The Titans season 3 version of Bruce Wayne is unlike every Batman movie so far

One of the most frustrating aspects of Titans, the HBO Max drama based on DC Comics’ Teen Titans, is its slow transformation into a Batman story in all but name. Its third season even takes place in Gotham City, through adapted versions of the Batman stories. A death in the family and Underhood, in which Jason Todd, the second Robin, dies and is resurrected much later as the violent vigilante Red Hood. TitansHowever, the turn to Batman canon isn’t all bad. While it is frustrating that Titans He has worked so hard to include a Batman story without Batman in his Teen Titans narrative, that he has not chosen to tell that story without Bruce Wayne. AND Titans has the weirdest hilarious version of Bruce Wayne that we could ever have in live action.

On Titans, Bruce Wayne is portrayed by Iain Glen, best known for his portrayal of Jorah Mormont on the HBO series game of Thrones. Glen is one of the oldest men to take on the role of Bruce Wayne, which is generally taken by men in their 30s and 30s. (Robert Pattinson, the newest Batman, is 35. Glen is 60.) Like the Ben Affleck version of the character, Glen’s Bruce Wayne is a gray-haired man, heavy with the toll his war on crime has taken in your mind and body. However, unlike Affleck, Glen’s Bruce is not a barrel-chested thug burning with rage. This Bruce is slim, edgy, and a bit out of place. It’s a performance that invites viewers to wonder what their Batman should look like – does he look as strange as his Bruce? Or is he choosing to play a Bruce who is very different from the man he is in a Batsuit?

AND Titans has a Batsuit, which appears mainly in a nightmare alternate reality where Dick Grayson is tormented with a vision of a Batman turned assassin. In these scenes, which take place in season one, before Glen was cast, Batman is portrayed by stuntmen Alain Moussi and Max Sevaria in fast-paced and brutal fight scenes that only feature fleeting glimpses of the hero, without any of his exposed face. By the time Glen joins the show in season 2, the show ends with Batman (for now) and only cares about Bruce.

Photo: Ben Mark Holzberg / HBO Max

This Bruce is still fighting crime, but since Titans it’s largely the story of his adopted sons Dick Grayson and Jason Todd, he only appears on this show in disguise, as a dysfunctional father figure. Sometimes it is an illusion evoked by their subconscious when they are plagued with self-doubt. At other times, the former mentor is actually present, in scenes where he encourages his former pupils. But in every appearance, he’s tinged with an air of failure, the idea being that if he’d done a better job, Dick wouldn’t have left town and Jason wouldn’t be so misfit. This Bruce sucks, in a way that is immediately felt by characters who are actively working or witnessing the repercussions of a life under his tutelage.

Glen plays Bruce with the nervous sobriety of a former addict, at least in scenes where the character must be real and present. Other scenes require an illusion from Bruce, and in them Glen is unpredictable: sometimes cruel, sometimes ironic, and sometimes downright ridiculous. He is Bruce Wayne as greeted by the young men who broke down in his heavy-handed efforts to build them, not the stoic legend of comics and movies, but a broken man who can’t help but upset everyone in the wrong way.

It is a daring choice, both for Titans‘writers, and in Glen’s acting. Most face an older Bruce Wayne, of Future Batman for Batman v. Superman – they are not afraid to prove that Batman has gone astray. But the creators usually want to emphasize that Batman is still coldEven if Bruce Wayne has lost sight of a few things. The Bruce of Titans not particularly cool. He hardly seems to have any good ideas, what if Titans is set in an Earth where he works with the Justice League, everyone would probably think he was a deluded fanatic. But while Batman is superfluous to TitansBruce is proving essential. Bruce Wayne built a family that was miserable. So with that poor example at hand, can two ex-Robins build a successful one? The series seems to focus on seeing them try.