Director/Producer – Jeff Mendikow, Screenplay – Jeremy Adams & Marly Halpern-Graser, Music – Jason Lazarus, Animation Director – Mac Whiting, Animation – Shipple Animation Studios Inc., Animation Supervisor – Dennver Madulid, Art Direction – Tony Mora. Production Company – Warner Bros. Animation.
Voices
Scott Menville (Robin), Tara Strong (Raven), Khary Payton (Cyborg), Hynden Walch (Starfire), Greg Cipes (Beast Boy), Kevin Michael Richardson (Trigon/Hexagon), Rhys Darby (Master of Games), ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic (Gentleman Ghost/Darkseid), Grey Griffin (Mrs. Claus/Bank Teller), Robert Morse (Santa Claus)
Plot
The Teen Titans fight the Gentleman Ghost who is on a bank-robbing spree. The Ghost makes a getaway by possessing various of the Titans. When The Ghost enters Raven’s mind, it attempts to steal a crystal it sees there. The crystal acts to imprison Raven’s demon self and the Ghost’s efforts to crack the crystal causes the demon inside Raven to emerge. Raven realizes that any further use of her powers will allow the demon free. The Titans are then snatched and taken away by the Master of Games. He announces that he wants them to fight their serious selves in order to find the best versions of the superheroes in the multiverse. As the Titans and their serious selves begin combat, they find this is a ruse created by Raven’s father Trigon to force her to unleash her powers.
The Teen Titans are one of the numerous superhero teams that populate comic-books. The Titans first appeared in DC Comics in 1964 where they were conceived as a junior version of the Justice League and the comic-book has enjoyed reasonable popularity over the years. The Titans received their own animated tv show with Teen Titans (2003-6), which saw a film spinoff with Teen Titans: Trouble in Tokyo (2006).
The show was later revived as Teen Titans Go! (2013– ), featuring the same voice actors but placing a less serious, comedic spin on the characters. This version had four film spinoffs with Teen Titans Go! To the Movies (2018), Teen Titans Go! Vs. Teen Titans here, Teen Titans Go! See Space Jam (2021) and Teen Titans Go! & DC Super Hero Girls: Mayhem in the Multiverse (2022). The DC Animated Universe Original Movies also made two unrelated, serious animated Teen Titans films with Justice League vs Teen Titans (2016) and Teen Titans: The Judas Contract (2017). The Teen Titans made their live-action debut in the tv series Titans (2018-23).
Teen Titans Go! vs Teen Titans came out a year after the animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018). It can be seen to be doing exactly the same thing that Into the Spider-Verse did – tapping into the Multiverse concept and featuring a Crossover between different incarnations of the character(s). Even more so, it anticipates Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) and its crossover between the current and previous screen incarnations of the characters.
The Teen Titans Go (left side l to r) – Cyborg, Beast Boy, Robin and Starfire – vs their serious selves (right side)
Watching Teen Titans Go! and any of its spinoffs is akin to being in a room of Ritalin-deprived kids all babbling and trying to make funny quips and asides at the same time. When it came to Teen Titans Go! to the Movies, this fell into place with a rather hilarious wit that was spoofing and making some clever asides at the whole Superhero Film phenomenon. On the other hand, I don’t feel that Teen Titans Go! vs Teen Titans quite hits those same inspired heights again.
This is merely a multiverse film like Into the Spider-Verse with a fast-paced frenzy of asides and occasional gags about the two teams meeting up. The film mostly consists of the Teen Titans Go feeling they are less cool runty versions of the serious Titans or about how they impetuously head into action without a plan. The various selves (where both versions of the characters are played by the same voice actors) are occasionally amusingly paired up, in particular Go’s versions of Robin who feels an underachiever against the serious version. The most substantial character arc throughout is given over to Raven and her fears of being taken over by her demon side.
The Into the Spider-Verse influence is particularly evident during the climactic scenes that involve the Titans bringing all their other teams from the multiverse together for a battle royale against the demon Trigon/Hexagon. This includes versions of themselves from an even more serious darkgrim universe, others where they are mermaids or in black-and-white animation, even including their selves from the comic-book page.
