Teen Titans Judas Contract

Animation wise, Cassie was so close to being adapted as a main part of Bat-team in the Batman: No Man's Land-inspired All-CGI Cartoon that was planned to air on Cartoon Network. Though the pitch was deemed too dark and expensive, and we got Beware the Batman instead (not that I mind).

Jean-Paul Valley's Azrael only television appearance was on Gotham, but that was just a revived Theo Galavan becoming another name to the mantle. The video game appearances come in the form of LEGO Batman (again), Scribblenauts Unmasked, and his Batsuit in Batman: Arkham Origins.

Kind of makes Tim a little bit more lucky by comparison.

Okay I should specify again: Tim is the only Robin to not appeared in any of the DC Animated Movies that are not related to DCAU, LEGO verse and Unlimited. As far as other media appearance go he's good but these movies not so much.

Tim's appearance in the Arkham Series is very un Tim-like.

Dude's way hardcore & gets with Barbra Gordon of all people.

I hate tim's look in arkham knight.That hair is so gross.

All I know is that they better not adapt this too literally. The Sladex Terra thing was gross and dumb in comics and after The killing Joke's fiasco DC animation doesn't need to turn off anymore fans with squick. I don't think too many will complain if that part of the comics get downplayed.

edited 14th Feb '17 12:35:15 AM by Vertigo_High

Yeah I think the world can do without Pedostroke The Lolicon. Which is, disturbing enough, the one thing the Teen Titans cartoon got right with him by giving him a pedophilic vibe towards which ever Titan he obsess over in the season.

I didn't think Slade's relationship with Terra in the comics was stupid; it was disturbing, sure, but it was supposed to be. Slade needed a way to get a handle on Terra, and letting her think she was his lover did that. Slade, at least at the time of "The Judas Contract's" writing, was a superior, manipulative, ruthlessly pragmatic asshole. That was how me manipulated Terra, who, at least in the comics, was an amoral psycho,

after the killing joke incident D.C. Won't go through with it.

The guys behind the Killing Joke seemed way too into ramping up the Squick factor.

They just wanted to Out-Alan Moore Alan Moore.

I'm eternally disappointed in Bruce Timm.

He's gonna have to prostrate himself for a long time to earn forgiveness for Animated Killing Joke.

I'll say it before and I'll say it again, they should have scraped that entire prologue and just did an adaptation of Going Sane as the prologue. It would have been a lot stronger.

Now that you mention Going Sane, I agree. Combining two memorable Joker stories into one movie would totally make the movie flow better. The challenge would be how make the two connected to one another as part of the plot to Going Sane involves Batman being killed off for a while.

But enough about how to improve Killing Joke, back to Deathstroke. Agree that the whole point of him being in a relationship with Terra is much of the same way Joker takes advantage of Harley Quinn's infatuation for him. It is meant to show off how deprave of a villain he is (well at least how the reader interprets, the writers seems to try to make him a likable character as the whole relationship with Terra was mean to show how promiscuous of a villain she is). Either way, it's for the best to drop it as villain or not that is a pretty gross implication I feel should be cut out.

Terra was implied to be a pretty awful person even before Slade came in, I think. Her being a misunderstood sympathetic character at first came from the 2003 cartoon.

With Harley, while pre-Joker she wasn't above cheating her way through life, overall she was an amiable and harmless enough person, bar a few background retcon bits that I think have been written out by now (something about having a boyfriend killed off in college, IIRC? ISTR it came during the forgotten AJ Lieberman run).

edited 18th Feb '17 5:05:21 AM by NapoleonDeCheese

Yeah, Terra was shown, from nearly her first appearance, as being willingly, gleefully in Slade's employ. Wolfman and Perez would later say that the fans' attitude towards her mystified them, as they never made any bones of the fact that she was a spy and a villain who hated everything the Titans stood for. People just kept ignoring her conversations with Slade and decided that somehow, someway, she'd be redeemed and saved. So it came as a shock to them when she wasn't.

So wow. They finally make a Judas Contract movie. I remember it having it's own IMDB page in around 2006, after the show ended. I did not read the original Teen Titans comic books, (and I still haven't) so I didn't know what to expect, except Terra and Slade would make an appearance. So maybe this would be the true finale of the Teen Titans cartoon. Of course I got more knowledge about how comics and cartoons are different, and watching Linkara's March of the Titans retrospective, it's going to be a different take on Teen Titans. Did anybody else remember when it was announced?

Different as in different from the '03 cartoon, sure.

But far closer in spirit to the comics.

The users of Sakugabooru actually liked the animation in this movie. They usually rag on current DC animated films.

They said the animation was better because The Answer Studio, the production company, hired Kenichi Tsuchiya as one of the animation directors. I check out this guy's resume. Not only did he work at Disney's Japan studio for years, going up the ranks to become a supervising animation director on films like The Tigger Movie, he was also a key animator on Batman: Under The Red Hood and the animation director on two Makoto Shinkai films, The Garden Of Words and Your Name. Something tells me he was fresh off the latter when he took on this movie.

edited 4th Apr '17 12:56:33 PM by DS9guy

I'm looking at some clips on YT and while the animation is pretty stiff looking on talking scenes the action ones are actually pretty decent. But deathstroke had one line that was incredibly corny and ruined what should be a serious scene with some grade A narm.

- after shooting Dick into the water- You could've died by the blade with honor, Grayson.

-beat-

LOSER.

Like....Slade would never say that lol. He says it in his typical deadpan tone too which makes it even more cheesy. 90s SNK-tier dialogue there.

edited 4th Apr '17 6:55:26 PM by Vertigo_High

Still better than '03 Titans Slade. His portrayal here - a merc with a beef towards Robin for having a family while his was killed because of him, a la the comics - was a lot more fleshed out and worth a damn.

My one point of contention was Terra. Still a little too sympathetic. At the risk of not passing standards and practices, I would have preferred something closer to, say, Aileen from Monster, broken from a bad childhood but still just plain dangerously psychotic. (Funnily enough Christina Ricci was in that too.)

While 03 Slade wasn't very fleshed out, I admit that, are you serious?

03' Slade was fine.

Compared to this?

Ugh, opinions!

edited 4th Apr '17 9:51:24 PM by Soble

Yes, I am serious. Slade was too flat in the '03 series.

In regards to his Blood Knight and Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy tendency that is portrayed in the comics (which this film is based on heavily), I can definitely see him stooping as low as to call his defeated opponent a 'loser' like a child.

Speaking of SNK, you just now made me think of Deathstroke as Rugal now.

It's funny, because In Deathstroke's first comics appearances, he'd go from talking like a street thug to sounding cultured in the same comic. He came off as being pretty full of himself (not without reason) and was extremely frustrated when, during the "Judas Contract," he was unable to capture Dick Grayson. He caught all the others, but not Dick. The same thing happened with the Wildebeest storyline (he actually managed to take out a Wildebeest and impersonate one in that storyline). Marv Wolfman was really good at demonstrating how Dick was the most competent of the Titans.

Did not expect Donna Troy of all people to appear in this.

And I fear there is an elephant in the room to be discussed

http://parvumautomaton.tumblr.com/post/159206963683/rant-for-the-new-teen-titans-movie-under-the-cut

It's funny because Rugal's infamous "I'll be back YOU JERKS!" was the 1st thing that came to mind when Slade said that line. It made him come off as awfully childish to me.

03 Slade felt like if Deathstroke graduated so to speak and matured, no longer being just a villain but moreso a mastermind.