I've been waiting for an adaptation of Neil Gaiman's "Sandman" comics for roughly twenty years now, and I have a lot to say about the Netflix show. I'll be devoting two posts to it - first a general review with thoughts on how "Sandman" fits into the current superhero industrial complex, and next time a spoilery analysis that will get into the details of changes from the comics, and all the plotty bits.
I'm incredibly curious about how the general public is going to react to "The Sandman," because it's not your typical comic book superhero or YA fantasy show, despite sharing some characteristics with each. It's an unusually faithful adaptation of the "Sandman" DC comics for adult readers, which gained a cult following among people who didn't normally read comics, and had more storytelling ambitions than any other comic being written at the time. The main character, Dream (Tom Sturridge), aka the Sandman, aka Morpheus, is one of the Endless, a powerful, immortal family of beings that embody and look after some of the primal forces of the universe. Dream rules over a realm called The Dreaming, inhabited by dreams and nightmares. In 1919, an occult practitioner, Roderick Burgess (Charles Dance), manages to summon and capture Dream, with terrible consequences.
Eventually Dream escapes, and we spend the rest of the ten-episode season watching him track down and recover his lost tools and items of power, hunt wayward nightmares, and try to put his kingdom back in order. Some have taken advantage of his absence, such as The Corinthian (Boyd Holbrook), a charming nightmare who has rows of teeth where eyes should be, and a reality-warping madman named John Dee (David Thewlis). There is a lot of violence and a fair amount of sex in "The Sandman," though the show has steered away from the episodes of out-and-out horror that characterized the early issues of the comic. I can't emphasize enough how rare it is to see this kind of very adult, but very sincere and thoughtful urban fantasy brought to the screen with the kind of budget and resources that "Sandman" has. There's a ton of CGI imagery to bring talking ravens and puppyish gargoyles to life, as well as to send Dream on a quest to Hell, and to travel through the dreams of the unconscious. The cast, which includes Gwendolyn Christie, Mark Hamill, Patton Oswalt, and Stephen Fry, is extraordinary.
I like the end result, but not as much as I want to like it. There are inevitably things that are going to be lost in any adaptation, and I suspect that disappointments are inevitable when you've had your own personal vision of something percolating in your head for twenty years. I think the best thing I can say about Netflix's "Sandman" is that I like all of the additions - new characters, new motives, and new details to help update the material. However, I can't help missing the strong visual elements from the comics. "Sandman" was created at the end of the '80s, and alternative and goth aesthetics were a big part of the book's DNA. Now that the action has been moved to the present day, all the rough edges are gone. There's a blandness and a cleanness to the look of the show that makes everything look very shiny and impressive, but awfully safe. Dream has gone from looking like a badass '80s rock star to a much more ordinary human being. Sturridge does well in an impossible role, but there's room for improvement.
On the other hand, other changes have been excellent. Lots of the characters benefit from race and gender blind casting, so Dream's librarian Lucien is now the loyal Lucienne (Vivienne Acheampong), his sister Death is played by the lovely, dark-skinned Kirby Howell Baptiste, and Lucifer (Christie) looks less like David Bowie and more like Brienne of Tarth. The rights to DC universe exorcist John Constantine are tied up, so he's been swapped out for Gaiman's original creation, Johanna Constantine (Jenna Coleman). "Sandman" was always known for its strong LGBT representation, and that continues here, with characters like the nonbinary Desire (Mason Alexander Park). There's also been a lot of careful streamlining of the story, and most of the villains are treated with more sympathy. The edgy nihilism of some of the darkest stories has been curbed, as it doesn't really fit how the rest of the series plays out. However, the creators found ways to retain many of the little one-off characters and side stories that made "Sandman" so unique, like Hob Gadling (Ferdinand Kingsley), the immortal man that Dream has a drink with once every century.
Part of me is still getting used to the idea that this series actually exists, and has been made with enough fidelity that I can actually criticize things like how the story arcs have been rearranged, and which characters need more screen time. It's difficult to say if some of my issues with certain episodes are due to being much too familiar with the comics, but there have been as many hits as misses, and the hits have been better than I ever dreamed possible. It's going to take me a while to fully process, but it looks like "The Sandman" has finally made it to the small screen, and the wait was worth it.
More next time.
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