TEEN TITANS: THE JUDAS CONTRACT (2017)

 

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

Though I had assorted criticisms of the original JUDAS CONTRACT  from the Wolfman-Perez NEW TEEN TITANS run, I considered it a solid work of melodramatic action-adventure. Not so this DTV adaptation, the second adaptation of the Titans made within DC's Original Animation line (though this JUDAS is at least better than the Titans' previous outing, the underwhelming JUSTICE LEAGUE VS. TEEN TITANS).

Adaptations can rarely avoid changing elements of the source material, and one may argue that total fidelity is not even desirable. That said, there should be a good reason for every change made. An example of an acceptable change can be viewed in JUDAS's opening scene. The opener has nothing to do with the main story, just giving the viewer a quick introduction to how the Earth-based Titans first made the acquaintance of the alien member-to-be Starfire. Of the five Earth-heroes seen in this short sequence, four are Silver Age members-- Speedy, Beast Boy, Kid Flash, and "Dick Grayson Robin." The fifth member is Bumblebee, a Black superheroine who appeared only briefly in the Titans franchise during the 1970s before the successful reworking of the concept into the Wolfman-Perez iteration. Given that Bumblebee is only there for a few minutes, no longer than Kid Flash and Speedy, I speculate that she's just a placeholder for Wonder Girl, who over the years was so often revised that the writer may've wanted to avoid that briar patch of associations. 

Some members for the main narrative are changed as well. Since the original comics-story provided the transition in which Dick Grayson took on the mantle of Nightwing, he appears largely unaltered. Like Wonder Girl, Cyborg is missing, but Raven shows up with barely any intro, though admittedly she got a lot of exposition in the previous DC Titans-cartoon. That flick also brought in the "Damian Wayne Robin," so it's understandable that he too is inserted into the JUDAS narrative. Damian-Robin is tolerable, but sadly, LEAGUE-TITANS also placed "the Jamie Reyes Blue Beetle" on the team as well, and his separate arc (he wears alien armor that sometimes gives him problems) drags every time he's on screen. (I've read a small sampling of the comic-book original and find him underwhelming in that medium too.) Beast Boy is present but he seems to have undergone a humor lobotomy, and of course the "judas" of the story, Terra, has a substantial presence. More about the changes to her later.

In the original comic, Deathstroke has a grudge against the Titans because he thinks they caused his son's death, and that's why he convinces Terra to join the super-group in order to betray the heroes. Deathstroke's grudge was always a weak motivation, so in its place the writer inserts an equally weak one. This time the villain resents his having been ejected from the criminal organization founded by Damian's father, so he has a hate for Damian. 

In the comic, once Terra betrays the Titans to Deathstroke, he sells the captured heroes to the HIVE organization, whose leader plans to drain off the heroes' powers, killing them and using those powers for some vague purpose. As it happens, that trope wasn't too far from a scheme by another Titan-foe, Brother Blood, who'd appeared in issues just prior to JUDAS CONTRACT, so the movie's writer excises the HIVE and puts Blood in their place, but to no great effect. It does make the JUDAS-movie a different sort of "villain-crossover," though. 

Original-JUDAS also introduced new member Jericho, a virtuous son of Deathstroke, but here he's demoted to some minor action, almost getting killed but surviving. Thus Nightwing alone is responsible for rescuing and freeing his teammates, though the resulting fracas may be one of the most desultory in the history of DC's animated features. (There sure were a lot of heavily shadowed scenes for a superhero cartoon.) Deathstroke and Terra have a falling out for a different reason, but Terra dies in more or less the same way.

And now we get to the Matter of Terra. I remarked in my comics-review that Marv Wolfman makes her a total "bad seed," who's evil just for the hell of it. The script for JUDAS doesn't follow this trope, choosing instead to suggest, albeit not very well, that Terra was traumatized by Bad Stuff that happened to her in her chaotic native country. 

Wolfman also made it clear that Terra had enjoyed sex of some sort with Deathstroke, which traumatized some readers and raconteurs so much that some authors attempted to retcon the event. I would not have been surprised if writer Ernie Altbacker had just not bothered to raise the question, and in some ways that might have been preferable to his actual strategy. This time out, Terra urges Deathstroke to sleep with her, and he refuses for vague reasons. One might accept that the senior villain might have had a moment of morality, or even that he just didn't want to piss where he ate, so to speak, and maybe mess up his master plan. But late in JUDAS, Deathstroke betrays Terra to Brother Blood, and tells her that it's too bad they DIDN'T sleep together. I think I prefer an outright leap into transgressive material over such pointless equivocations.

Though Wonder Girl doesn't actually enter the diegesis, a coda suggests that she, or someone who looks like her, may take Terra's place in future stories-- though as yet no further TITANS animations have appeared from the DC folks.