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Teen Titans (2003)
Michael Chang, Ben Jones, Ciro Nieli, Alex Soto, and Matt Youngberg's Teen Titans: Because Violating Perez and Wolfman's Fans is fun!
To put my thoughts in a nutshell: this show stinks to high heaven. Low production values, poor continuity, sloppy pacing, over-condensed plot, horrible characterization, sometimes manageable, sometimes horrible casting, and the fact that its actually only half-animated make up what's wrong with this show. If Directors Michael Chang, Ben Jones, Ciro Nieli, Alex Soto, and Matt Youngberg weren't even able to afford to make their animated show...animated! They probably shouldn't even have bothered! While several of the scenes are word for word from the comics, they are soullessly done. A story should have a "soul", if you will, and this show lacked anything of the sort. Which is a huge part of the problem with it. The original comics, on the other hand...well, they almost overflowed with the stuff. The authors, George Perez and Marv Wolfman, spent about twelve years of their lives writing them, using a typewriter. They seamlessly spun together a beautiful fabric of a story, using their craftsmanship, their devotion and their love for their work. This brought us "Teen Titans".
Michael Chang, Ben Jones, Ciro Nieli, Alex Soto, and Matt Youngberg merely took the materials they already had and just slapped them on screen with very little care.
After looking through the show, episode by episode, the two biggest mistakes that Michael Chang, Ben Jones, Ciro Nieli, Alex Soto, and Matt Youngber made are definitely evident.
Biggest Mistake #One: They tried to do it for too little budget, $8 million. What they were able to do with that little amount is impression, though, I will admit. On the other hand, being impression of such a small amount of money, and actually making something that actually is impression, in of itself, are two different things. They definitely needed about twice the budget that they had just to get the show fully animated, and even more than that if they wanted to add a little style to the animation.
Biggest Mistake #Two: They tried to fit the entirety of the first two comics (about 30 pages total, and in small print) into one half hour show. This forced drastic cuts all throughout it, especially in the "Second Generation" section, also at which point they'd run out budget for animation for the most part (filming at high contrast and using rotoscoping does not make animation). They were also forced to sacrifice personality and development for most of the characters.
All this led up to a sudden end, in which the narrator announced "to be continued". The show was not officially titled "Teen Titans-Part One", and nothing even hinted that this was merely a part of the story. It is merely titled "Teen Titans", which directly implies that the entire story should have been told in this show. They advertised it that way, and they've kept it that way. In another review, the reviewer who wrote up "Michael Chang, Ben Jones, Ciro Nieli, Alex Soto, and Matt Youngberg's Teen Titans, Part One: A Critique" on the "DC Comics Sarcasm Page" said, "I'm surprised there weren't any lawsuits." Film Rating: 3/10