When dads go bad
How ‘Teen Titans Go! to the Movies’ turned Will Arnett into a villain (and producer)
A ctor Will Arnett says that usually, when his young sons Archie and Abel are watching one of their shows, he tunes it out. It’s kid stuff, background noise, the kind of TV that 9- and 7-year-old boys are into, but their dad? Eh, not so much.
Then one day, as the boys watched “Teen Titans Go!” something caught his attention: The jokes in the superhero comedy on Cartoon Network were really, really funny.
“I was like, ‘This is really great,’” Arnett says. “The truth is, I wouldn’t be part of this movie if it wasn’t for my kids.”
That movie is “Teen Titans Go! To the Movies,” an animated feature in which Arnett stars as Slade, the arch-villain and nemesis of the Teen Titans, the oddball young crimefighters led by Robin, the Boy Wonder himself, Batman’s teen sidekick.
“I actually called over to the show and tried to meet with (the showrunners),” Arnett says. “And the guy who is now my partner, Sam Register, went, ‘Nice try, you can’t steal them. I know you want to poach these writers, but we’d actually like to make a Teen Titans movie — do you want to help us?’
“And I said, ‘Yes I do!’ “says Arnett, who ended up not just acting in the movie but also signing on as a producer with Register, the president of Warner Bros. Animation.
In the movie, Robin and the Teen Titans are dismayed that every single other person in the superhero universe is getting their own movie, all the way down to Batman’s butler, Alfred. But as desperately as they want their own film — and truthfully, it’s more Robin than his friends Beast Boy, Starfire, Cyborg and Raven — Hollywood dismisses them as sidekicks, not heroes, and thus unworthy of a movie.
But when they realize that heroes always have a nemesis, and pick Slade to be theirs, things start to change, though not in the way they expect. And because a movie about juveniles needs humor to match, there are fart jokes. Really good ones.
Every superhero you can imagine, and some you’ve probably forgotten about, shows up in the film — Nicolas Cage is the voice of Superman, Jimmy Kimmel does Batman, singer Halsey is Wonder Woman, and rapper Lil Yachty is Green Lantern — and an animated Stan Lee is borrowed from Marvel for a parody bit on his endless cameos in that cinematic universe.
Arnett, whose live-action roles include such TV series as “Arrested Development” and “A Series of Unfortunate Events,” has done a ton of animated voice acting, including the TV series “Bojack Horseman” and the role of Batman in various iterations of “The Lego Movie” franchise.
“With something like Slade, he’s an arch-villain who fashions himself the kind of villain who can take over the world, and so he’s going to be bombastic and be kind of bigger than life,” he says. “But also there can be a tinge of doubt in there, almost like it’s always on the verge of teetering off the cliff.”
Finding those quirks in an over-the-top animated character is fun, Arnett says. When he played the banker in “Despicable Me” he decided that character should “sound like every time he said the word ‘money’ he was going to eat money, almost like he was salivating.
“In (‘The Lego Batman Movie’), we thought it was funny that, as the voices got darker and darker in the live-action ‘Batman,’ what would it sound like if a guy spoke like that all the time?” he says. “No matter what. Even in the most emotional moments, if he was always that guy. That’s funny to me.”
Scott Menville, who voices Robin in the “Teen Titans” movie as well as in two different TV series on the crime-fighting teens, says that’s part of the key — finding a small part of a character and then homing in on what kind of humor can come of it.
“Sometimes when you audition you’ll be given a lot of description of the character or a rendering of the character,” Menville says. “Sometimes you’re really not given anything. Sometimes I’ll create a spontaneous voice that I’ve never done before, or I’ll pull something out of the archives of my brain and go, ‘Oh, this is like that weird guy I met that time, and I filed his voice away.’ “
For Robin, the voice is fairly close to his own, Menville says.
“It was pretty much my voice just pitched up a little higher and younger,” he says. “The wonderful (voice director) Andrea Romano said, ‘I love what you’re doing but can you add a little bit of Clint Eastwood to it?’ “Voila, a character was born. While Arnett has often played characters whose arrogance masked an insecurity — think Gob on “Arrested Development” — he says he’s moved away from that for live action, though he still finds it useful in creating animated characters such as Slade.
“I find it funny with a character who comes across overly confident, and then you kind of see a sliver of doubt, and potentially they’re questioning the very thing they seem confident about,” he says. “Or they’re not really as smart as they should be.
“That’s always sort of a very magical little space in terms of comedy,” Arnett says. “That makes me laugh.”
The “Teen Titans” movie, as well as the Lego movies in which he’s acted, finds a similar sweet spot, he says.
“I love the idea of taking this structure, taking these characters that are so clearly defined and beloved and revered — and that people take very seriously — and kind of messing with what we know about them. Poking fun not just at the character but at the very structure of it and its very existence.”
It’s a fun and funny movie, Arnett says, and best of all, his kids love it.
“Watching their faces as they enjoy the film was unbelievably rewarding to me,” he says. “Really truly, truly. That they introduced me to the show, and then I got to help put this movie together and see them enjoy it? It’s a win for me.”