Teen Titans Judas Contract

Ron Perlman completely kills it as Slade and he was effectively creepy, but from a writing standpoint, he was kinda shallow.

I liked how professional he came off as in Young Justice. But I also always thought Sportsmaster was the show's Deathstroke.

How do you guys feel about the takes on him that portray him as a revenge-seeking madman, such as Arrow and Beware the Batman?

He became an effective nemesis in Arrow... but it also weakened his character, because he was obsessed with Oliver he couldn't really grow. What they should have done was have him get past his insanity and realize that Shado's death wasn't Oliver's fault, and just have him exit his vendetta to become a proper "mercenary character."

Instead he's rotting on Lian Yu never to be seen again.

edited 5th Apr '17 8:23:11 PM by Soble

Agree. He was a great villain in season 2 of Arrow taking on Oliver on a more personal level. However, because of his obsession with Sado's death, he couldn't evolve as a character and serve as a recurring villain due to said obsession.

Honestly here are my views on each portrayals of Deathstroke:

• Teen Titans: Creepy Awesome but lacks a lot of personality and comes off the most generic of the bunch.
• Midway Fighting Games: Awesome.
• Batman Arkham Series: Also awesome.
• Young Justice: By far the most accurate portrayal of the character aside from that ponytail.
• Arrow: Great but the insanity is really holding him back.
• Beware the Batman: Great but the insanity is really holding him back.
• LEGO Batman films . . . not the one starring Will Arnet: Surprisingly true to the character in spite of the very comedic and childish nature of the films.
• Son of Batman: Okay THIS one is the most generic of the bunch. But thankfully for this universe Slade . . .
• Teen Titans Judas Contract: Really entertaining version of the character whose snarky personality and fighting prowess makes him the best part of the film.
• That New Batman Movie: I didn't see that yet.

Well of the ones I've seen:

• 2003 Slade: Ron Perlman.
• Son of Batman: The f'ck?
• Young Justice: He was in this series?
• Arkham Origins: He's there for a single awesome boss fight and then... poof.
• DC Universe Online: Well, he fought Wonder Woman and didn't die.

Young Justice already had a Deathstroke before Ponytail Deathstroke showed up, just for some reason he was called Sportmaster.

edited 5th Apr '17 8:54:47 PM by Nightwire

Sportsmaster was described as being the "blue-collar" version of Deathstroke, the "white-collar" mercenary.

Apparently no one liked the ponytail and regretted adding it, so if he shows up in season three, it's gonna be gone.

edited 5th Apr '17 10:51:15 PM by GamerSlyRatchet

Sums it up pretty well for me, though I haven't seen his Arrow portrayal.

The LEGO Batman/JL one was so hilariously cheesy.

I didn't have a problem with the ponytail -shrugs- I didn't even really notice it lol.

Sportsmaster took so many levels in badass during Young Justice it's unbelievable. He was really cool.

All this talk about the similarities between Sportsmaster and Deathstroke in Young Justice reminded me that in said show Deathstroke was brought in by the Light to replace Sportsmaster.

Perhaps the writers intentionally gave Sportsmasters all those Slade Wilsons qualities.

I'm amazed someone even came up with the idea of making Sportsmaster into a cool and important character in the first place.

I mean, find me one person who was fan of Sportsmaster before Young Justice.

edited 6th Apr '17 7:43:48 AM by Nightwire

Can't really argue on that given his Golden Age origin. Hell, just look at his portrayals in Justice League, Justice League Unlimited and Brave and the Bold: the first one he is a campy sports themed villain, the second just a minor villain and the third is a combination of the two.

Sportsmaster was a Golden Age Green Lantern villain and charter member of the Injustice Society, He was a frustrated, but brilliant, athlete named Lawrence "Crusher" Crock who turned to a life of crime. He married the villainess (huh...tvtropes is flagging "villainess" like it's misspelled; odd that the site wouldn't recognize it) The Huntress, and together they had a daughter named Artemis who fought Infinity Inc. (a group composed of the children and proteges of the Justice Society). Artemis was remade into the more heroic Artemis of Young Justice, (and they made Chesire her sister, which was new to the animated YJ). YJ's Artemis is no doubt at least partially based on the character Arrowette who appeared in the comic. Why they elected to do this is a good question, as neither The Sportsmaster nor his daughter were especially popular characters. Still, they did an excellent job with Sportsmaster and Artemis, so I suppose you can easily ask "Why not?" One does wonder what drew the writers' attention to those characters.

Prior to YJ I'd say Sportsmaster's most memorable appearance was in James Robinson's The Golden Age. In a very brief cameo appearance, he's shown to have reverted to a life of crime out of despair over the breakup of his family. An uncostumed, retired Alan (Green Lantern) Scott encounters him as he tries to rob a jewelry store; Sportsmaster dies saving the life of a little girl (who reminded him, apparently, of his own daughter) during the robbery, and this action prompts Alan Scott to muse that it's gotten to the point where his villains are behaving more heroically than he is. We are given to understand that this is one of the things that prompts him to take up his ring again.

edited 6th Apr '17 2:01:10 PM by Robbery

I'm going to have the unpopular opinion and say that I found Sportsmaster in Young Justice kind of flat. He had absolutely no redeeming qualities. Yeah sure, he was a good fighter and I guess that made him kind of a decent villain; but he was such a douchebag. I could never get over how he abused his own children and didn't even care about his own daughter's death. Instead, he just shrugged it off as a reason to take on some top dog position.

On the subject of Deathstroke, though, I'd still say Arrow's Slade and Teen Titans' Slade were the best for the exact same reason: they had a personal vendetta against the heroes and made their lives a living Hell. Both Slades also had amazing actors and were easily the best villains in their respective shows.

Overall, however, this movie was pretty good. It was kind of like I was watching the old Teen Titans: Beast Boy still annoyed me, Dick Grayson and Starfire still were adorable, Slade still gave off disturbing, unsettling vibes toward teenagers, Brother Blood was still pretty lame, and I still absolutely despised Terra.

edited 6th Apr '17 2:44:21 PM by deuteragonist

By Teen Titans do you mean comic or '03? Because the vendetta was only in the former between the two.

Oog. Saw the movie last night, re-read the original Judas Contract comics just now. Didn't exactly do the movie any favours

Shoehorning Damian and Brother Blood into things made... well, to be honest, very, very little sense. Honestly, I'm pretty sure that the only reason Damian was there was because the animated movies are supposed to share a continuity, and so they were continuing the stupid, stupid rivalry between Damian and Slade that started in the Son of Batman movie. It doesn't look any less ridiculous to have a (presumably) slightly older Damian fighting on even terms with Deathstroke. I don't care how well-trained you are, if you're all of four feet tall and maybe sixty pounds soaking wet, against a full-grown opponent of even modest competence, you will lose.

That being said, I didn't mind Damian that much in this- he's grown up a little, which is all to the good, but he really didn't have a lot of reason to be in the movie.

Brother Blood running H.I.V.E.? Why? It's not like he's all that popular a character... granted, Titans' media seems to love conflating their villains; the cartoon managed to moosh H.I.V.E., the Fearsome Five, and Brother Blood together, so I suppose I can be thankful that at least this thing didn't go quite that far.

Honestly, I never had a problem with the initial contract being taken out on the Titans because an up-and-coming villain group thought that it would be a quick and easy way to grab some rep. The whole 'I steal superpowers and ascend to godhood' thing kind of came out of left field... Blood said he'd been planning this for nine centuries... planning what, exactly? 'Superpowers' only existed in the DCU (barring a handful of special cases) from the 1940s-ish onwards, and the tech to move them around is certainly rather more recent. What was the original plan?

• Step 1: Kidnap a bunch of my enemies
• Step 2: Tie them all up and then stick 'em on a pedestal with my followers staring at them
• Step 3: ??????
• Step 4: Profit!!!! (also maybe godhood?)

Speaking of which, why did he think turning himself into Animal Vegetable Mineral Man (or maybe Ultra, the Multi Alien) made him a god? I mean, okay, some fruitloop with the powers of a bunch of the Titans would weigh in decently high on the super weight scale, but not that high... and if the machine was supposed to steal superpowers, what was Damian doing tied to it? What was Blood going to steal from him, his snotty attitude? For that matter, how did he get anything at all from Jaime? The Blue Beetle 'powers' are entirely tied up in the Scarab, no matter what origin they're giving the bug this week. Bleh, sorry, random tangent on a pet peeve (hate it when the baddies just have generic 'power dampeners' that force people down to human level, no matter where their powers come from or whether they're human to start with).

And why the little prologue with Starfire reaching Earth? I mean, sure, okay, no worries, it was kind of a fun bit, but then where did Kid Flash, Speedy and Bumblebee go in the intervening time? And why did Speedy have a portal-closing arrow in his quiver? That... didn't make a lot of sense.

Blargh. Overall, it wasn't a bad movie, per se, it was just... less. Less than it could have been, maybe less than it should have been. Ramming a sympathetic origin down Terra's throat left the whole thing feeling weaker, and Slade's motivation shifting to 'you stole what I thought was mine!' from 'I hold you partly responsible for my son's death, and I have to kill you to satisfy my own twisted sense of honour' weakened the character, I thought.

Also, Jericho just randomly kind of shows up as a guinea pig for Brother Blood's power-stealing machine and then gets shot in the head by Mother Mayhem (and later gets back up)? Why did Mother Mayhem think that would work, anyways? She'd just watched Joey display enhanced durability.

Oh well. Maybe someday we'll get a nu52-baggage-free version of the Judas Contract.

Yeah. I liked it, certainly more than what the '03 cartoon did with it, but it could have been even better had it been more faithful to the original.

I do agree that the drawback to this film is the it combining the plots of Judas Contract and Cult of Brother Blood into one (even after the last DC movie that tried to use plot points from The Dark Knight Returns and The Death of Superman ended up pissing off a lot of fans). Though I could see why as, for me at least who read the trade paperback copy of Judas Contract which features a story involving Brother Blood, it welds in the two unrelated story together in a nice package. Also, his plan is pretty much a rip off to Libra who did the exact same thing to the Justice League; only difference is Blood ended up becoming a Super Skrull knockoff rather than a servant for Darkseid. But other than that, this was a good portrayal of the character who acts exactly like how he is in a comic: a zealous cult leader seeking to expand his religion. Especially compare to his other two portrayals who doesn't seem to take the cult leader theme far enough.

On the Damien/Slade rivalry, yeah that is unavoidable given the Son of Batman movie still being canon. But hey at least we can enjoy Deathstroke beating the hell out Damien for all his appearances being a brat. And to paraphrase a quote from him in the movie regarding the beating: "C'mon. You all have the urge".

... I still want to know how he was planning that for nine centuries, though. Or at the very least what the original plan looked like >.>

Remember that opening scene from X-Men: Apocalypse where we saw the Horseman perform a ritual that transfer Apocalypse mind and body from his frail body to another younger one?

That's my guess as to what Blood's original plan was.

Remember, the original "Judas Contract" was one story arc that was part of an ongoing comic book series, and in an ongoing comic book series, story arcs intersect. The collected "Judas Contract" features a brief appearance by the Cult of Brother Blood in it's first chapter because the Titans had been dealing with Brother Blood on and off for like, at least two years at that point. It doesn't make sense to include him in a stand-alone movie version of the "Judas Contract." But then, I don't think it's a terribly good idea to do "The Judas Contract" as a stand-alone film, given that most of its elements need a lot of build up in order to pay off. While I doubt it'll ever happen to any great extent, WB should take a page out of the Anime model and consider doing OVA series occasionally,

The Hive was originally supposed to be a super-criminal organization that was trying to establish themselves; taking out the Titans was supposed to be their big entry onto the world stage of super-villainy. The original contract was held by the Ravager, who hated the Titans for embarrassing him in front of his girlfriend (Grant Wilson and his girlfriend were the ones who found Starfire when she landed on Earth, and Grant acted like an ass when the newly formed Titans showed up to help her out), and was then taken over by his father, Slade, after the Hive's version of the serum that gave Slade his powers killed Grant. It always felt like one of the ideas (of which there were many) that Marv Wolfman never got to ully develop. It's original council was supposed to have been composed of a number of minor, but recognizable super villains (the only one who was ever named was Dr. Tzin-Tzin, an old Wonder Woman villain). It showed up, I think, just once again during Wolfman's run on the Titans, and we didn't find out much more about it, except that the previous Hive leader's not-as-dumb-as-she-looks mistress had killed him and taken over. Otherwise, all we knew about them was that they were apparently a big criminal organization with a lot of mooks.

Thanks for explaining the entire backstory to Judas Contract that I already knew about. which is pretty much the main reason why it wasn't going to be a direct adaption to the film unfortunately.

We didn't get the whole backstory of Slade and Jericho joining the team since 1) there haven't been any previous Titans movies that establish HIVE and their contract, 2) Deathstroke is changed greatly thanks to Son of Batman, and 3) time constraints of movies when introducing characters. I cite trade paperback of Judas Contract which features that Blood story mostly because what follows after that story was the retirement of Wally West as Kid Flash, Terra fully earning the trust of the Titans, and Dick Grayson dropping the Robin identity, which is a clearly important story element to the overall plot of Judas Contract that can't be ignored IMO.

But since this is the New 52 Animated Universe, this version of Judas Contract was going to be different in a lot of areas seeing the weird history with the Titans being a team before the Justice League and Donna Troy being a new young member instead of a founder. Wonder when they are going to do DC Rebirth movies? Cause let's face it, we all will prefer Son of Superman over Son of Batman.

At least one likable superhero child that doesn't act like everything should be his and is shoehorned in the movies?

edited 8th Apr '17 7:14:31 PM by Blueace

Pretty much.

My main point was that "The Judas Contract" is a story whose emotional payoff depends on a number of it's elements being well established in the minds of the audience, and thus is an odd choice to do as a standalone movie at any degree of adaptation. If you're gonna show Terra betraying the Titans, the audience needs to at least know, and care, who she is. Not an impossible thing to pull off, mind you, just, in my opinion, an odd choice.

My summary of the backstory was aimed at the thread at large, for anyone who didn't already know it and might enjoy such a thing. No offense was meant.

edited 8th Apr '17 10:11:05 PM by Robbery

None taken. Admittedly I assumed too much from your comment.

But yeah, I agree with your point on the emotional conflicts in said betrayal. Its kind of the main reason why I am hoping Young Justice (a.k.a. the best Teen Titans show) will adapt the story in its show and do it justice where both this film and the 2003 Teen Titans cartoon failed to capture. I mean it have to since it seems like a common theme for the team to have to deal with trusted members betraying them in some way; except this time the member will not have a well meaning excuse for doing it like Red Arrow and Blue Bettle.