‘Jason’: Highly Anticipated Robin Fan Film Gets Gritty Trailer
After dropping a short teaser almost one year ago, Alex Hunter, of HiTop Films, has now released a full three-minute trailer for his highly anticipated feature-length fan film, simply titled Jason.
The film follows an early 20s Jason Todd on Christmas Eve in the Gotham City Slums, “spending the Holiday with the poor and forgotten,” until a past “partner” rolls up in a stolen car. Todd reluctantly joins him, and “his world begins to fall apart” as a result. The titular character, beloved for years as Batman’s quasi-son sidekick Robin, seems to be shown in a darker place than ever before.
The trailer promises a gritty, street-level Gotham City experience, bathed in red lights to match all the blood. The tone is set from the very beginning, as somber images of a battered Robin (in what seems to be a gorgeous comics-inspired suit) play under a monologue from the man himself: “The bird, the bat, and the fucking crowbar. The bullet holes of my life, they feel like a blur. I don’t know… we remember what we want to, and we can’t forget what we really need to.”
This brutal and realistic take on the Boy Wonder would represent the first in a feature-length format, inevitably challenging the beloved common familiarity with the character that most people have. As flashes of Jason’s life are shown throughout the trailer, the through-line is abuse, addiction, desperation. He’s lost in a whirl of pushing and punching, and behind the camera, Hunter certainly isn’t pulling any punches himself. He strips the aforementioned childlike innocence associated with Jason in the mainstream and adopts a sharp, painfully humanistic approach in its wake. Hunter himself has described his take on Jason Todd as semi-autobiographical, chronicling the turbulence of his own life, leaving his whole heart and soul on the screen.
Hunter, an accomplished video essayist, first came onto the film scene in 2019 with a horror short called The Scarecrow, and then followed it up with a similarly dark release in early 2020 titled Date Night. Both films displayed Hunter’s unique knack for terror, which he’d further by releasing his most ambitious project to date late in that same year, The Plumber, one he co-directed with John Graves.
Through HiTop Films, Hunter has amassed a following of over 400,000 subscribers on YouTube due to his personal, well articulated takes on the latest comic book films, tv shows, and more remaining one of the more respected voices on the platform.
Jason is set to release this year on Christmas Day; impressively, it’s his fourth film in four years, and his first feature-length release, which he notes is more than two years in the making. The film stars Hunter’s longtime friend and collaborator Francesco Di Maio as Jason Todd, Eddie Vincent as Willis Todd, Emily Moore as Sheila Todd, and Leo Mengine as Young Jason.
With tons of Safdie-esque grime (see Good Time and Uncut Gems for comparison), an untold story charged with apprehensive intrigue, and a Batman appearance on the backend, the new Jason trailer is sure to be one of the more unique takes on not only the caped crusader but the kid from crime alley.