Saturday 12 January 2019

TV Series Review: TITANS (Season 1)

DC Titans


Titans is a modern take on DC's classic Teen Titans comics. It's considerably darker and the tone reminds me quite a bit of Zach Snyder's Watchmen movie, but with an added injection of fun, dragging it from the pit of misery that so many DC titles have suffered in. It's still violent and dark, but the lighter moments make it really special.

The truth is that I'm not overly familiar with Teen Titans or, aside from Robin, any of these characters. I may have read a few comics a very long time ago, recognise their names and remember what they looked like and a few of their powers, but that's about it. For that reason, as a viewer I'm not sitting there drawing too many comparisons to the source material, so it's been nice to watch it without being distracted by fanboy baggage. In fairness, I'm normally quite chilled about re-imaginings of superheroes, providing there's still something left of their original identity.

SPOILERS AHEAD

I'll cut to the chase. Titans is the best thing I've seen from DC since The Dark Knight. It's absolutely brilliant. Robin normally sucks as a character, but this dark, tortured, ass-kicking version is awesome. We even get to meet Dick Grayson's replacement, new Robin, Jason Todd, who is pretty much a belligerent sociopath, and everything Dick feared becoming if he stayed as Robin.

The story arc revolves around a young girl called Rachel (Raven) who has a kind of evil power inside of her, and some organisation is after her for an unbeknownst reason. She ends up at a police station where she meets Detective Dick Grayson who decides to help her and keep her safe.

We meet loads of well-loved DC characters along the journey in wonderfully re-imagined forms such as Hawk & Dove, The Doom Patrol, Donna Troy (AKA Wondergirl) and of course, fellow future Titans, Starfire and Beast Boy. In the finale, we also get to see Batman in action, and although the scenes with him in are brief and don't reveal his face, I still got goosebumps. Bat-fleck doesn't come close, so hopefully the people involved in the next movie will take note.

There is a real depth to the characters in this show, thanks to some mature and detailed writing, not to mention excellent casting. The actors are all first class. Every single one of them. All of these factors have helped Titans to not only be a huge success, but to rekindle my enthusiasm for the DC Universe. That in itself is a huge achievement, because I haven't exactly been thrilled with any of the recent movies, and I've gotten bored of most of the TV shows, even the once great Arrow and The Flash. Titans was exactly the breath of fresh air DC's superheroes needed.


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