Teen Titans Go! To The Movies

And Doing Time With Paul Manafort

At some point, as someone who avidly loved comics as a kid, I made a rather foolish decision to try to see all the DC and Marvel movies, which has taken me to the doorstep of the Teen Titans. I never watched the TV series “Teen Titans Go!”, it was considerably after my time. Seems as if the movie takes less from the source material (the Teen Titans have had an unusually robust run on the page as far as team-centric hero books) than it does from the anime-inspired show. The tone here is lighthearted, goofy – if you are a former comics-reading adult like me, maybe inessential. But I have spent ninety minutes on superhero fare worse than this, if you must know.

The shift from the Cartoon Network to the movies brings with it a welcome parodic angle on the superhero movie boom. This is a story about how the Teen Titans get no respect. While uncommented-upon in the movie, it is telling that the team’s two most well-known characters, Robin and Cyborg, have had disproportionately middling presences on screen. At least Cyborg appeared in the Snyderverse, albeit fairly briefly. The last few Batman appearances barely referenced any Robin-related activities, and the character hasn’t been seen in live-action films since Chris O’Donnell in the 90’s. There’s an early gag here about a prequel movie dedicated to Alfred, which stings particularly now considering DC did pursue that particularly-dubious muse with the three-season “Pennyworth” show.

The gang – Robin, Cyborg, Starfire, Raven, Beast Boy – is fighting crime at the start of the film, but the respect mostly goes to the Justice League. They partner with a superproducer, Jade Wilson, who is meant to maybe be a female analog to Zack Snyder as far as making superhero films. Which is a tell, as the team is also battling supervillain Slade Wilson. Their fairly trivial battles at one point involve time travel, which leads them to undoing and then redoing the origins of several famous superheroes. Seeing Robin push Bruce Wayne’s parents into that fateful alley was not something I expected from a movie for children, or even adults.

The irreverence here is very child-friendly, with a few nerdy nods to the fans who have been DC fans for decades. There’s a catchy bit where the Teen Titans rap when they should be saving the world, an earworm that tackles such toony topics like the size of animated Robin’s tiny hands. It’s all good-natured buffoonery, not exactly at the level of more prestigious animated stuff. But I found this easier to sit through than the post-”Shrek” stuff Dreamworks used to bang out a couple decades ago.

I’m going to hopscotch a little to make this relevant to criminal justice, I hope you’ll forgive me. There is a notorious film producer who was working during this time, a Steven Mnuchin, I’m sure some of you need no introduction. Mnuchin was someone I thought would be a producer on this – he wasn’t, though his name was on “Batman V. Superman: Dawn Of Justice”. Mnuchin also served in the Donald Trump Presidential Administration, as the Secretary of the Treasury. And I’ll bet he knows another Trump ally, Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort. Paul Manafort, with whom I was in prison.

For a brief period, I was living across the hall from Manafort, in a dorm that housed about a hundred of us, in six-man cubicles with no doors and open-air concrete partitions. I was curious about him – was he maybe some sort of secret oracle with a cache of hidden insight? Would he suddenly make Donald Trump make sense to me? Unfortunately, whenever I heard him speak, I realized he was just repeating FOX News chyrons, not a lot of substance behind his words. We didn’t talk, but you always knew he was around because he was surrounded by a ton of tough white guys who always strutted around with Hannity braying through their single earpiece. 

These guys protected him, of course, but there was also plenty of hero worship there. After all, he got Donald Trump elected, probably by sharing polling data with the Russian government, according to a Republican-led investigation that has since been brushed under the rug. The guards were also pretty preferential towards him. There were always extra toiletries and food around for him. Which is notable because what people don’t realize is that toilet paper is distributed sparingly, and is one of the most cherished and desired items in a prison. I recall a graduation ceremony being held for GED students, which allowed admittance only to inmates who had taught classes. While I sat in the rafters, there was Manafort, who hadn’t taught anything, seated at his own table, getting endless slices of cake while the rest of us were only allotted one. Events like this allowed the officers and the warden to freely hobnob with Manafort, and he basked in what was obvious adulation.

Kissing Manafort’s behind didn’t have any effect on me, of course, so I didn’t pay much attention to it (I’m sure he was in line for many more perks I didn’t notice). What did strike me as notable was Manafort receiving Compassionate Release at the early part of the pandemic. Policies on Compassionate Release in federal prison are pretty straightforward, since early release is one of those concepts federal prison rarely indulges. Compassionate Release is typically limited to inmates who had served 75% of their time, but Manafort seemingly received his after only two years of a seven and a half year sentence. 

It is my understanding his application was accepted on the basis of his having a heart surgery a year earlier, and maybe there’s a premium on respiratory-related ailments during such a time as the pandemic. However, the pandemic also notably slowed many cases of compassionate release. Indeed, I knew people who had petitioned for such a release despite recurring health problems. I saw people waiting for compassionate release die. Others were wheeled out on stretchers, to a fate I’ll never know. Many of these men were physically limited in various ways. For what it’s worth, Manafort was outside on the track with the rest of us, powerwalking every single day for hours at a time. 

FYI, Paul Manafort was last seen attending the Republican National Convention a week ago.