Ive only watched the first ep, but I was most intrigued by the little changes. Magus was a tad more sympathetic. His kid was more sympathetic. I liked the narration, “Should I have trusted him this time? Maybe.” The stuff with Jessamy was cool.
I also appreciated the dead-on panel adaptations like Morpheus right after he was captured (What did ever happen to that cloak?) or right after he escaped and was sitting in the chair.
I just gotta fan wank for David Thewlis, especially for killing it in episode 5. He captured the essence of a bitter old man with secret draconian intentions, speaking in a kindly voice with sinister undertones. He used a similar style as the Shame Wizard, whom he voiced in Big Mouth and Human Resources. He has that creepy “I know what you’ve been up to” character trait that makes one’s skin crawl.
I can hardly wait for Delirium to appear. Hopefully, next season.
ep: 2…Jesus, kick the dog why don’t you. And IMHO its really only effective against people who have read the books already.
Anyone here who hasn’t read the comics? I’d be interested in what you think. Is it confusing at all?
I haven’t, although I’ve read plenty of Gaiman’s books and short stories. As fantasy goes, it’s not that hard to follow.
I’m up to episode 6 and loving every second of it. The last two episodes especially were amazing.
No, it worked on my wife and daughter, who are both comics-innocent.
My family seems to be following along quite nicely.
I have not read the comics. Coming in cold having read some Gaiman other than Sandman. Just finished through “24/7”. It either stands on its own for me or it does not. How faithful it is to source material matters not at all to me. I’ve been looking forward to this.
I am not confused. It isn’t what I was expecting though.
I expected more characters to follow through into future chapters. What I expected to be arcs finished pretty completely in single eps.
I also was not expecting the complete humorlessness of it. And no the raven fails if that is supposed to be humor.
Dream comes off monotonously flatly matter of fact, sadly weary with little variation or energy.
“24/7” though, the part without Dream, in the diner, evoked the feel of old Twilight Zones, the ones that gave me nightmares. It has that horror achieved without the graphic bits which actually diminished it some.
Overall I give it high marks for being beautiful and for giving a sense of a complete cohesive mythology. Being dropped in as if I already know the world helps there.
But despite great characters many wonderfully acted and fantastic production, it is lacking. There is just little fun.
I wonder when/how they will drop the “Sandman Special One-shot issue”…im sort of misnaming it for spoiler sake.
Hopefully they drop it between seasons to give people time to absorb it
There aren’t a lot of laughs at any point in the story (at least until we meet Delirium, and even then they’re tangential). They’ve actually lightened up Matthew a lot from the books - there’s a whole backstory for Matthew that ties into the Swamp Thing comics, but he really is not a very nice person at all and being a raven is a sort of penance for him. Which is why I find Oswalt not to be a great fit for the character, much as I like him in other voice roles.
Well, yes. This is a key plot point, touched on in the “The Sound of Her Wings” episode but which will develop further over time (I assume).
Yeah, Sandman was never a quippy MCU-style laff-fest, and if that’s what a viewer is looking for, they will be disappointed. It goes to very dark places and doesn’t often lighten the mood to assuage the reader’s feelings while it does so.
While watching Good Omens, the diverse cast made the story seem bigger and I feel the same way about Sandman.
I never expect an adaptation from one medium to another to be simply a recreation of the original source, but often times if the changes are too radical I ended up disliking it. The Will Smith vehicle I Am Legend completely misses the point of the original source material and I think the move is poorer for it. On the other hand, there are times when an adaptation is more like an “inspired by” and you can get some good stuff out of it. I’ve never read The Boys comic, but from what I’ve heard the show improved upon it greatly. No way would I have watched a totally faithful adaptation of comic to screen for that.
I wasn’t expecting quips, MCU-style or otherwise. I was expecting the mix of wry humor and darkly absurdist situational humor that I associate with Gaiman.
And again I wasn’t expecting so many well formed interesting characters to be introduced and quickly rushed off, their stories now finished. THAT I associate as a problem with faithful adaptations. It all has to be shoved in but those of us not remembering the rest of the characters’ arcs and details can feel hurried along as that one is done and the next character is checked off.
But that’s the nature of episodic TV, isn’t it? Characters appear for an episode, have their arc, and are gone. The Sandman is no different in this sense than, say, Law & Order.
Maybe. My mistake for expecting other than Law and Order episodes. I also wonder if I’d experience this differently watching one a week instead of several in a day?
Re-emphasizing - overall high marks.
The “Cereal” Convention ep. had some pretty awesome, if dark, gags that had me LOLing. YMMV.
The Gaiman I know is the Gaiman of American Gods, Graveyard Book, Coraline, Neverwhere , Black Orchid and Sandman. I don’t think of any of those as particularly humourous works.
Different reads of the same material then. I smiled quite a bit while reading American Gods for example. Not jokes or laugh out loud stuff but stuff that was either by turns subtle or absurd. Even the small oh duh word play like Low Key.
I really don’t mean to be complaining. It’s very good. Not at all confusing.
And so far in particular 24/7, the section without Dream, hits the mark, giving the story pacing to build the tension and horror.
It’s just then once Dream is back on the scene it feels John’s remaining story is hurried along to get to the next issue?
The thing to keep in mind for the early story arcs/seasons is that The Sandman started off as a horror comic. Its tag line was, “I will show you terror in a hand full of dust.” Only later, after twenty-five issues or so, did it develop into its world spanning, mythos defining form.
Wife hasn’t, I have(at least the comics being shown in this season of the show).
She follows it completely and I follow it and love it, knowing some of what is coming.
We’ve seen three episodes and I can’t wait for the Diner and the episode with Death.
Okay. Just watched “Sound of her Wings” and just enough of the small humor with pacing enough to feel and think that hits all the marks.