DC’s Titans Gets Its First Trailer and It’s Not Very Good

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Earlier this year DC announced that the Teen Titans will finally make their way to the small screen as part of a new series simply known as Titans. Next to the Justice League, the Teen Titans are arguably the most popular and beloved group of superheroes from DC Comics. It goes without saying that a lot of people were very excited about this new series. Probably not for much longer, though. Unfortunately, it looks like fans will be disappointed because the first trailer for Titans looks pretty bad.

The Titans trailer was showcased earlier today at San Diego Comic-Con 2018 and carries DC’s signature style. That’s to say it’s dark, gritty, bloody, and completely unrepresentative of the Teen Titans as depicted in the comics or the 2003-2006 animated series. Granted, the trailer is a slight improvement over the leaked set pictures that came out back in April. But not by much. Check it out for yourself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PPofXaJ4go

Out With the Old, In With the Awful

Right off the bat, we get a sense that the trailer, and perhaps the series as a whole, will focus primarily on Raven. Nothing wrong with that, however, what we have here is a Raven that seems less goth and more emo. Not good. Titans will apparently not go for the intimidating and brooding Raven we all know all love. Rather, we get a helpless young girl that can’t control her powers yet. Well, at least her costume is fairly decent so there’s that.

Next off, the trailer introduces Robin (Dick Grayson). Robin seems to be an adult, and yet, hasn’t taken up the mantle of Nightwing. There’s clearly an age inconsistency here but alright. What’s even stranger, though, is that the Titans version of Robin seems to hate Batman and has no problem killing people. That’s quite a bit departure from the original character and seems closer to the Jason Todd version of Robin.

As many have pointed out, it’s starting to look like the folks over at DC don’t bother to read their own comics anymore. Robin’s costume does look okay(ish) in Titans but his depiction as a bloodthirsty maniac will surely not sit well with the fans.

And It Only Goes Downhill From Here

Then, there’s Starfire. There’s not much to say here other than the obvious she looks completely ridiculous. The fact that she’s African-American (for some reason) was bound to upset some people but that’s actually not that relevant in the grand scheme of things. DC could have made an African-American actress look like Starfire but they just didn’t want to.

The Titans version of Starfire would have looked bad even back in the 90s. The hair, the costume, the eyes, pretty much everything. They even changed her powers, which doesn’t make any sense. At no point in the comics was Starfire able to control fire in spite of her name, but it looks like she does now.

As for the other characters we expected to see, the Titans trailer doesn’t really show much else. There’s no Cyborg and we only get a short glimpse of Beast Boy. Frankly, he just looks like a regular kid with neon green hair. Judging by what we’ve seen so far, it’s very unlikely that Beast Boy will have his iconic transformation powers in Titans. That sort of CGI is expensive and it doesn’t look like the show can afford it.

We also see Hawk and Dove for a short second. These two aren’t actually full-fledged members of the Teen Titans but it looks like they might play an important role in the show. Their costumes are actually not that bad all things considered. So why didn’t they make good costumes for everyone? I guess we’ll never know.

All and all, Titans doesn’t look very promising, at least if this trailer is anything to go by. The good news is that the show doesn’t have a release date yet so maybe they’re still working on the main characters. Hopefully. Titans will only be available to watch via DC Universe, a new streaming platform that launches this fall. The platform will feature a subscription-based model and will set you back $8 a month.

Jason Moth

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