The Trash Marketing for Titans Was Unfair to the Show and Viewers

Alright, give me your crow, because I enjoyed the heck out of Titans, but I maintain that the marketing for this show did it no favors and existed as a “gotcha” bait for critics and fans who found the initial trailers and images questionable.

One of the scenes in the trailer for Titans that bothered me was the image of Dick Grayson stepping on someone’s neck and breaking it, implying that my sweet boy Dick Grayson was now out here wilding out, snapping necks. Then you watch the show, and while Dick does brutally beat up these guys, that step on the neck scene is not there. So why was it in the trailer?

It’s one thing to say that we should wait to see if images, costumes, etc. will look better in the actual film or show, because that is often the case. That being said, when you set up a tone and a vibe in a trailer, it’s disingenuous to then say, “Well just wait and see.” Trailers and marketing are there to sell us a product, to build up hype for something. It’s frustrating to see marketing and trailers lead with lowest common denominator misrepresentations and use that for hype.

With Titans attracting so much backlash about Starfire’s costume, knowing that there were other better images to use, why not use them? Now that the series is overall getting mixed-to-good reviews, we get news about a new costume. Why, why, why, when Anna Diop was out here getting dragged by racist comments—and even those on her side saying, “This doesn’t look good”—didn’t anyone say, “Hey, let’s give them a hint of future costumes?”

I get not wanting to cave to pressure, but the fact that Anna’s Starfire is being praised as one of the strongest elements of the series isn’t a “gotcha” to racists when she should have never been subjected to it in the first place, and showing her in a strong costume from jump would have exposed those who were saying that their reasoning wasn’t race-related.

When speaking with the cast and writers of the show during NYCC, the things that kept coming up were the show’s humanity and sense of family. Titans wanted to use this show as a way of talking about toxic family dynamics—Bruce and Dick, Raven and Trigon, Starfire and Blackfire, etc.—and to have the positive equivalent be the Titans together as one adoptive family. A family that dates each other, but that’s beside the point.

It also wanted to show how, for non-powered characters like Hawk and Dove, there is psychological pain and grit to being a “hero.”

None of this is shown in the trailer or marketing.

The trailers focused on the violence, the grim and the dark, not on the hope that the writers said was important in how they constructed the narrative. “Grim without hope or redemption,” executive producer Akiva Goldsman said at NYCC. “I don’t care about those kind of stories.”

Yet people promoted it like that, and that’s how mainstream media understandably took it. It wasn’t just us at The Mary Sue who raised eyebrows over this show. Most people and sites believed what they saw and didn’t like it—which is fair. That’s how trailers work. Even I was like, “We will see,” and while those dark elements are absolutely there and not for everyone, and there are some dynamics (Dick being one of the few white cops in a black Detriot precinct) to be explored, everything got overshadowed.

I also wonder if this was done on purpose—that they had so much faith in their product that they wanted this to be a huge gotcha moment for the show: “Joke’s on you; our show is good.” We thought that might have been the plan with Solo, but it ended up just being basic. Venom wasn’t great, but it was fun queer-coded escapism, and Blockers I got wrong, but I still say the trailer was trash.

I can’t speak for everyone, but I want shows and movies to be good. I love the Teen Titans and love nothing more than a woman of color being cast instead of a white woman and being a boss. Plus, I’m BBRae trash, and that was promised to me by the actors from Titans. Honestly, if anyone had put a scene of them together in a trailer, I would have highlighted that.

When speaking to Greg Walker, another executive producer, he talked about his plans for the series and said that he wanted to explore the legacy of Bruce and Dick’s nature vs. nurture relationship. I found that conversation much more interesting than anything in the trailer. In fact, watching the pilot, hearing Dick talk to his partner about his “old partner,” he says more than “Fuck Batman,” which seems extra, even in context.

“Fuck Batman,” the bad costume images, the neck-snapping … all of that took precedence over the themes of the show, which should have been the focus.

Trailers exist to be judged, so give us good ones that highlight the things that are unique and special about your show, not just what’s on-brand and derivative. For those who watched the pilot, what did you think? Starfire was amazing, in my opinion.

(image: DC Universe)

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