TITANS
F*@K BatmanW W W.SCI FI N OW.CO.U K
2018 HAS BEEN A PRETTY
MOMENTOUS YEAR FOR
THE TEEN TITANS. Not only did
they get their fi rst big screen appearance
in Teen Titans GO! To The Movies, but they
also made their fi rst live action appearance
on television, following on from two successful
animated series. It took them 54 years, but
they’ve fi nally made it. Although, to be more
accurate, it’s taken them 38 years – that’s when
George Perez and Marv Wolfman’s New Teen
Titans debuted, creating characters including
Starfi re and Raven, and bringing in former Doom
Patrol member Beast Boy, all of whom play a major
part in Titans. That’s when the Titans as we know
them truly came to life, rounded out by Dick Grayson’s
Robin (who leads the team in the live action series),
Cyborg (mysteriously absent from the show – for now...)
and Donna Troy’s Wonder Girl (who is set to make an
appearance in the show).
Until now, the Teen Titans have been one of DC’s most
noticeably and bewilderingly under-utilised properties, so
it only seems fair that they got the big launch they deserved,
heading up a raft of original programmes on DC Universe in
the US. The reason it took so long essentially boils down to one
thing: Dick Grayson. As Robin/Nightwing, Dick is one of DC’s
bona fi de leading men, and DC was reluctant to give him away
to a TV show when they might want to use him in fi lm. “But Geoff
[Johns, then CCO of DC Entertainment] grabbed Robin and held
him,” explains Titans’ executive producer Akiva Goldsman. “Holding
onto Dick Grayson for a TV show was not exactly [DC’s] favourite
idea, but that was really Geoff just protecting it. We have a startling
number of characters, with one noticeable absence in Cyborg... We’re
guarding them preciously. We have a few more, but there’s some we
ain’t getting at.” Goldsman had an extra incentive to do Dick Grayson
justice, seeing as he was the writer behind the universally derided Batman
And Robin. He jokingly refers to Titans as “the ‘Apology’ tour” when we
meet him and the show’s cast at the New York Comic Con, where the show
premiered. “When folks of my particular age group and generation started
getting into comic book movies, it was a lot more challenging to do reality-
based and psychologically-real characterisations,” Goldsman explains, telling
us that he’s now free to present Robin and the rest of the Titans as realistically
as he wants. There’s much talk about how dark, gritty and violent Titans is –
quite a feat when your main characters include an alien princess and a green
dude who turns into animals.
But let’s start with the heart of the show – Dick Grayson. The series picks up at a
time when Dick has left Batman, and is trying to balance being a solo vigilante with
being a police offi cer. He encounters troubled teen Rachel Roth (better known as
Raven) and, along with the rest of the Titans team, who form along the way, he sets
out to protect her. But Dick has problems of his own, hence his wash-your-mouth-out-
with-soap-young-man outburst in the trailer. “In the comic books, we all know his time
with Batman and living with Bruce Wayne at the mansion didn't go so smoothly,” says
Robin actor Brenton Thwaites. “It was nice to start the story from that point of view; from
a place where we would most likely end the story.” Thwaites adds that “there's a darkness
and sadness [in Dick] that’s deeper than just getting a full night’s sleep. It’s going to take
a long time to iron out these deep grounded emotional issues that we see in fl ashbacks
throughout the series.” According to Goldsman, Dick is “somebody who is profoundly
cast under the shadow of Batman. He’s omnipresent in the show, although absent. It’s
exactly the way most of us feel about our dysfunctional fathers. It’s an ideal way for us to
tell a father/son story, and a Batman story, by telling Robin’s story.”
Batman, we can only assume, is one of the characters that the Titans producers “ain’t
getting at”, but the various Robins are, it seems, on the table – Jason Todd, the second
Robin, pops up later in the show. “Midway through the fi rst season, Jason Todd comes
up,” Thwaites tells us. “He’s basically used as a way to describe to the audience what it
is like to work with Batman. We’ve seen fl ashbacks of this or that – but this is the current
Robin coming in and saying: ‘This is what it's like to work with Batman right now’. When| 067