The Sandman is coming to Netflix

[estragon]

My guess that my husband would like and was definitely correct. I made that last post before he had seen any trailers for the Netflix version or was even aware of The Sandman in any way. I showed him the trailer and then we finished all the episodes in 2 days, including the adaptations of The Dream of a Thousand Cats and Calliope that came out yesterday. So, anecdotally, I'd say it's a huge success in allowing people who don't like reading comics to experience this material.

Beyond that, I came away with it much more positively than the word of mouth/reviews/clips that made me think it would be just serviceable. If you read comics at all, I would definitely say to read the comics. But if you don't or already have, this is definitely worth watching on its ow merits. The casting is very strong, and they did an admirable job reworking these issues, which require a lot of work because this is the period where The Sandman is most tied into DC superheroes/villains that the adaptation (correctly, in my opinion) just cuts out.

The casting is superb. The whole show would be a joke without a perfect Dream, and they nailed it. I found Patton Oswald a bit too much like 2020s punch-up dialogue at times in his first appearances, but he and the writing team seemed to pull back on that as Matthew became more of a regular. That and the opening voiceover in the first episode feel a bit like studio notes (whether or not they are), but other than that I was largely impressed by the show's restraint at not overexplaining.

I also appreciated the show's willingness to lean into standalone episodes and the tendency of the source material to function something like an 24/7 that are part of the narrative but functionally standalone and with adaptations of Calliope. I worried that they might have to make it more explicitly cliffhanger-y for Netflix, but they've really let them keep the show loose and baggy, to its benefit.

This show is good enough that it will be a real loss if they aren't allowed to just adapt the rest of the source material with more or less this degree of quality and pacing. Most agree that this is the weakest part of the comic, and I'm excited for them to get to the better stuff.

 

[Exposition Owl]

I maintained for years that Sandman was unfilmable, and that trying to adapt it for the screen would be a mistake. So, I've surprised myself with how much I love this show, even if the episode I saw last night disappointed me in the end. I agree with everything estragon says above--the casting is a miracle, and almost every change the show makes from the books is for the better. I've been especially delighted with Jenna Coleman's Johanna Constantine. I desperately want seven seasons and a movie of a spinoff Constantine show starring her.

Last night I watched 24/7, which adapts by far the weakest single issue in the entire Sandman run; one that I kind of dread going back to every time I reread the series. I was very pleasantly surprised when the show seemed to be taking things in a somewhat different (and far more interesting) direction.

Spoiler

Rather than just having John Dee create gratuitous sex and violence because he can, as he does in the comic, they build on his obsession with truth-telling, which is another interesting wrinkle that the show adds to his character. That part of the episode, in which the characters in the diner make each other thoroughly miserable just by telling each other everything they feel in the moment, worked brilliantly, as did the way Dream pays it off in the end with his speech about the difference between lies and dreams. In between those two, though, there's the bit where the diner patrons confront Dee about how forcing them to tell the unvarnished truth hasn't actually made anything better, and Dee responds by . . . making them commit a bunch of gratuitous violence. Forcing Bette to put her own eyes out, for instance, felt jarringly out of sync with the rest of what we've seen from the show's version of Dee. As far as I could tell, it served no narrative purpose except to unnecessarily recreate a shocking image from the comic. I really wish the production team had had the courage to be less faithful to the original Sandman in this episode.

 

[Büge]

I hope that if they do the story "Ramadan", that it's in lush and stylized 2D animation at first and becomes live-action after the Caliph trades the city to Dream.

 

[Phantoon]

My emotional display when watching TV is at best vestigial. I last got emotional watching Buffy on its first run. Nothing in the last 20 years a has got to me, callused and coal-hearted as I am, yet The Sound Of Her Wings really affected me.

I'm pleasantly shocked by how much I like it, and this is the bit of Sandman where it hasn't yet realised its greatness. Please let this continue.

 

[Exposition Owl]

The Sound Of Her Wings

Yeah, that one was utterly brilliant. Combining it with Hob Gadling’s story was sheer genius.

 

[YangusKhan]

I've only watched the first episode and I gotta be honest: this didn't do a great job of hooking me. If I didn't already know the pedigree behind this IP... well I still would probably watch the next episode regardless, but it would be On Thin Ice for sticking with it.

 

[Positronic Brain]

I've only watched the first episode and I gotta be honest: this didn't do a great job of hooking me. If I didn't already know the pedigree behind this IP... well I still would probably watch the next episode regardless, but it would be On Thin Ice for sticking with it.

Yep. You can watch "Dream of a Thousand Cats/Calliope" first - they're standalone, with Morpheus being just a supporting character in these. Or, since you've seen the first episode, watch "The Sound of Her Wings" They're a good encapsulation of the kind of stories you're getting into - if you don't bounce then you know what you're sticking with for.

 

[Johnny Unusual]

I basically just made JBear watch Dream of a Thousand Cats by itself, because I figured as a cat owner, he's appreciate it.

 

[estragon]

One thing about The Sandman is that there is definitely an anthology approach, and so for people who bounce off the opening arc of either the comic or this show it's absolutely true that maybe you just don't like that particular story but could like some or most of the others. It's very uncommon for the Preludes and Nocturnes material to be anyone's favorite volume. On the other hand, the opening story is about mortals getting in over their heads with divine forces they don't understand, and in that respect it's honestly representative of what a lot of the series is like. It's not that huge of a leap from Roderick Burgess' summoning ritual to Calliope, for instance.

On the other hand, this season is where its ties to superhero comics and horror comics are the strongest, so you get a lot of focus on a mcguffin hunt and then some extremely edgy murders that aren't really in line with where the series ends up focusing. I'm an apologist for both the mcguffin hunt and the edgy murder stories in both the source material and this adaptation and I'm glad they adapted them as they did instead of trying to rush past them. (I like the very divisive "24 Hour Diner" issue, and I think the 24/7 episode adapting it was probably my favorite of this first season.) But I do think it could give people the wrong idea. I disagree, but it's not uncommon to hear people say they should just skip/skim all or most of what's in the episodes that make up this first season, except for some highlights like The Sound of Her Wings.

 

[shivam]

i have never read the sandman before, and know very little about it. I watched it because i've been hearing about it for decades. I am up to episode 8, and can say that the only episode i've enjoyed so far was 6. The rest are too gross, meandering, or seemingly pointless. Episode 5 (or whatever that diner was) was egregiously fucked up, and 80% of it was just unnecessary filler that didn't advance the story in any way.

Honestly, if not for Hob's story, i'd happily throw this whole thing in the bin and never think about it again. The fact that ep 7 just went back to fucked up horror was extremely disappointing.

 

[Positronic Brain]

Thats because Hob is from the third volume of the comic - the first two volumes were horror, but after those the comic hit its stride as it wandered off those roots. Late Sandman tend to be less horror oriented and more plain introspective fantasy, although it still has a couple of lows during its run.

EDIT: Crap, Im misremembering. It was an interlude of the second arc.... but probably was published in the thir paperback? In any case, late Sandman is more Hob and less John Dee.

 

[Positronic Brain]

By the way, if youre not enjoying it, cut straight to Episode 11, which is part of the third volume. We can give you the liner notes of whats important for later seasons if they come to fruition and you can skip the lows (and go back later if you ever have the curiosity).

 

[ThornGhost]

I've watched two episodes of this and I think it is pretty bad? So far Dream is entirely unrelatable as a character. Honestly I'm not sure I care about any of the characters.

The CGI looks cheap, the weird vertically squished aspect ratio looks like someone messed up their Adobe Premiere render settings and just went with it, claiming it was a creative choice. The audio mixing and mumbly acting forced my wife and I to turn on subtitles just to understand the dialog.

Mrs. ThornGhost likes it well enough though so I suppose we'll finish. Hopefully it gets better.

 

[Büge]

The audio mixing and mumbly acting forced my wife and I to turn on subtitles just to understand the dialog.

I've noticed that seems to be an issue with a lot of contemporary films and series.

 

[Rascally Badger]

I just finished with this. I think it gets a lot better after the first couple of episodes, with the best episodes being in the middle of the season.

 

[estragon]

One thing I like about The Sandman and that is a real breath of fresh air compared to a lot of Streaming Content content is that many of the characters are definitely not supposed to be relatable, including and especially the titular character. I was worried that this adaptation might lose that, but thankfully it didn't.

It makes me somewhat worried for its likelihood of getting renewed long enough to finish the adaptation, but I'd rather have a single season like this than a whole show developed in Netflix house style. We subbed to Netflix for a month just to watch this and testing out some of the other Netflix Originals we've missed before the subscription runs out, wow the rest of what they're putting out is extremely dire.

 

[Phantoon]

I've watched two episodes of this and I think it is pretty bad? So far Dream is entirely unrelatable as a character.

Should he be? He's a physical constant.

 

[ThornGhost]

I see what you're saying and it is likely that I phrased that obliquely. I suppose I find him so unrelatable that I have a hard time caring about him or his challenges. As the (seeming) main character this is a critical problem for me for the show.

 

[YangusKhan]

I don't really think I'm supposed to care about Dream and his life so much as I'm supposed to care about the people that are affected by him and the things that happen to him.

 

[Bongo]

Oh hey, we have this thread.

I can't really approach this show from the perspective of one without exposure to the source material, since reading it was so formative for me, but it's a very solid adaptation, one that seeks to faithfully represent the tone and theme of the source material while taking opportunities to improve and modernize it in the particulars. in particular I feel the casting was rather inspired. To me, I found the comic at its best when Dream was more facilitating an anthology than going on a quest of his own, and if these most recent episodes are any indication, the show is well-positioned to hit a similar stride.

Dream can be a frustrating protagonist because he's such an aloof jackass, but "The Sound of Her Wings" being placed where it was in the season is a clue to the audience: he's like that on purpose, we know that he's difficult to relate to, you're supposed to put your empathy in the characters around him instead, yadda yadda. If you picked up on that, then you got the point.

 

[estragon]

To me, I found the comic at its best when Dream was more facilitating an anthology than going on a quest of his own, and if these most recent episodes are any indication, the show is well-positioned to hit a similar stride.

Yes, the willingness to be an anthology is one of the things I liked best about this adaptation. I hope the show continues to lean into that if it gets renewed, and it seems like the creative team definitely would like to, if they get the opportunity.

 

[Sprite]

He’s like if Rod Serling were diagetic to the Twilight Zone. Or at least that’s my memory of the comic, I’ve only seen one episode of the show so far.

 

[Adrenaline]

I would say he's more of a central character than that. He's always a mysterious and aloof figure, and there are lots of standalone issues where he only exists on the periphery, but the longer story arcs usually have him as a significant character in the story.

 

[Paul le Fou]

I've seen the first three episodes, and I'm enjoying it, though I dunno if I'm hooked per se. I've read the comics but it was a while ago and I don't really remember too many details, but I'm enjoying being reminded of bits and pieces as I see them come across the screen, like Cain and Abel in episode 2. I'm probably going to end up re-reading the comics after this, aren't I?

 

[Phantoon]

You should, they're amazing

 

[Sprite]

Is there a consensus on what’s the best box set or otherwise of the comic to buy? I’m thinking I may lobby for us picking it up as a big Christmas purchase. I’m guessing this show’s gotta lead to a reprint or something, right?

 

[ThornGhost]

So I should think of Dream as more of a Doctor Who type character, sort of otherworldly and bopping from discreet adventure to discreet adventure? Because that might work with how he's been portayed.

 

[Paul le Fou]

So I should think of Dream as more of a Doctor Who type character, sort of otherworldly and bopping from discreet adventure to discreet adventure? Because that might work with how he's been portayed.

Actually... yeah, that sounds about right.

 

[Johnny Unusual]

So I should think of Dream as more of a Doctor Who type character, sort of otherworldly and bopping from discreet adventure to discreet adventure? Because that might work with how he's been portayed.

I mean, yes and no. And I say no because the Doctor actively solves people's problems and you can't necessarily trust dream to do that. The Doctor is an agent of heroic chaos, often, while Dream is someone who is steadfast when it comes to rules and responsibility, which is why despite he and the other Endless seemingly are more powerful than anything every, they rarely can handwave their problems away.

Also,, though Morpheus gets his own journeys and stories, there are a LOT of times where he is tangential, acting as a catalyst, a guide, a revealer of truths (some people don't want to face), or a monkey's paw. It's not uncommon for him to be, well, not a villain (though he has done evil stuff, which kicks of the Season of Mists arc) but he might stand in the ways of some protagonists and isn't necessarily in the right (and his journey is very much about dealing with that and the possibility of change... which is a big deal for an unchanging being). The big arcs are The Doll's House, The Season of Mists, A Game of You, Brief Lives, The World's End (a personal favourite and exceedingly fun because it's really just a pretense for another anthology of tales with a big epic ending) and The Kindly Ones. In only three (there's a reason the number is debatable) of these is he the lead and even then the Kindly Ones is very much an ensemble tale of most of the important characters we've seen thus far.

Dream definitely isn't supposed to be conventionally likable and after the first two arcs fits more specifically in fantasy than horror (though it likes to use all the genres and there are still lots of horror stuff popping in and out of the series) and the comic deals with that and gives us more likable character to bounce him off of and more conventional heroes. Sandman is a story about stories, Gaiman's favourite topic, so there's actually a number of protagonists depending on the story and VERY often Morpheus stands aside for the tale to be about someone else... and sometimes doesn't even show up.

 

[Exposition Owl]

The Doctor is an agent of heroic chaos, often, while Dream is someone who is steadfast when it comes to rules and responsibility

To summarize in nerdy terms, the Doctor is classic Chaotic Good, and Dream skews Lawful Neutral.