Justice League vs. Teen Titans (2016)

Justice League vs. Teen Titans arrives as the twenty-sixth entry in a line of direct-to-video animated superhero features, a category of film that exists largely to be purchased and then shelved. Its social consciousness is inherited, not constructed. The Teen Titans roster happens to include a Latino teenager bonded to alien technology, an alien princess who leads the group, and a half-demon girl who anchors the story. The film never pauses to congratulate itself for any of this. The diversity is simply present, the way furniture is present.

Starfire commands the team and Raven carries the emotional burden, which gives the proceedings a mildly matriarchal shape that the screenplay treats as unremarkable. Blue Beetle's heritage passes without comment. There is no same-sex romance, no climate anxiety, no critique of capital, no meditation on body image, and no attempt to reframe the young Robin's volatility as a neurological condition. He is arrogant and undisciplined, and the film prescribes discipline. That is the whole of its diagnosis.

The moral instruction, such as it is, arrives through action instead of speeches. Teamwork and found family are demonstrated with fists and kryptonite, and the sermonizing is kept to a minimum. A demonic invasion is not an economic system, and the film shows no interest in pretending otherwise. What remains is a competent exercise in franchise maintenance, moderately diverting, untroubled by the cultural questions of a later decade. The Titans punch a demon. The demon loses. Nobody learns anything about society.