The Not-So-New 52: Teen Titans – The Judas Contract (2017)

July 10, 2024 / swampflix / 1 Comment

Welcome to The Not-So-New 52, your digital Swampflix comic book (adaptation) newsstand! Starting in 2007, DC Comics and Warner Premiere entered the direct-to-home-video market with animated features, mostly in the form of adaptations of well-received event comics or notable arcs. This Swampflix feature takes its name from the 2011 DC relaunch event “The New 52,” and since there are (roughly) fifty-two of these animated features as of the start of 2024, Boomer is watching them in order from the beginning with weekly reviews of each. So, get out your longboxes and mylar sleeves and get ready for weekly doses of grousing, praise, befuddlement, recommendations, and occasional onomatopoeia as we get animated for over fifteen years of not-so-new comic cartoons.

If you were on any message board, TV Tropes page, or fan forum that was every even loosely connected to DC Comics during a certain period of time, then you know all about Terra, the earthbending girl whose inevitable betrayal of the Teen Titans caused the first faneurysm (™ me) in an uncountable number of fragile young minds and whose specific betrayal of poor little Beast Boy broke more hearts than the siege of Troy. The hair-pulling, the weeping, the gnashing of teeth – it was all the rage at exactly the same moment that every nerd boy was creaming himself over Summer Glau and the rosy fingers of the dawning of SuperWhoLock were just taking hold of the horizon. It’s so well known that, when Young Justice used the character in its fourth season, they managed to pull out a few unexpected surprised by subverting the same old story. See, back in the 80s, there was a relaunch of an older comic, now rechristened The New Teen Titans, and the most well-remembered storyline from that series’s entire run was entitled “The Judas Contract,” in which fan favorite character Terra turned out to be a plant within the organization, operating under the guidance of Slade “Deathstroke” Wilson. Terra appeared in an unvoiced cameo in the post-credits sequence of Justice League vs. Teen Titans, setting up this film’s narrative.

After a flashback sequence that shows us the meet cute between Dick Grayson (Sean Maher), then still the original Robin, and alien refugee Starfire (Kari Wahlgren), we return to the present, where it has been almost a year since Tara “Terra” Markov (Pumpkin star Christina Ricci, who may not be the biggest “get” these movies have managed to bring on board, but who is perhaps the most exciting to me) joined the team. The team is currently working to bring down an organization known as Hive, which is fronted by a cult leader called Brother Blood (Gregg Henry) and his right-hand woman, Mother Mayhem (Meg Foster!). In between missions, we get insight into their various slices of life. Jaime “Blue Beetle” Reyes (Jake T. Austin) starts volunteering at the local shelter, as it helps him feel connected to the family that he is currently separate from because the alien machine on his back mistrusts Jaime’s father. Raven (Taissa Farmiga) is continuing to work on controlling her powers, and she now has a gem in her forehead in which her demonic father is imprisoned. Dick and Starfire are preparing to move in together, while Garfield “Beast Boy” Logan (Brandon Soo Hoo) is nursing an obvious crush on Terra. All of the team is invested in getting her to open up, but she remains reserved and standoffish. Life gets more complicated when the assumed-dead Slade “Deathstroke” Wilson (Miguel Ferrera, replacing Thomas Gibson) re-emerges working with Brother Blood in pursuit of his vengeance against Damian (Stuart Allan).

As much as I liked JLvTT (with some reservations, especially that horrible emo song), this one is still an improvement on that installment. Unlike the unrepentant psychopath that she is in most versions, this Terra is legitimately conflicted. I’ve always really liked when an ongoing piece of long from media has a “breather” installment in which we get to see a more relaxed side of our characters and learn more about them and what they’re like in their down time. I enjoy a lot of the moments between Starfire and Dick, since we’ve mostly seen him as a tangential character to the various and sundry Batman-focused entries on this list, and Starfire’s playful energy breathes life into the film, especially the teases about their sex life; I appreciate that if there’s one thing we know about these two, it’s that they are Gomez-and-Morticia horny for one another, and you love to see it. There are a few other things that are risque here, including what a horn dog Garfield is for Terra. My personal favorite, though, comes in a scene in which Jaime gets a little too worked up about his fellow volunteer, Traci, and has to hop into the walk-in freezer to try and get his “scarab” to understand that his quickening pulse doesn’t mean he’s in danger. It’s played like an erection joke, including the position that he’s in, hiding his gun arm, when Traci finds him:

It’s notable that this movie is the most successful comedy in this series so far. There have been little touches of humor throughout, which has been hit or miss. Steve Trevor’s “comical” outdated sexism in Wonder Woman didn’t work for me, but the banter in JL: War was fun, and it still mostly worked in JL: Throne of Atlantis. I don’t normally laugh aloud when I’m watching most comedies at home by myself, but this one elicited multiple chuckles from me. I probably shouldn’t have found it so funny, but there’s a scene where Terra asks Garfield if he knows how she became an orphan, and he responds with “Umm … your parents died?” that made me laugh aloud. Later still, when Deathstroke has set various traps for the Titans, Dick escapes and is searching for the others and finds the trap set for Garfield—a big red button labeled “Do Not Press” that, when pressed, shoots tranquilizer darts—his exasperated muttering of “Come on, Gar,” is legitimately hilarious. Screenwriter E.J. Altbacker has mostly done TV series writing, but he has done two previous animated features: previous installment Justice League Dark and, um, Scooby-Doo! & WWE: Curse of the Speed Demon, which I suppose explains his comedy credentials. That kind of crossover energy may also explain why Kevin Smith appears as himself in this one, which was one of the few off-notes in play here, and I say that as someone who doesn’t particularly dislike him like many other critics. Still, once again, even though we’re past the halfway point, I’m still occasionally finding something new to praise in these movies, and even though there have been a few that felt like such a chore to get through that I started to doubt my commitment to ~~Sparkle Motion~~ this project, this renews my vigor.

Which is not to say that this movie is all fun and games. Brother Blood isn’t a character who was created just for this film, obviously, but if you did play Mad Libs to come up with a goofy name for an edgelord, “Brother Blood” has a pretty high likelihood of ending up on the list. His brand of violence is a little ho-hum; it may be more that my brain is broken, but when we find him bathing in a pool of blood, I wasn’t impressed, even when we panned up to see the drained body of a reporter who had tried holding him accountable in an earlier interview. It could be that he’s simply not that scary next to Mayhem, since Foster’s trademark rasp imbues all of her lines with a coldness so lacking in compassion that it’s genuinely unsettling. Even more skin-crawling, however, is a scene that occurs after Terra’s true colors have been revealed and she’s back with Deathstroke, entering his command center with cheeks rouged to hell and back and wearing a little pink shift with one spaghetti strap seductively pulled off of the shoulder. We’re not given an exact age for her, but I’d say she’s probably fifteen but looks younger, and her Alicia-Silverstone-in-The–Crush act toward the much older Deathstroke is effectively gross. It’s clear that he’s not into it, but that doesn’t stop him from continuing to promise her that the two of them can be together on some elusive someday, encouraging her ongoing affections but rebuffing her when she acts on them, so that he can continue to manipulate her and use her powers for his own ends. It’s surprisingly dark for a series of movies that have normally equated more adult with more violent, and gives this film a bit more depth than the flicks it shares shelf space with.

I mentioned Young Justice above, and there was a tactic that the animators of that series turned to in seasons three and four to help cut some corners on the budget. Starting in the third season, the episode’s credits would play over a mostly still image (with the occasional shooting star in the night sky, or the repeated motion of an animal’s breathing in their sleep) while characters had conversations with each other. I was a big fan of this, actually, as it broadened the world a bit, followed up on lingering plot threads and in some cases provided closure on characters who were no longer a part of the main storylines. This started to become more obvious in the show proper during the fourth season, when montages of still images became a part of the storytelling, and although it was noticeable, I wouldn’t call it detrimental. That technique is also becoming somewhat more apparent in these films. In the last Teen Titans movie, it was used during the montage of the characters getting to know each other at the carnival (with that aforementioned terrible emo song), and it happens here, too, when the others throw Terra a surprise party to commemorate the anniversary of her joining the team, among other scenes. In Young Justice, I was happy to accept this as part of an ongoing effort to keep costs under control, and whatever got me more Young Justice was just fine with me. Here, it feels a little cheaper. Conversely, I’ve often cited in these reviews that I wish that there was a little more dynamic movement in the action sequences, and this one delivered on that; in particular, there’s a scene in which Dick’s shoulder is dislodged, and he has to fight Deathstroke with one arm hanging limply, and it’s exceptionally animated. You win some, you lose some. And hey, at least for the first time since Superman: Unbound, we made it through a whole movie without Batman in it.

I read online that this one is considered the point where the DCAMU (sigh) really matured and came into its own. I’d grant that, although I think that JLvTT and JL Dark would also be contenders for that title. It feels like a real movie, and its tragic ending evokes the conclusion of my cherished Under the Red Hood, which is always a plus in my book. I hope that’s true, since these have mostly been pretty average so far, and I hope we can only go up from here.

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond

The Not-So-New 52: Son of Batman (2014)

May 8, 2024May 8, 2024 / swampflix / 3 Comments

Canon is a funny thing. I think that for a lot of people and within a lot of media, what’s “real” in any long-running piece of fiction is whatever was the normal state of affairs when you entered the fandom. Whatever happens moving forward from there is just new stuff to enjoy or not. When something is added retroactively (usually referred to as “retcon,” as in “retroactive continuity”), it can be something really fun and new and interesting, or it might end up being a big pile of steaming garbage. For the former, my favorite comic book character of all time, Jessica Jones, was completely retconned out of nothing for the series Alias (no relation) because Brian Michael Bendis wasn’t allowed to use Jessica “Spider-Woman” Drew for his noir detective series, so he had to make someone up. For the latter, my go-to example is the 2003 retcon that Chuck Austen introduced in an X-Men storyline entitled “The Draco.” This arc “revealed” that beloved character Nightcrawler was actually half-demon and his entire years-long arc of coming to terms with his faith and becoming a member of the clergy was actually a manipulation on the part of a group that sought to “unveil” his “demonic” form in concurrence with a technologically-induced rapture once they were able to elevate him to pope. Everybody hated it, no one accepts it as canon, and we’ve probably had two or three more retcons since then. As an example of changes that have gone back and forth for better and for worse, there are the characters of Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, who were initially introduced merely as members of Magento’s Brotherhood of Evil Mutants before being revealed to be his children (good), before they were again retconned to not only not be his children, but to also not be mutants at all. Why? Because the characters had been members of the Avengers at one point, and thus were shared between Disney’s ownership of MCU-related film rights and Fox’s then-independent ownership of X-Men-related film rights, and Disney, like a toxic parent in a shared custody situation, flexed their muscles to get the source material to change.

I have to admit that I struggle with this myself, with the particular way that my brain functions meaning that I’m in conflict between being (a) resistant to big changes, (b) appreciative of new angles that make for a more interesting story even if it’s not in alignment with what I’ve believed before, and (c) annoyed by changes that conflicts with what we already knew. Where I was worst about this (and where I’ve been forced to grow the most in how I approach the material) is in the Star Trek franchise. My weird little prepubescent brain accepted the aesthetic differences between my contemporary present and the original series without question, but by the time Enterprise rolled around, I was of just the right age to take offense at and get too caught up in complaining about its “too modern” look for a prequel series. It’s been over two decades since, and the large and amorphous continuity of Star Trek has just gotten bigger and more difficult to contain in the intervening years, and at this point, I don’t care how neurodivergent you (and by “you” I mean “we”) are, sometimes you just have to let go.

This is all a long-winded introduction to talk about my feelings about the ways that the story of Batman changed over the course of my life. When I was a kid, Batman: The Animated Series was Batman, with the occasional sighting of an episode of the Adam West sixties series when I was at the home of a relative who had cable. All of the things that are “Batman” to me are caught up in that series: the faithful loyalty and acerbic wit of Alfred, the partnership of a Robin, the unresolved romantic/sexual tension with Catwoman, the rivalry with the Joker, the presence of a large, consistent rogues gallery (Mr. Freeze, The Riddler, Penguin, Poison Ivy, Two-Face, and second-stringers like Clayface, Scarecrow, and Mad Hatter), and an eventual Batgirl. But when you’re talking about a story continuity that was already six decades old at that point, all of those elements had to have been introduced as new at some point, and, as it was ongoing, it was never going to remain static and unchanging at that point. In fact, the character of Harley Quinn, who is now one of the most recognizable and well-known DC characters in the mainstream, was created for and introduced within BTAS, and although she’s beloved by now, I’m sure that there were cranky gatekeepers at the time who hated her introduction. New live action films continued to be made, and their effect on the landscape of the comics and their affiliated media would echo across the narrative topography, and those reverberations would then end up in the new adaptations, symbiotically. It’s impossible to know which ones are going to be a flash in the pan before being rejected and never referenced again (see above re: demon Nightcrawler) and which ones will “take” and stick around. When the whole “Court of Owls” thing (a secret society of rich Gothamites going back generations who influenced the city) was introduced in 2012, I didn’t think it would stick around, but given that it’s now associated with Bat-lore in the public consciousness because of Fox’s Gotham, it’s probably here to stay. Even before that when Damian Wayne, Batman’s son via Talia al Ghul, was first introduced in comics in 2006, the obvious expectation was that he would prove so unpopular that he would be written out as a character and written off as a failed ploy, but here we are, nearly twenty years later, and it looks like he’s here to stay, too.

Son of Batman opens on the island fortress headquarters of the League of Assassins, headed by Ra’s al Ghul (Giancarlo Esposito). Under his grandfather’s tutelage, young Damian (Stuart Allan) is being trained to one day replace Ra’s, all under the watchful eye of his mother, Talia (Morena Baccarin). Under the cover of night, spurned pupil Deathstroke (Thomas Gibson), who was previously being groomed to become the new leader of the League before Damian’s birth, has returned for revenge. Ra’s is critically injured and, unable to make it to the Lazarus Pit that has so prolonged his life, dies. In order to seek out her father’s killer and find her revenge, Talia leaves her son with his father, whom she knows is both Bruce Wayne and Batman (Jason O’Mara), under the care of the hero and his butler, Alfred (David McCallum). Gotham is less of a safe haven than expected, however, as this is also the home of Dr. Kirk Langstrom (Xander Berkeley), a scientist who has been working on a serum that will turn League assassins into bat hybrid creatures known as “Manbats.” When Langstrom and Talia are both captured by Deathstroke, it’s up to Batman and former protege turned independent hero Dick “Nightwing” Grayson (Sean Maher) to find them and stop Deathstroke, with young Damian as the newer, less morally clear Robin.

This is a good one. The animation is crisp, the designs are clean, the contrast is extremely well done. Scenes in the day are suffused with light, and the more frequent night scenes have a slight moonlight glow to them. It’s carried over from Justice League: War, of course, but it’s nice that it’s consistent here, and this slots into the same art style as that film without looking identical to it, which is a nicer touch than I was expecting from this ongoing series. The fact that this is supposed to be a new timeline that’s still in the early days of the emergence of heroes continues to be a bit of sand in the shoe, as the previous film made it seem like Batman had only been on the scene for a couple of years at the most, while this one now establishes that he’s been at this long enough that he’s already had one young sidekick graduate to start his own enterprise. It’s also strange that this series would decide to kill off Ra’s al Ghul so early into this franchise (only the third film now if we count Flashpoint Paradox, and the first to focus on Batman primarily), it seems very sudden and early to get rid of one of the Bat’s most important foes, and means that any attempts to graft other adaptations of stories into this continuity may have to compensate for his absence.

Still, that’s not this film’s problem. It’s good! Not special, really, but good, definitely above the median of quality in this overall franchise so far. I ended up making yet another long-winded introduction and a comparison to Star Trek (two of my specialties!) all up top because, really, there’s not that much to say. I’ve listed what I didn’t like above, and it’s mostly minor stuff that relates to continuity, and which most people probably wouldn’t care too much about. What there is to like isn’t so groundbreaking that it requires description, either; the fight choreography is very good, and the more ninja-style action is a real standout when most of these fights are all about punching while flying, eye beams, and occasional Amazonian hand-to-hand content. Damian has a lot of potential for his petulance to be extremely annoying, especially when he has a nepo baby’s sense of smug entitlement coupled with no real qualms about committing straight up murder because of how he was raised. Instead, he’s not only tolerable, but occasionally even likable, when he isn’t being a twerp about how effeminate the original Robin costume was.

I might have been wrong about this new continuity within the larger franchise. I’ve seen a few of the others and although I don’t remember disliking them, I don’t remember them being particularly memorable, either. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond