Teen Titans: The Judas Contract (2017)
Genre: Animation/Super Hero/Action
Who’s Voices Are In It: Sean Maher, Kari Wahlgren, Christina Ricci, Greg Henry, MIguel Ferrer, Brandon Soo Hoo, Taissa Farmiga, Jake T Austin
Who Directed It: Sam Kiu
Plot: Led by Starfire, the Teen Titans - Beast Boy, Raven, Blue Beetle, Robin and the just-returned Nightwing - have built a cohesive team in their never-ending battle against evil but their newest teammate, the mysterious, and powerful, Terra, may be altering that dynamic. Meanwhile, an ancient evil - Brother Blood - has awakened, and familiar foe Deathstroke is lurking in the shadows, both waiting to pounce. Ultimately, the Teen Titans will need to battle their enemies and their own internal doubts to come together and overcome the malicious forces around them in this twisting tale of intrigue, adventure and deception.
Running Time: 84 Minutes
Why I Watched It: My oldest Daughter and I have been on a run of DC Animated films, she’s a big Titans fan so this made sense.
How I Watched It: iTunes
IMDB: 7.0
Random Thoughts: Sorry for that plot summary I couldn’t find a better one that was shorter. I usually grab the summary from IMBD and this was the best they had for this film.
The DC animation has done a very good job or setting up different teams, Teen Titans, Justice League and JL Dark, Suicide Squad and they’ve always done a very good job of setting up the one universe where these teams exist.
What I Liked: The set up is solid, we see the Titans and we see Starfire is the leading and we see the other members, this was done very well and got us up to speed right at the beginning so we knew who the players were.
The best part of this was some of the voice cast, great to hear both the late great Miguel Ferrer and Greg Henry oddly as villains, Ferrer was Deathstroke and it was perfect casting. I also really like Sean Maher as Nightwing, I’ve heard him in other films and he’s none a nice job with the Nightwing character. Should also say Taissa Farmiga is very good as Raven.
The story moves well and the action is decent enough, I did like seeing the Titans as a team and not rely on the Justice League, it was good to see them work as a unit.
What I Didn’t Like: The main story was alright but for me this was lackluster on the script level. I’ve seen a bunch of DC Animation recently and this is one of the weaker ones, now the film isn’t bad just kind of there it lacks the energy and the stakes of some of the other entries.
My main problem is the Teen Titans bicker and act like they’re in a soap opera and not a super hero story, I prefer the action to the tension of the team. Also bigger picture wise this seemed kind of small and the story was very paint by numbers and didn’t have the overall feel that this was important, seemed like a bland episode of a TV series.
I was kind of bummed Nightwing was barely in it and Starfire was very one note, I wished we saw them together more and I wish we saw more team building and also training as a group. The thing that Teen Titans lack that Justice League doesn’t is strong characters and really well defined relationships, we know that Batman and Super Man but heads, we know who the peacemakers are and so on here the Teen Titans seem interchangeable.
The big finale was fine but again was just kind of there, I liked the villains but they didn’t have much to do, again they didn’t seem like big enough threats to warrant this story.
Final Thoughts: Even though I was disappointed it was fine and a very watchable film in the DC animated universe.
Rating: 5.7/10
