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Neil Gaiman's SANDMAN adaptation for Netflix


Werthead

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Such a big surprise that some will say 'oh, don't white wash/don't make changes/it's unclear what happened if you don't explicitly show rape happen on screen'. 

It's perfectly clear. It's even explicitly mentioned in conversation between Dream and Calliope, just in case anyone wasn't watching properly. Absolutely no need to show it on screen. Like we haven't all seen enough sexual violence in fantasy shows already. 

I enjoyed both parts of the extra episode. I just wanted more cats.

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11 hours ago, polishgenius said:
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 as far as I can tell it the show never makes clear that Hettie is really old even if you catch her name, 
 

 

Spoiler

It does - Hettie herself says "I'm 247 years old" in the scene after Morpheus and Constantine are coming out of the church

 

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10 hours ago, Rippounet said:

It may be so in the comic, but Unity says nothing like that in the show. In the show, the one information we have is that she lived a life she describes as "glorious" in which she "met" a man with whom she had a baby. That's it.

Except that's not it: she is describing a life that she dreamed, not one that she lived. And she is describing a person whose name she clearly doesn't know, about whom she can only say that he had 'golden eyes'.

The show asks you here to do a little inferring and the idea that because what happens to Unity is not explicitly described as a rape then it was consensual shows why sometimes it can be a risk to ask viewers to infer sexual violence - because they don't.

At best, Unity's body was used as an unwitting tool in a plot against Dream. That's enough for me to say it was rape.

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I have to say I was thrown by the ‘golden eyed lover’ line and unsure what they wanted to adapt. My wife, who hasn’t read Sandman, certainly assumed it had been rape from the first reference that Unity had a baby in the hospital and assumed it hadn’t been from the golden eyed lover reference. I’m not sure what purpose the ambiguity or extra subtlety serves, maybe they wanted to make it seem like something more in Desire’s function, giving Unity something she desired, even if it was deception.

Death’s ‘not physically present for each death’ line, on the other hand, surely just means what it says, that she’s not at every death. There’s too many deaths just in this world for her to have time to walk around chatting to her brother.

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14 hours ago, polishgenius said:

 

Just going back to this, because I rewatched Sound of Her Wings and I remembered this little chat:

 

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She was referring to people who don't die, with that sentence. I guess that wasn't clear for those who haven't read the comic what with Hob not having been met at that stage and as far as I can tell it the show never makes clear that Hettie is really old even if you catch her name, but yeah, she means not everyone dies.

Which does mean that is a small plot hole. She should have met Dream when Roderick died. 

 

The counter to that, is that we see her for about half an hour - and she walks 5-6 people through their deaths.
Meanwhile approximately 3,000 humans died without her (and how many billions of non-humans?).

Elsewhere, we "know" that the personification of Dream isn't present whenever anyone dreams, just that dreaming, and sleep per se, go haywire if the personification is out of action for a century. There's no hint that desire is personally present every time anyone feels desire for anything, or despair, or...


Elsewhere in literature, we know that Gaiman and Pratchett were personal friends, who influenced each other significantly (from before Sandman was written); and we know that Pratchett's anthropomorphic personification of death explicitly isn't present for every death; just enough of them to keep things running smoothly (and again, that when he's out of action, things go to pot).

Taking all of that together with Death's own words about not turning up for everyone - I'm happy to go with the theory that death (with a lowercase d) happens to everyone (eventually including Hobb, Hettie and various deities and even the endless), whether or not the personification of Death (with a capital D) is present.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I finished this last night and thought it was excellent. I think I read some of the original run years ago, but I can't speak to how well it worked as an adaptation as it is all a bit hazy. As a show on its own terms though, it worked beautifully. While I was more engaged by the non-Rose Walker storylines than the ones that included her, I think even those that I liked the least worked better than what we usually get.

I hope Sandman can keep up this level of quality (or even further improve, you never know). Next season I'll probably be joining having read the entirety of the original run, because that's how much I liked this.

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I finished the season, it did take me a while to be honest. Overall I thought it was a show with some real stand out episodes that were exceptional, mainly episode 6, and then a few too many episodes that I quite enjoyed but struggled a bit to really feel all that engaged. 

Like most people I think the first half of the season is stronger than the second half, the Rose storyline wasn't all that great, even if it had some fun moments like the Cereal convention. The whole vortex thing I don't think was explored very well and it all felt a little Harry Potter, teen lit at times.. maybe because Rose looks so young.

I'm really looking forward to what they do with another season, it was a much better adaptation than I would have expected, I was not enthusiastic for this show at all going in, I imagined it would be like any number of the awful Terry Pratchett adaptations I've endured in the past, but this is much better, maybe Gaiman is easier to do.

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Does anyone know whether they are planning to republish like a collected form of the original comics? I'm looking online and it's such a mess with how these things are marketed, with different collections and titles and series... Kind of makes it hard for me to send them my money. 

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19 minutes ago, Veltigar said:

Does anyone know whether they are planning to republish like a collected form of the original comics? 

This year they released the Expanded Box Set which includes the full 75 issue run, plus prequels like Overtures (gorgeous art by J.H. Williams III) and The Dream Hunters (art by Amano and P. Craig Russel) as well as the anthology Endless Nights with a bevy of star artists.

Or you can start piecemeal with the deluxe editions from 2 years ago 

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49 minutes ago, Veltigar said:

Does anyone know whether they are planning to republish like a collected form of the original comics? I'm looking online and it's such a mess with how these things are marketed, with different collections and titles and series... Kind of makes it hard for me to send them my money. 

I'd just get the ten-volume collection, either piecemeal or altogether (graphic novels are absurdly expensive).

  1. Preludes & Nocturnes
  2. The Doll's House
  3. Dream Country
  4. Season of Mists
  5. A Game of You
  6. Fables & Reflections
  7. Brief Lives
  8. Worlds' End
  9. The Kindly Ones
  10. The Wake

There are then further expansions to the world written by Gaiman. These are non-essential to the original storyline but do expand the world and characters:

  • Death: The High Cost of Living
  • Death: The Time of Your Life
  • Endless Nights
  • The Dream Hunters (occasionally printed as #11 of the original series, but it is separate)
  • Overture (effectively #0 of the original series, but not reprinted as such so far)

There also non-Gaiman spin-offs, but they can mostly be ignored (although some are good, some are okay), at least for now as there's quite a substantial rabbit-hole to dive down. These include the comic series The Dreaming, LuciferHouse of WhispersBooks of Magic (there is a Gaiman-written mini-series that was not really part of the Sandman universe, and a later ongoing series which is) and the recurring characters of The Dead Boy Detectives.

One interesting add-on in all of this is The Sandman: Book of Dreams, a prose anthology which has a lot of heavy-hitting fantasy writers working on it (Tad Williams, Gene Wolfe, Catilin McKiernan) and, intriguingly, I believe the first or one of the very first stories by Susanna Clarke, years before she published Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrel.

Although nonessential to read the series, The Sandman Companion is a thoroughly brilliant book analysing the themes of the series and providing a behind-the-scenes look at how it was written (the book mostly consists of a very long interview with Gaiman where he analyses each issue of the comic book in turn).

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Also worth noting that Sandman has fifty different editions, some of them cripplingly expensive. But DC have released a recent cheap option of four very-large format paperbacks which I suspect will not sustain repeated readings but are a good way of getting in on the ground floor without the crippling expense of getting each graphic novel separately: The Sandman Book OneTwoThreeFour.

The Deluxe set noted by Ran above is hardcover and will sustain more reading, and also isn't a vast amount more expensive than the new cheap option. It does collect fewer issues per volume so it's a five-volume set rather than four, but as a bonus it does incorporate The Dream Hunters and Endless Nights into the core series (whereas if you get the four-volume version, you'd need to get those separately later on, so the Deluxe option might be more cost-effective if you think you're going to go all-in on the franchise). The Deluxe editions do have a large Audible advert printed on the actual dustjacket (not a sticker) which is a weird choice, though.

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Thanks @Ran and @Werthead it really is a mess on the sites where I usually buy my books. Lots of options either not available or only partly available (and if I can help it, I'd rather stick to one edition). Not to mention that some options are mislabeled (e.g. the second volume of the 30th year anniversary edition has a different title structure than every other part of that edition).

I have chosen to order the first 5 volumes from the 30 year anniversary edition (because those were cheapest) from two different websites. If those are good, I'll be buying the rest of the titles written by Gaiman on Wert's list :) 

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7 hours ago, Darryk said:

It's concerning that it's taking Netflix so long to greenlight a 2nd season. No 1 show on Netflix, what more do they want?

 

 

Gaiman's been pretty consistent that they won't make the call either way before a full 4 weeks, which is this Friday. So after that if it takes a bit longer we can start getting concerned.

Anyway, this particular scene is unlikely to be in the show as is because the character she's talking is unlikely to be, but Gaiman used this in response to a discussion about the show, implying that Death is indeed at every death in the show as well:
 

 

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On 8/31/2022 at 5:06 PM, Darryk said:

It's concerning that it's taking Netflix so long to greenlight a 2nd season. No 1 show on Netflix, what more do they want?

According to Gaiman it has to do with the sheer cost of this show. Sandman is doing as well it could do apparently, also harvesting great reviews, Netflix is apparently just weighing the cost.

But I agree though, its taking quite long, surely they knew going in what the cost where and this viewership is the best they could have hoped for. Guyer has apparently written some scripts for season 2 already so perhaps they may have a good headstart once that renewal comes in.

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1 hour ago, Calibandar said:

According to Gaiman it has to do with the sheer cost of this show. Sandman is doing as well it could do apparently, also harvesting great reviews, Netflix is apparently just weighing the cost.

But I agree though, its taking quite long, surely they knew going in what the cost where and this viewership is the best they could have hoped for. Guyer has apparently written some scripts for season 2 already so perhaps they may have a good headstart once that renewal comes in.

I'm wondering if an on-the-cusp renewal might make them reconsider the cost and expense of the show. Season 2 could be somewhat cheaper if they're focused tight on just Season of Mists and A Game of You, but A Midsummer Night's Dream could be hugely expensive (depending on how they do it) just by itself.

The other thing to look at is if they can get the show down to 3 seasons. If they've adapted 5 graphic novels by the end of Season 2 that might not be possible, unless they seriously cut down on The Kindly Ones and maybe just flat-out skip most of The Wake.

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17 hours ago, Werthead said:

A Midsummer Night's Dream could be hugely expensive (depending on how they do it) just by itself.

It's a prime candidate for another animated episode IMO. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

https://www.whats-on-netflix.com/news/the-sandman-season-2-netflix-renewal-status-and-what-to-expect-09-2022/

The Sandman Season 2 Netflix Renewal Status

Has The Sandman been renewed or canceled at Netflix?

Official Renewal Status: Not Yet Renewed (last updated: September 15th, 2022)
Our Renewal Prediction: 50/50

The Sandman has not yet been renewed for a second season and after a month’s wait, we’ve revised our prediction to the show now having a 50/50 chance of getting renewed.

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