ABANDONED POST: The Sandman (2022)

The Sandman (2022)

Dirs. Various | 10 episodes, approx 45 mins each + 01 'bonus' episode [1]

I've often thought that if Sandman were to be adapted for the screen, then it'd work best as animation; having now watched the live action version, my feelings on that haven't changed.

All responses to the series that I've read thus far have been positive and complimentary. That isn't surprising, in today's world, but I felt it was almost as shit as every other Netflix Original Series that I've tried to watch over the years.

I've covered the original TPBs briefly on The 7th and Last. A number of significant changes and additions were made in the live action series, but generally it adapts the first two TPBs, namely Volume I: Preludes and Nocturnes (1991) and Volume II: The Doll's House (1991).

Of course, if reading doesn't appeal to you and you enjoy (or can tolerate) modern filmmaking techniques, then maybe you'll feel differently. I certainly seem to be in the minority this time.

The era in which it came out was a major low point for Movie and TV production, a shit-show of political correctness and virtue signalling that saw people hired for reasons other than talent.

A percentage of characters as they exist in the source text have been gender and / or race swapped to appeal to viewers (or investors) who feel that onscreen representation is more important than story integrity; e.g., Lucien: gender + race swapped; Death: race swapped; Lucifer: gender swapped; Unity Kinkaid: race swapped; Rose + Jed Walker: race swapped; Hector Hall: race swapped; Constantine: gender swapped (to a degree - they use Johanna Constantine, an ancestor of John's in the comics, but the show appears to have given her his storyline).

It need not be ruinous; if the person who's cast fits the role and has the acting skills needed to bring the character to life onscreen, then it's the right choice. But there are times when a character's appearance is a major defining trait of their personality. Dream's sister, Death, for example, who's something of an epitome of the pale-skinned 'goth girl', loses something beneficial in the swap to a black actress. The association of 'pale' with 'death' is centuries old; the pallor mortis; the pale horse of Revelations; it's so ubiquitous that it's even become an idiom, as pale as death. Swapping her is blatant tokenism given precedence over common sense. The makers clearly didn't give a f**k about staying true to the story they were adapting.

On the flip side of the coin we have Charles Dance as Sir Roderick Burgess; David Thewlis as John Dee; and Stephen Fry as Gilbert / Fiddler's Green, all of whom were clearly hired on merit and it's no coincidence that they're the best thing in the entire series.

At time of writing, it's simply called The Sandman, with no Season 01 identifier. It'll likely be retroactively labelled Season 01 if production continues, like they did with some of the other franchises they bought control of, but it won't matter to my titling because I won't be reviewing any further episodes. It ought to be noted, however, that it ends on a cliff-hanger and if it sticks to the usual Netflix schedule, the continuation may not appear until 2024 or later.

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[Before I abandon writing this post entirely, a summary of what I didn't go into]:

• Tom Sturridge looks fine as Morpheus, but he didn't convince me that he understood the character's developing emotional state.
• The Dreaming is CGI, which was unsurprising but still overwhelmingly disappointing.
• There seems to have been a half-hearted attempt to set up The Corinthian (Boyd Holbrook) as a series antagonist.
• The setting has been 'modernised', for some reason, which means it's not of the original era - it has mobile / cell phones, etc.
• And there's lens flare. 😐

[1] the 'bonus' eleventh episode was released about two weeks after the first ten. It's somewhat different in style and tone, and a hell of a lot better for it. It features two stories, both from Volume III: Dream Country (1991), a collection of individual issues that were kind of standalone — or at least could be enjoyed as such — with an appearance or two by Dream of the Endless.

The first of them is an animated tale adapted from a story titled A Dream of a Thousand Cats. It lasts about 15 minutes and is the only part of the series that I want to see again. The basic message suggests that dreams have the power to reshape reality, but it's told via the medium of cats - animation cats, which reinforced my feeling that live action Sandman was a bad idea.