Fresh from Comic-Con International in San Diego, the first trailer for the live-action Teen Titans series, Titans has been released. The show will launch this fall on DC Universe, DC's own multimedia streaming platform that promises to be the "ultimate membership" for fans, with Titans being one of a handful of original shows subscribers will have exclusive access to.

Other than a couple of unofficial shots of the cast that made the rounds on social media, and a even fewer officially released promotional images of Brenton Thwaites' Robin and Alan Ritchson's and Minka Kelly's Hawk and Dove, this Comic-Con trailer is our first proper taste of the kind of show Titans will be. And, judging from what we've seen so far, that taste will be full of blood, sweat and tears.

The Teen Titans have been kicking criminal butt on our small screens in cartoon form since 2003, but given that the current iteration of Titans' long-serving animated counterparts -- Teen Titans Go! -- relies on fourth-wall breaking zaniness and fart jokes to pull in viewers, the two worlds couldn't be further apart.

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That's how it appears on the surface, at least. Fans of the original Teen Titans cartoon may have felt a little deja vu while watching one pivotal sequence in the Titans trailer. The scene in question features Robin proving his independence from his former mentor as bluntly as possible -- brutally (or possibly fatally) striking down a group of men in an alleyway after they query where said-Bat-themed-mentor is. It's strikingly reminiscent of a scene that happened during Teen Titans Season 5's "Go!," an episode that revealed what each member of the team's life was like just prior to the Titans forming... which is the entire premise of Titans.

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Not sold? Let's compare the two scenes. In Titans, the alleyway sequence begins with an overhead shot looking down on a group of men and a car -- a group of men who are clearly up to no good. Sensing that they're being watched, the men glance fearfully up at the night sky. Something leaps from one rooftop to the other, almost too fast to see properly, before suddenly landing on the car with a crash. The men pull guns, and one of them -- confused at the intruder's appearance -- asks: "Where's Batman?"

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A change in shot reveals that the person perched on the battered car's hood is Robin. The men open fire, with Robin appearing to (gasp!) exchange shots with the criminals, before going in for close-combat. After a bloody scrap, the teenage vigilante emerges victorious, and, with a horrible bone-crunching step onto a poor guy's neck, a soon-to-be-much-quoted line comes out of his blood-splattered mouth: "F*ck Batman."

The Teen Titans alleyway sequence begins in much the same way, albeit with a single thief rather than a gaggle of street thugs. As the man tries to make his escape, swag bag in hand, a birdarang knocks the crowbar from his hand. It clatters behind him and, startled, he backs the way he came. "I don't want any trouble, okay?" Behind him, a shadowy figure silently drops to the ground, accompanied by bats flying out from nowhere to attack the thief. "You should have thought of that before you committed the crime." The figure steps out of the darkness, revealing itself to be Robin. A hand-to-hand fight ensues, ending with the older man thrown against a wall. "Hey, this isn't your town -- aren't you supposed to be with..?" Robin merely scoffs at the allusion to his old sidekick gig. "I just moved here. And from now... I work alone."

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While there are key differences -- the number of criminals, the bat attack, the gore and the expletive -- the set-up, sequence of events and message is virtually identical. Both scenes establish a Robin who is newly independent, resentful of his past and looking to strike his own brand of fear into the hearts and minds of his enemies. Sure, a member of the Bat Family beating up bad guys in a dark, urban setting isn't hard to come by any form of DC media, but the specificity is hard to dispute here.

Whether this callback is coincidentally or deliberately referential, finding reasons to compare Titans to a show as beloved as Teen Titans can only work in the former's favor.


Debuting in late-2018 on DC Universe, Titans stars Brenton Thwaites as Dick Grayson, Anna Diop as Starfire, Teagan Croft as Raven, Ryan Potter as Beast Boy, Alan Ritchson as Hawk, Minka Kelly as Dove and Lindsey Gort as Amy Rohrbach.