N years ago, someone asked Neil Gaiman if he could tell the story of ‘The Sandman’ in 25 words.
Gaiman then said a classic “nonsense literature”: “The Lord of Dreams learns that one must change or die, and makes his decision.”
Gaiman builds a fantasy world where all creatures who can dream will enter a world called dream world in their sleep, and Morpheus, the master of dreams, will build the deepest fears and fantasies of people’s minds here.
In the 1980s, DC brought in a group of British writers to create scripts for its new comics, including the now world-famous ‘V for Vendetta’ and ‘Watchmen’.
Among other things, author Neil Gaiman fused superhero stories with myths and legends to create ‘The Sandman’. Since then, ‘The Sandman’ series has won Neil Gaiman a World Fantasy Award and his fourth Hugo Award.
For this reason, it is not an exaggeration to call ‘The Sandman’ a “masterpiece” in the history of comics.
Gaiman deified Death, Delirium, Desire, Despair, Destiny, Destruction, and Dream, who were arranged in order of appearance, called “The Endless”.
Gaiman is a writer who particularly enjoys drawing on the major myths and legends of the West.
According to legend, when humans fall into dreamland, a spirit will scatter sand on their bodies or eyes to bring them a good night’s sleep. This is the origin of ‘The Sandman’.
If you look at the comic ‘The Sandman’ alone, you won’t find it difficult to adapt the IP into a film or TV series, but ‘The Sandman’ is one of the most popular works of the DC brand, and the “scrutiny” from fans will be “very stressful” for any adaptation team. “.
And ‘fans oforiginal’ ruthlessly, the author of the original will also curse the same.
The ‘The Sandman’ film project was launched in the 1990s, and in 2001 the project fell into development crisis.
After a series of mishaps with the project, Gaiman became very cautious about adapting ‘The Sandman’, and he was not sure if ‘The Sandman’ could be adapted.
In 2007, Gaiman said: “I’d rather not see ‘The Sandman’ movie than a bad ‘The Sandman’ movie.
We need someone as obsessed with the original as Peter Jackson is with ‘The Lord of the Rings’ or Sam Raimi is with ‘Spider-Man’.”
Gaiman’s request for an “original” adaptation may be justified, as Gaiman has said that his favorite comic is ‘Howard the Duck’.
As a teenager, he was particularly excited when he heard that George Lucas was going to make it into a movie. Then came the box-office flop ‘Howard the Duck: A New Breed of Hero’, which went on to win seven Golden Age Awards.
In 2013, Gaiman announced that he was writing ‘The Sandman’ script for New Line cinema, but the project was terminated in 2016.
The path of film seems to be hopeless, and streaming becomes newblueocean.
Now it seems it all starts with Netflix taking over the equally ill-fated ‘Lucifer’ in 2018 – the comic ‘Lucifer’ happens to be a spin-off of ‘The Sandman’.
In fact, from the rating and air volume of ‘Lucifer’ at that time, the results were not spectacular, but the rich and powerful Netflix is still moving forward to create “The Sandman universe”.
In 2019 Netflix announced that it had signed a partnership with Warner Bros. TV to adapt ‘The Sandman’. In the past three years, there have been force majeure such as the epidemic, so this work, which has an aura of “impossible to be adapted”, has gone through some more twists and turns.
Finally, at a cost of $170 million, Netflix went live with all 10 episodes of ‘The Sandman’ Season 1.
Currently ‘The Sandman’ is called “the most expensive DC series” (this statement is somewhat watered down, mainly because the DC series produced by Warner or CW has never taken the high cost route).
All ‘fans oforiginal’ who want to judge the drama version of ‘The Sandman’ should remember what Gaiman said in an interview in March 2019: “It belongs to DC & Warner now, not to me, and the possibility of ‘The Sandman’ being adapted is still growing, but I have no say in anything say in anything.”
Oh, take a closer look at the list of creators of the drama version of ‘The Sandman’, the TV co-producer’s name still hangs in Neil Gaiman.
This can only mean that the adaptation of the play version of ‘American Gods’ left Gaiman with PTSD.
After ‘The Sandman’ went online, one review of the show was particularly interesting – a good adaptation, just not friendly to people who hadn’t seen ‘The Sandman’.
Of course, George R. R. Martin, who does not write his own ‘Game of Thrones’ properly, “took the time” to watch ‘The Sandman’ again, and then praised the show on his personal blog as ‘very faithful’ to the original, and claimed in the article that he was definitely not The article also claims to be absolutely not the other side of the money, purely their own love it.
The two days have turned into a commercial exchange between Gaiman and Martin.
On Rotten Tomatoes, ‘The Sandman’ has a critic rating of 87% and an audience rating of 80%. It’s good, but not great.
Compared to the original, the general framework of ‘The Sandman’ has not changed much, but only in some character settings have made adjustments. Although some adjustments are still criticized.
For example, in order to politically correct stuffed into multiple black characters and gay people who were not in the original, but also for example, in order to avoid the DCEU, that is, DC development universe, let DC multiple famous characters disappear, or simply HellblazerJohn Constantine sex turn to Johanna Constantine.
Season 1 can be divided into two parts, the first five episodes are about how The Sandman got back the lost sandbags, rubies and helmets, and the last five episodes are about The Endless’ struggle.
It is generally agreed that Season 1’s episodes 5 and 6 are the best of the season, so if you don’t have time to watch the whole season, or just want to understand the story of ‘The Sandman’, then just watch these two episodes.
These two episodes focus on Gaiman’s creative intent – the complexity of human nature.
Let’s not forget that Neil Gaiman was one of four finalists for the Nobel Prize for New Letters in 2018, a year in which the Nobel Prize for Literature was in turmoil. His work is classified as pop culture, but the thoughtfulness of his work is still recognized by the purely literary field.
Episode 5 tells the story of John Burgess, the bastard son of the warlock Roderick, who wants to create a world without deception, only to prove that many evils are faked in the name of goodness.
Episode 6 is about a bet between two gods, which is Gaiman’s favorite subject matter, in his writing, the gods are ordinary people.
After watching episode 10, we know that the drama version of ‘The Sandman’ can at least be shot for another season or two, and the internal “house fighting” of The Endless will go on endlessly.
As ‘fans oforiginal’ of ‘American Gods’, I just hope that ‘The Sandman’ will not repeat the same mistake. Either that or close it in time.
Related Post: ‘The Sandman’ creators worried that it would be too expensive to shoot Season 2.
