CLASH OF ‘TITANS’
Young superheroes confront grown-up evil in new series
These aren’t your kids’ Teen Titans.
These aren’t even your parents’ Teen Titans.
DC’s young heroes are best known from the comedic animated series “Teen Titans Go!,” running almost round-the-clock on Cartoon Network and the recent fulllength animated feature “Teen Titans Go! To the Movies.”
In the first live-action original series for the DC Universe streaming service, the “Titans” heroes prove they’re not anyone’s funny sidekicks.
Already renewed for a second season, the series from executive producers Akiva Goldsman, Geoff Johns and Greg Berlanti finds Rob- in, Starfire, Beast Boy and Raven coming together for the first time in a loose retelling of the story that launched the most successful run of the DC comic book in the ’80s from creators Marv Wolfman and
George Perez.
(Cyborg isn’t here because he’s still waiting for his own “Justice League” spinoff. He’ll be waiting a long time.)
In Michigan, Dick Grayson (Brenton Thwaites,
“Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales”) is a police detective who resents his foster father Bruce Wayne (you know him as Batman) and still fights crime as a costumed vigilante, searching for the people who murdered his parents, the trapeze artists known as the Flying Graysons.
Not so far away, teenager Rachel Roth (Teagan Croft, “Home and Away”) has an inner voice that is manifesting in scary ways. She terrifies her mom (Sherilyn Fenn, “Twin Peaks”).
“There is something inside of me. Something evil.” She’s not wrong.
In Ohio, a green tiger breaks into a video store and runs off with a video game. That’s your introduction to Gar Logan (Ryan Potter), Beast Boy.
In Austria, a woman by the name of Koriand’r (Anna Diop, “24: Legacy”) wakes up with no memory in a car next to a dead man. The next people she sees try to kill her.
Fanboys are most rankled by this radical re-imagining of Starfire -in the comics an alien princess who is a naif when it comes to earthly ways -- as a 6-foot-tall African-American woman with magenta hair. And it’s a case of reacting before seeing the finished result. Diop is the best part of this series.
The second episode introduces the scariest assassins outside of a horror film and takes a greater risk, introducing, of all the heroes in DC’s stable, Hawk and the Dove.
And it works. Alan Ritchson, so much fun on “Blood Drive,” gives muscle to Hawk’s fury. Minka Kelly (“Friday Night Lights”) captures Dove’s calming influence.
If you haven’t guessed, “Titans” is Marvel Netflix dark on steroids. Its heroes bleed and break and are often only a hair morally stronger than the threats they face. The series features plenty of f-bombs, grisly violence and a willingness to dispose of supporting characters as if they are yesterday’s newspaper. As uneven as it is, there’s enough here to make you want to see how crazy it all gets. As one cartoon Boy Wonder is fond of saying, “Titans Go!”