JUSTICE LEAGUE VS. TEEN TITANS (2016)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*

Though the Justice League gets top billing, this DTV release is primarily a TEEN TITANS story. The central plot centers upon Trigon, the demonic father of the mystic heroine Raven, and his efforts to escape his otherworldly confinement in order to prey upon Earth. In the comics this event transpires close to the point when the “New Teen Titans” are newly formed. In the comics it's a major accomplishment for the team, establishing that despite their youth they’re no longer "the Junior Justice League."

In this iteration, the Titans seem to have been operating for some time. The original Robin (a.k.a. Nightwing) is no longer with the group, but his sometimes inamorata Starfire now leads the young heroes, now consisting of Beast Boy, the Blue Beetle, and Raven, whose demonic heritage is not known to the rest of the group. (Starfire, incidentally, is now a respectable-looking, almost matronly heroine, in contrast to the innocently oversexed version that premiered in the early 1980s.) Nightwing persuades the Titans to accept the induction of a temperamental teenager: the new Robin. This version of Robin is Damian Wayne, the son of Batman by the daughter of the supervillain Ra’s Al Ghul, deceased in the DTV world.

At least a third of the film seems devoted to showing the arrogant Damien’s early contempt for the other teens, which, predictably enough, gives way to an esprit de corps by the final scenes of the film. The Leaguers are converted into possessed pawns of Trigon, which loosely parallels a similar NEW TEEN TITANS story in which the “old” heroes were marginalized in order to make the young bloods look good. Thus Raven is forced to confess all to her teammates so that the Titans can subdue their possessed quasi-parental figures—though, to be sure, Superman gets some action in that endeavor as well.

The action-scenes, the lifeblood of the genre, are decent but not especially memorable, while the character-arcs, especially Damien’s, are predictable and draggy. Both of these DC franchises enjoyed earlier TV-cartoon incarnations that remain fan-favorites today, and inevitably, the laborers behind this DTV version logically seek to make their visual versions distinctive. A few of the re-designs reflected costume-changes in the contemporary comic books, but even those that are original to the video are underwhelming. For the most part I found the video a decent time-killer, though the fan in me strongly disagreed with the attempt to align one of DC’s best villains—the aforementioned Ra’s Al Ghul, temporarily back from the dead—with a lesser fiend like Trigon.