First published online Jan 14, 2015.
When I found out that the Teen Titans were getting a new show that would take its cue from the one I was such a fan of, I was most definitely excited! This was my chance to get to see the further tales of Raven and the rest of the team, and with the same lineup and voice talent, no less!
Soon enough, I saw a preview in a DC Nation magazine, and though I was starting to realize that the show wouldn't be totally similar to the old one, I was still pretty optimistic. I wasn't nearly as fond of the new art direction, but I figured the writing would be more important.
When the first episode aired, I watched nervously -- fearful that it wouldn't be any good and would only serve to tarnish my fandom. But when it was over, I left feeling, almost surprisingly, that it was actually pretty good. They had introduced a new hobby or interest for Raven in the form of a My Little Pony-esque show, which was certainly a risky decision, but I ultimately welcomed it. Another change for the final product was her hair, which now had pointy bangs and, contrary to the DC Nation magazine preview, had its base color redone as black, both of which I was more or less indifferent on. Regardless of these alterations, I resolved that the program had potential.
Then more and more episodes followed, each introducing worse elements and lowering the quality in writing. My fears hadn't been in vain. It quickly became clear that this show was, quite frankly, an abomination that desecrated the old Teen Titans show. Each episode resulted in me hating it increasingly more, and I found myself disgusted with the way the show abandoned the lovable and respectable characterizations and story-telling that its predecessor had. So much had changed.
It finally culminated to the point where a little before the first season wrapped up, I decided to stop watching altogether. Simply watching the show almost felt like I was betraying Raven, but then again, I almost felt like Raven was betraying me.
I stayed away for about twenty episodes, and then seeing that the newest one was a focus on Raven and the aforementioned Pony show, I went ahead and watched, hoping it had shaped up with time. Upon finishing my viewing, though, I found my hopes were sadly for naught, leaving me even more disheartened than before. The episode flat out displays how the show is inferior to good shows like how "My little Pony: Friendship is Magic" was at that time, and further deteriorates any sensible characterization. In the old Teen Titans show, Raven was possibly the most respectable character in television's history, but in this new iteration she's repeatedly degraded by acting wacky and immature. The writers are obsessed with trying to achieve humor through subverting our expectations (which they rarely show any finesse in doing, I might add, since it regularly broke a character rather than expanding upon it in a fresh, surprising way), but they rely so heavily on this technique that the subversion ultimately becomes the norm, destroying what could've remained a mostly lovable cast. Robin's lost his complex mix of serious heroism and friendly realism, Starfire's lost her sense of adorable innocence, Cyborg is always obnoxiously loud with little to no offerings of calm sympathy, and Beast Boy's become that annoying type that eight-year-olds think are hip but everyone else sees as a parody of an eight-year-old who thinks they're hip. How could the same characters and same perfect cast of voice talent as the old "Teen Titans" lead into this horrendous result? This is not the Teen Titans I love, this is a botched atrocity trying to mimic and conform to the brain-numbing expectations of too many other contemporary cartoons. Dancing and grotesque face-making isn't funny anymore if it ever even was. For any dumb moment in the old show, we were treated to many more heart-warming, intense, plot-driven, humorous, and/or other positive scenes, whereas this new show is just spattered with dumb moment after dumb moment. Beast Boy was pretty much the only problem with the old show, but in "Teen Titans Go!" he's even worse, and so is everybody (and everything) else.
Why did those in power feel they needed to butcher an already established incarnation of the Teen Titans? None of this would have bugged me if they invented a new super hero team or at least used a new version of the Teen Titans. Why'd they mess with a specific version that had previously been a good thing? The whole reason I'm even comparing the two shows is because they purposely made it so superficially (and even audibly) similar, going as far as even having a remixed theme song.
Their depiction of Trigon, annoying giant birds, unsightly designs, ridiculous allusions, the way they can turn an epic story like that of Terra's into a 15 minute disgrace... There's so much wrong with the show I can't even list it all. Even the comic series it's spawned shows no promise, as I can attest having read the first six issues. It even stole the title of the old show's comic adaption...
It's a shame to see someone so close to Raven behave so horribly, but even though she sounds and looks so similar, I just have to remind myself that she's not Raven... she's someone else.
8-25-15 Postscript:
I thought it should be mentioned somewhere on the site that I also disregard the original Teen Titans Go comics and the DC Nation Shorts as being a part of Raven continuity, though both are much closer than the Teen Titans Go show.
No comments:
Post a Comment