Did you guys know I hate the red Nightwing suit? Cause I really do.
Greetings Ladies and Gents! It is I, The Shaman of Animation back with another DC animated movie review. Today's film: Teen Titans The Judas Contract! Let's not waste any time and dive on in
Teen Titans The Judas Contract is an adaptation of the 1984 comic storyline of the same name and the sequel to last year's 'Justice League vs Teen Titans'. With the return of former leader Nightwing and newcomer to the team Terra, the Titans battle The Hive: a cult like super villain organization led by Brother Blood along with a resurrected Deathstroke and his plan to tear the Titans from the inside.
Going into this review I figured I'd get this out of the way now: your enjoyment of this movie may come down to whether or not you enjoyed Justice League vs Teen Titans. What this movie does is take the original comic and strip it down to just its key points. Those wanting a direct adaptation may be disappointed.
The first scene of the film is a flashback of the original Titans team and their first time meeting Starfire (It's not a spoiler because the scene was on YouTube before the movie was released). The reason I'm making mention of this scene is because ultimately it has no bearing on the rest of the movie; and maybe I'm overthinking it, but it creates a type of discontinuity to me between movies. That comes from Beat Boy: when watching JL vs TT, you could definitely tell he was one of the younger members of the Titans definitely, but here he is in the first scene in the movie as a member of the first Titans team. It makes me wonder just how old Beast Boy is, and it might make some of his interactions with Terra a little...weird.
But aside from that, this flashback scene is pretty pointless. Maybe it'll play a part in the next Teen Titans movie, but here it's just a scene that happens. Although it was cool hearing the Young Justice VAs again. Hope to hear more news about season 3 soon.
In fact, a lot of the Titans vs Hive part of the story until the third act feels like just stuff happening and that's because the Hive and Brother Blood himself leave so little of an impression on the story. They're stock villains there to kill time.
But to be fair, the movie is more of a character driven story than a plot driven one; and the biggest compliment I can give the film, as the sequel to JL vs TT, is that it fixes probably one of the biggest flaws of the first movie is that every Titan has a little bit of time to shine with their own subplots. While some I think weren't explored to their fullest extent (Like Starfire and Nightwing's issues over leadership) or Blue Beetle's struggles with his scarab), it's a near hour and a half movie, I think for the time, it was satisfactory. Perhaps because the film was trying to give every character some shine, I couldn't really get into The Hive and Brother Blood.
If you saw JL vs TT, then you remember the end credit scene of Terra flying towards Titans Tower. The film continues on from that; and Terra is definitely one of the biggest players in the film as it spends time on her, showing why she is who she is and her interactions with the team. The film, to my surprise, paints Terra as more of a sympathetic character than she was in the original comic. But again for the sake of this movie, Terra's arc is fine.
And finally, the last thing I want to note for this film is Deathstroke, who I honestly thought was pretty great and the character who stood out to me, which is odd considering he's pretty much a henchman throughout most of the movie, but a lot of his banter with other characters in the film, specifically one scene with Robin, never fails to make me crack a smile or chuckle. It doesn't hurt that Miguel Ferrer, the voice actor for Deathstroke does such a great job with the character and his delivery.
I'll be frank everyone, this was the most difficult DC animated movie for me to talk about. Even with this done, I don't know if even said much about, after wracking my brain with things to say about it. Teen Titans: The Judas Contract...okay. Just okay, to me. Which I think it's weird because I think as far as structure goes and equally dividing team for every character, it's a better film than JL vs TT. But because the previous Titans film put more focus on two characters, I believe it was able to hammer out a better story and a more interesting villain. With Judas Contract, I sat down and watched it, and while technically, there was nothing wrong, the movie as a whole just didn't click with me
But, that's just me, if you want to give Judas Contract a shot, be my guest, you might see something in it that I didn't. But as far as I'm concerned, I just hope the next Titans movie knocks it out of the park. Something tells me with the end credit scenes and the mostly positive reception I've seen for the movie, they won't stop making Titans films anytime soon; and when it arrives, I'll be here to review it.
Till then folks, I'm signing off for now. I'm the Shaman of Animation. Take care...
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