into the episode. The most I'd heard about Titans was some bad press in the months leading up to its release, hearing most frequently that the previews just made the show seem "too dark." I don't understand this logic when it comes to comic books and their adaptations. Comics deal with some of the darkest content I've ever read. So those initial reactions to the trailers weren't enough to deter me from viewing. Having viewed the episode, though, I have to admit that the show is surprisingly dark. Perhaps it's because I grew up with the cartoon versions of these characters that I think this, but some of the content is quite adult in nature.

This isn't a criticism, to be sure. It could become one, depending on how much the show indulges in violence and sexual content. In the first episode, at least, the fine line between too much and thematically appropriate is walked admirably. There is blood spray when someone is punched or shot that isn't exactly common in most primetime television shows. In Titans, this isn't excessive, but it does serve as a reminder that heroes don't necessarily enjoy punching bad guys, because it requires them to get their hands dirty. It's one thing to watch a hero beat up the bad men, deliver a quip, and then fly away. It's a wholly other thing to watch the hero have to go home and clean the blood from his suit, and this is the course that Titans charts very early on.

Dick Grayson (Brenton Thwaites) was trained to be Robin by Batman. But, at some point in the past, Dick didn't like what he was becoming while in Batman's shadow, so he left his mentor behind to carve out a life of his own as a detective in Detroit. While in Detroit, he comes across a girl named Rachel Roth (Teagan Croft), who is on the run and has some kind of dark entity inhabiting her body. Rachel has seen Dick in her dreams, and when she recognizes him she becomes convinced that they were meant to find each other. On the other side of the world, in Austria, a woman named Kory Anders (Anna Diop) awakens in a crashed car with no memory of who she is. She's got the European mob on her tail, and as she begins piecing things back together, she learns that she, too, is hunting Rachel Roth, for reasons unknown.

Titans really is an ensemble show, with no one clear cut main character. Anyone familiar with the Teen Titans comics or cartoons understands that these three characters are central players on the titular superhero team. Dick is Robin, Rachel is the empath called Raven, and Kory Anders is actually the alien known as Starfire. A fourth character, Beast Boy (Ryan Potter), is only glimpsed in the episode's closing moments. One can reasonably assume that all these characters will eventually come together as a group to combat the mysterious villains of the series. But, for now, the characters are scattered across the world, and the story unfurls as a mystery that raises more questions than it supplies answers.

To be completely fair, the show's darker tone is actually appropriate, given the story that the writers have chosen to tackle. Rachel is clearly being set up as the driving narrative force. Everyone seems to want her for their own reasons. In a shocking moment early in the episode, Rachel learns that the woman she's always believed to be her mother actually isn't—a split second before that woman is killed in front of her. On the run, Rachel is confused, hurt, and alone. To go from this kind of darkness (a darkness which is present in the character even in the comics, mind you) to puns and quips would be tonally uneven. Instead, the writers choose to double down on the dark and mysterious, and the end result is a compelling hour of viewing, tinged with elements of horror, that manages to reinvent these characters in new and interesting ways, which is the secret ingredient to any adaptation.

The thing that surprised me most was the acting. It is simply top notch. These are younger actors and actresses carrying the narrative weight of a really mature show. Teagan Croft and Anna Diop deliver breakout performances as the desperate Rachel and stunning-but-deadly Kory, respectively. Brenton Thwaites turns Dick Grayson into a haunted, devastated figure trying to recover from the trauma of having lived in the shadow of the Bat. It's too early to tell where things are going to go from here. But for someone like me, who has been accustomed to these characters for years, the unpredictability is intriguing, wholly unexpected, and very much welcome.

I haven't dipped into their world since 2003's Teen Titans cartoon. Now, over a decade later, I find the characters all grown up and trying to deal with personal issues that someone should have flagged for them years ago. In a way, it's as if they have grown up alongside me, and now we're starting to reconnect, all older and probably a bit more jaded than we'd like to admit, trying to make sense of personal traumas and failed relationships, looking for ways forward that allow us to avoid punching as many people in the face as we did in the past.