While HBO’s small screen take on the Batman franchise wasn’t flawless, the show does deserve credit for pulling off one thing that four different movie versions of the franchise couldn’t get right. Prime Video’s The Boys franchise set the bar incredibly high for R-rated, mature superhero shows. Based on the cult comic book series of the same name by author Garth Ennis, The Boys played fast and loose with its source material.
The Boys used the main storyline of the comics as a launching pad for an original plot that parodied real-life events, and soon became a critically acclaimed phenomenon as a result. However, the show inevitably overshadowed other R-rated superhero series, some of which even predated it. 2021’s animated hit Invincible was arguably even more brutal than The Boys, while 2022’s Peacemaker was just as scathing in its satire as the Prime Video show.
However, HBO’s gory, brutal Titans arguably deserves even more credit, and not just because the show gave Reacher‘s Alan Ritchson a lead role before he became a household name thanks to Prime Vidoe’s action thriller. Running from 2018 until 2023, Titans was a live-action Teen Titans series that completely dropped the family-friendly approach of earlier takes on the team. Titans was foulmouthed, gritty, and unapologetically bleak, and it was exactly these qualities that made it the best depiction of Robin in Batman franchise history.
Brenton Thwaites’ Dick Grayson Is The Best Live-Action Version of Robin
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In an infamous early trailer designed to prove that Titans was nothing like earlier screen versions of Batman, Robin explicitly said “**** Batman,” a jaw-dropping line that threatened to overshadow the entire series before it began. Luckily, Titans had the depth to back this shock value, with Brenton Thwaites’ Dick Grayson quickly becoming the most memorable screen version of Robin to date.
Iain Glen’s fresh take on Bruce Wayne was a welcome change to the traditional Batman, but Thwaites’ Robin wants nothing to do with him or his reputation when he arrived in Detroit as a detective. He may still have donned the Robin costume, but Grayson was a conflicted antihero, and the trauma he collected while working for the Caped Crusader eventually shaped him into the Titans hero Nightwing.
Compared to earlier versions of Robin, Thwaites’s Titans take is undoubtedly the franchise’s screen standout. Chris O’Donnell’s forgettable supporting role in Batman Forever and Batman & Robin, Joseph Gordon Levitt’s poorly disguised reveal in The Dark Knight Rises, and an unseen nod to the offscreen death of Jason Todd in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice all proved that the movies of the series don’t know how to handle the character.
For All Its Failings, Titans’ Depiction Of The Titular Group Was Great
In contrast, Titans not only did a superb job of making Robin a main character, but the show also highlighted the rest of the titular gang beyond Nightwing. From Beast Boy to Hawk and Dove, to Starfire, Raven, and everyone else, the actual Titans were a high point of a show that was admittedly tonally wobbly, but still cared about its characters and offering viewers a richly realized, mature take on them.
The idea of a hard-R, gory take on Teen Titans could easily have felt like a pointless edgy reboot, but DC’s Titans was true to its characters while still portraying them in a way that would never have flown in earlier, family-friendly takes on the franchise. As much as Zack Snyder’s darker take on Batman wanted to lean into grittier territory, Titans was ironically freer to feature profanity and gore since it wasn’t a mainstream blockbuster movie.
As such, viewers got a harsher, darker version of Batman and Robin’s relationship not from one of the franchise’s many major movie releases, but instead from a TV series that was otherwise criticized for its inconsistent blend of admittedly cartoony moments and brutal, realistic action. In the process, Titans proved that the HBO show undoubtedly did its characters justice.
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