Teen Titans Go! vs. Teen Titans (2019)

The Teen Titans have always been a diverse outfit, and this crossover between the 2013 comedic quintet and their 2003 predecessors does nothing to disturb that inheritance. Cyborg is Black, Starfire and Raven are women, and the voice cast is suitably multi-ethnic. None of it is arranged around a thesis. The composition is simply what a superhero team looks like in the DC catalog, and the film treats it as furniture. We are not being instructed. We are being shown a bank robbery.

The plot sends both teams through the multiverse, pursued by Trigon, a second Trigon, a game master, and Santa Claus, who turns out to be a surprisingly physical antagonist. There is no economic critique here, no environmental sermon, no commentary on race, and no body-positivity messaging. Raven's arc, in which she learns to accept her demonic half, carries a faint self-actualization flavor, but the film makes no argument about gender and the story resolves as a boys-and-girls brawl with dragons. The moralizing that does occur arrives in the form of jokes, which is the preferable delivery system.

This is a gag-driven crossover that knows exactly what it is and declines to lecture anyone about it. The 100 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes suggests audiences were grateful for the restraint. It is a sequel to two separate properties, adapted from comic books, and it features superheroes, all of which the classification ledger records without enthusiasm. A modest artifact. Pleasant, loud, and ideologically inert.