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> Sources say Goyer was also adamant that “The Sandman” not be “dumbed-down” and that it be “kept weird,” and any attempts to make it “formulaic” were rejected

> Sources say Goyer was also adamant that “The Sandman” not be “dumbed-down” and that it be “kept weird,” and any attempts to make it “formulaic” were rejected by Goyer and Gaiman. That's funny since I found it formulaic to the extreme, which is a shame. Being a fan of the comics, I was saddened by the potential that was squandered in this adaptation. Regardless of what Gaiman says, I can't see this series as anything else than yet another cookie-cutter commoditized dumbed-down corporate-approved offering designed for mass-consumption. It's more of the same mind-numbingly "safe" and soulless material that Netflix is so good at. At least Alan Moore had the courage to tell Hollywood where to go.

arthurcolle 4y ago
I thought it was a pretty good adaptation! What didn't you like about it?
- metroholografix 4y ago
  The comic was transformative and iconoclastic. It made you think but also forged new ground in graphic storytelling (and let's not forget that the artists that worked on it were at least as important if not more so than Gaiman). There is none of that in this adaptation. It plays it safe on every possible level. One can easily imagine the corporate bean counters slapping Gaiman on the back, a firm nod of approval.
  - BugsJustFindMe 4y ago
    Maybe you're right, but I have no way to tell from your comments, because both of them are very generic. A lot of handwaving dismissal, but not actually describing any of the aggrieved wrongness. Lobbing "formulaic" but not giving a formula, "safe" but not explaining the safety. What you've done is, ironically, formulaic and safe. Statements that fit well into the typical potshot pattern of people on the internet wanting to turn "I don't like" into some objective truth about the work, with a smattering of "everyone knows Netflix corp yada yada", without having enough detail to put your own preferences at risk.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - revscat 4y ago
      For many years now I have had a rule to downvote on sight any post that complains about something being “overrated”. 99% of the time it’s a cheap criticism, insubstantial and impossible to rebut. “Formulaic” feel like it lives in a similar bucket. They’re kissing cousins, at least.
  - varjag 4y ago
    Wonder if it has anything to do with reading the comic in your 20s and watching the adaptation in your 40s.
    - JackFr 4y ago
      Or could it simply be “the book is better.” In my experience of the dozens of books I’ve read which have had movies made of them there are only two in which the book is good and the movie is better or even as good as the book - “The Shining” and “The Godfather”. I find it’s a very rare and hard thing to do.
      - varjag 4y ago
        Could be: I definitely enjoyed the comic immensely back in the day. However watching the adaptation after should be compared to a re-read perhaps. Adaptations aren't necessarily worse though. The Martian is better than the book. The yesteryear Dune is better than the book (I don't really like the book tho). Altered Carbon is a draw on the first season, but quickly outshines the book sequels later.
      - tsimionescu 4y ago
        Just to add another example, I think Tarkovsky's Stalker is far better than the book it's based on, Picnic on the side of the road.
      - clouddrover 4y ago
        I'd add The Princess Bride. In some ways the book is better than the movie, in other ways the movie is better than the book. And in the case of The Hunt for Red October I like the movie better than the book.
    - kuramitropolis 4y ago
      Or the comic being made in the 80s/90s and the adaptation being made in the 2020s. The work was progressive for its time; today its ideals have been captured by managerialism. > "Our predecessors were so wrong! Of course your otherness is worth celebrating! It's so much easier to extract value from your labor that way!"
- cmm 4y ago
  well, let's see: bog-standard cgi, overbearing music that sounds like music in any other big recent(ish) "fantasy" production, stilted dialogue laced with awkward exposition, nobody among the cast seems to know how to fucking act (except the guy playing John Dee, he's excellent though also exactly the same as everywhere else, so he just steals every scene he's in), that stupid raven, shall I go on. still watchable, weirdly enough, but just not good.
  - metroholografix 4y ago
    Not to mention the lead doesn't have the chops to carry this thing through. In casting him, they went for surface (looks) rather than substance. To paraphrase the great Malcolm Tucker: He comes across like he should still be at school with his head down a fucking toilet.
  - Supermancho 4y ago
    The raven feels like a studio note. Hey, let's get a grating voice^ to do narration and exposition cleanup, and it can completely counteract the dark moody theme for people who don't like that! ^ No offense to the great Patton Oswald, but the audio is boosted to make the choice seem even worse. He's supposed to be a voice for the Sandman, but instead he's a bullhorn.
    - jjkaczor 4y ago
      I have never read the comic/graphic novel, so - was coming into this blind. It was going well, until Mathew opened his mouth and spoke - and all I could think of was... "Happy!"... Another graphic novel adaptation where Patton Oswald did voice acting... But that character worked with his voice, this... does not.
  - tptacek 4y ago
    The music is a definitely weak point. The guy playing John Dee is David Thewlis, one of the best cinema actors of all time. Matthew the Raven is not well handled (he's not well-handled in the book either!), and his dialog is unearned and superficial. "Dreams don't die" is the Goonies wishing well speech repurposed. I groaned audibly. Episodes 2-4 were interesting as a fan of the books (though not of Preludes & Nocturnes, the weak first book), but if I weren't one of those, I'd have been happier skipping them. Episode 5 is good; episode 6 is unimpeachable.
- MisterBastahrd 4y ago
  Boring. I could read the book at my own pace but I have to wait for the pace of the show when watching the TV adaptation. Like trying to swim upstream through mud. I understand that they needed to start with this, but "scrawny naked male protagonist being sullenly mute while locked in a bottle and narrating" is... not great.
- probably_wrong 4y ago
  I don't like writing about things I haven't seen (not a Netflix subscriber), but since this is the Internet after all I'd like to discuss the "Morpheus vs Lucifer" scene that was uploaded yesterday [1] and that no one should watch unless they like their episodes spoiled. The setting is less creative/weird than the comic (a night club in the original), a demon character is gone (probably to simplify the story), and the battle is shortened from the comic books while, simultaneously, stretched with a pep talk from Morpheus' raven that's only there to add drama. I accept that maybe the episode is better due to these changes - as I said, haven't seen it yet and I could very well be wrong. But when I saw the trailer I got the exact same impression than the OP: formulaic, conventional, and dumbed down. I feel that Sandman makes such good use of the medium that it may very well be impossible to faithfully adapt to live action. And maybe this is the best version anyone could realistically make. I just wish someone would once in a while say "let's keep this exactly as weird and nonsensical as it was in the original". [1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=iZOwaeAEIw0 https://youtube.com/watch?v=iZOwaeAEIw0
  - tptacek 4y ago
    The demons are gone because they weren't actually Gaiman's; they were DC IP. The show is going out of its way to cut ties with the rest of DC IP; there are things (like Johanna Constantine) done I think solely for the purpose of disentangling Morpheus from the DCU. Later Also, can we as adults with the books in far in the rear-view mirror (I mean, for those of us who'd say that) all not agree that the demon "contest" in the original books is cringey and deus ex machina? What the fuck is an "anti-life"?
    - dogma1138 4y ago
      There were quite a few Demons in the show tho playing mostly minor roles. I was actually surprised they didn’t changed it even further considering how it conflicts with Fox/Netflix’s Lucifer which according to the blogosphere departs quite a bit from the source material but it was quite a fun show, and despite things getting a bit old at some point especially when it moved away from its monster of the week format it’s clear that the entire production and cast loved working on it which is why it constantly got extended.
jasonladuke0311 4y ago
24 hour diner followed a bunch of nobodies and a side character for 40 minutes. That is not in any formula that conventional shows would follow.
- Supermancho 4y ago
  > 24 hour diner followed a bunch of nobodies and a side character for 40 minutes. It's well very well-traveled ground. This formula isn't popular. The Walking Dead-themed shows are known for it.
  - Gravityloss 4y ago
    Count of Monte Cristo sure did it...
- eyelidlessness 4y ago
  It’s a comedy trope. Seinfeld is probably most famous for the formula with back-references throughout the series. Arrested Development dabbled in it, and Community took it to the extreme of whole story arcs. Brooklyn 99 and New Girl revel in it. A less comedy-specific example, Buffy, created a role for the throw away character (Spike) because he was so well received, then went on to do several more episodes along a similar theme (Zeppo, the one about Jonathan being a superhero, the musical, come to mind). Movies are less susceptible to being described as formulaic, but an iconic movie, The Big Lebowski, could reasonably be summarized this way (albeit the series is serialized into one piece). Coffee and Cigarettes doesn’t satisfy the “nobodies” in the literal sense, but it’s almost entirely this formula. I’m just citing examples I can think of, I haven’t watched most of what people have watched. And I don’t mean in any way to dismiss the actual work, or the concept, or your finding novelty in it. It’s a really cool device for storytelling, but it’s definitely not a unique device.
  - taeric 4y ago
    I'm not sure I follow. Most of the examples you used still centered on main characters for the series. They were often disjoint story lines. None of which is to say that this is unique. It just isn't what I would call formulaic.
yehShapey 4y ago
simonh 4y ago
> At least Alan Moore had the courage to tell Hollywood where to go. Except he didn’t, he sold the rights to a lot of his stuff, saying it was “money for old rope”.
- metroholografix 4y ago
  He sold the rights early in his career, in the 80s, before the shitshow adaptations started coming out. Once he realized the travesty they had made of his life's work, he vowed never to work with Hollywood ever again and even stopped accepting royalties, telling the studios to pass them on to the artists that had worked on the original comics instead.
  - disgruntledphd2 4y ago
    Yeah, with the result that the only decent adaptation (V for Vendetta) doesn't have his name anywhere on it.
yewenjie 4y ago
Totally agreed. They made it an emotional drama while the story is far more than mere emotions. With forced cliffhangers and petty emotional dialogue, it just feels so fast - whereas the original often gives you space and time to ponder upon the deep ideas it plays with.
- bryanrasmussen 4y ago
  space and time are, I believe, more easy to achieve in a comic book where you will often reread a page multiple times in looking at the pictures.
- tptacek 4y ago
  The entire story, of the whole comic series, is an emotional coming of age story about a petulant man-child. So this is a weird critique.
bryanrasmussen 4y ago
part of playing at that level of media is talking up the product, if he didn't say these things people's jobs and livelihoods would be effected, and essentially he would probably end up the next Alan Moore and there would less money coming in. So I expect he says the things that would alleviate people's fears, assuming he thinks it is not a total shit show, and then hopefully more than half of the people who see it will think that was good and that's good enough. all that said I like to imagine Neil Gaiman asked why he finally adapted The Sandman would snort like Frito in Idiocracy and reply I like money.
ubermonkey 4y ago
Are you serious? It seems astoundingly faithful and definitely very much in keeping with the tone of the source material. Of course, this is HN, where there's always SOMEONE who needs to be contrarian, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.
norwalkbear 4y ago
You are right

arthurcolle 4y ago

I thought it was a pretty good adaptation! What didn't you like about it?

metroholografix 4y ago
The comic was transformative and iconoclastic. It made you think but also forged new ground in graphic storytelling (and let's not forget that the artists that worked on it were at least as important if not more so than Gaiman). There is none of that in this adaptation. It plays it safe on every possible level. One can easily imagine the corporate bean counters slapping Gaiman on the back, a firm nod of approval.
- BugsJustFindMe 4y ago
  Maybe you're right, but I have no way to tell from your comments, because both of them are very generic. A lot of handwaving dismissal, but not actually describing any of the aggrieved wrongness. Lobbing "formulaic" but not giving a formula, "safe" but not explaining the safety. What you've done is, ironically, formulaic and safe. Statements that fit well into the typical potshot pattern of people on the internet wanting to turn "I don't like" into some objective truth about the work, with a smattering of "everyone knows Netflix corp yada yada", without having enough detail to put your own preferences at risk.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - revscat 4y ago
    For many years now I have had a rule to downvote on sight any post that complains about something being “overrated”. 99% of the time it’s a cheap criticism, insubstantial and impossible to rebut. “Formulaic” feel like it lives in a similar bucket. They’re kissing cousins, at least.
- varjag 4y ago
  Wonder if it has anything to do with reading the comic in your 20s and watching the adaptation in your 40s.
  - JackFr 4y ago
    Or could it simply be “the book is better.” In my experience of the dozens of books I’ve read which have had movies made of them there are only two in which the book is good and the movie is better or even as good as the book - “The Shining” and “The Godfather”. I find it’s a very rare and hard thing to do.
    - varjag 4y ago
      Could be: I definitely enjoyed the comic immensely back in the day. However watching the adaptation after should be compared to a re-read perhaps. Adaptations aren't necessarily worse though. The Martian is better than the book. The yesteryear Dune is better than the book (I don't really like the book tho). Altered Carbon is a draw on the first season, but quickly outshines the book sequels later.
    - tsimionescu 4y ago
      Just to add another example, I think Tarkovsky's Stalker is far better than the book it's based on, Picnic on the side of the road.
    - clouddrover 4y ago
      I'd add The Princess Bride. In some ways the book is better than the movie, in other ways the movie is better than the book. And in the case of The Hunt for Red October I like the movie better than the book.
  - kuramitropolis 4y ago
    Or the comic being made in the 80s/90s and the adaptation being made in the 2020s. The work was progressive for its time; today its ideals have been captured by managerialism. > "Our predecessors were so wrong! Of course your otherness is worth celebrating! It's so much easier to extract value from your labor that way!"
cmm 4y ago
well, let's see: bog-standard cgi, overbearing music that sounds like music in any other big recent(ish) "fantasy" production, stilted dialogue laced with awkward exposition, nobody among the cast seems to know how to fucking act (except the guy playing John Dee, he's excellent though also exactly the same as everywhere else, so he just steals every scene he's in), that stupid raven, shall I go on. still watchable, weirdly enough, but just not good.
- metroholografix 4y ago
  Not to mention the lead doesn't have the chops to carry this thing through. In casting him, they went for surface (looks) rather than substance. To paraphrase the great Malcolm Tucker: He comes across like he should still be at school with his head down a fucking toilet.
- Supermancho 4y ago
  The raven feels like a studio note. Hey, let's get a grating voice^ to do narration and exposition cleanup, and it can completely counteract the dark moody theme for people who don't like that! ^ No offense to the great Patton Oswald, but the audio is boosted to make the choice seem even worse. He's supposed to be a voice for the Sandman, but instead he's a bullhorn.
  - jjkaczor 4y ago
    I have never read the comic/graphic novel, so - was coming into this blind. It was going well, until Mathew opened his mouth and spoke - and all I could think of was... "Happy!"... Another graphic novel adaptation where Patton Oswald did voice acting... But that character worked with his voice, this... does not.
- tptacek 4y ago
  The music is a definitely weak point. The guy playing John Dee is David Thewlis, one of the best cinema actors of all time. Matthew the Raven is not well handled (he's not well-handled in the book either!), and his dialog is unearned and superficial. "Dreams don't die" is the Goonies wishing well speech repurposed. I groaned audibly. Episodes 2-4 were interesting as a fan of the books (though not of Preludes & Nocturnes, the weak first book), but if I weren't one of those, I'd have been happier skipping them. Episode 5 is good; episode 6 is unimpeachable.
MisterBastahrd 4y ago
Boring. I could read the book at my own pace but I have to wait for the pace of the show when watching the TV adaptation. Like trying to swim upstream through mud. I understand that they needed to start with this, but "scrawny naked male protagonist being sullenly mute while locked in a bottle and narrating" is... not great.
probably_wrong 4y ago
I don't like writing about things I haven't seen (not a Netflix subscriber), but since this is the Internet after all I'd like to discuss the "Morpheus vs Lucifer" scene that was uploaded yesterday [1] and that no one should watch unless they like their episodes spoiled. The setting is less creative/weird than the comic (a night club in the original), a demon character is gone (probably to simplify the story), and the battle is shortened from the comic books while, simultaneously, stretched with a pep talk from Morpheus' raven that's only there to add drama. I accept that maybe the episode is better due to these changes - as I said, haven't seen it yet and I could very well be wrong. But when I saw the trailer I got the exact same impression than the OP: formulaic, conventional, and dumbed down. I feel that Sandman makes such good use of the medium that it may very well be impossible to faithfully adapt to live action. And maybe this is the best version anyone could realistically make. I just wish someone would once in a while say "let's keep this exactly as weird and nonsensical as it was in the original". [1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=iZOwaeAEIw0 https://youtube.com/watch?v=iZOwaeAEIw0
- tptacek 4y ago
  The demons are gone because they weren't actually Gaiman's; they were DC IP. The show is going out of its way to cut ties with the rest of DC IP; there are things (like Johanna Constantine) done I think solely for the purpose of disentangling Morpheus from the DCU. Later Also, can we as adults with the books in far in the rear-view mirror (I mean, for those of us who'd say that) all not agree that the demon "contest" in the original books is cringey and deus ex machina? What the fuck is an "anti-life"?
  - dogma1138 4y ago
    There were quite a few Demons in the show tho playing mostly minor roles. I was actually surprised they didn’t changed it even further considering how it conflicts with Fox/Netflix’s Lucifer which according to the blogosphere departs quite a bit from the source material but it was quite a fun show, and despite things getting a bit old at some point especially when it moved away from its monster of the week format it’s clear that the entire production and cast loved working on it which is why it constantly got extended.

jasonladuke0311 4y ago

24 hour diner followed a bunch of nobodies and a side character for 40 minutes. That is not in any formula that conventional shows would follow.

Supermancho 4y ago
> 24 hour diner followed a bunch of nobodies and a side character for 40 minutes. It's well very well-traveled ground. This formula isn't popular. The Walking Dead-themed shows are known for it.
- Gravityloss 4y ago
  Count of Monte Cristo sure did it...
eyelidlessness 4y ago
It’s a comedy trope. Seinfeld is probably most famous for the formula with back-references throughout the series. Arrested Development dabbled in it, and Community took it to the extreme of whole story arcs. Brooklyn 99 and New Girl revel in it. A less comedy-specific example, Buffy, created a role for the throw away character (Spike) because he was so well received, then went on to do several more episodes along a similar theme (Zeppo, the one about Jonathan being a superhero, the musical, come to mind). Movies are less susceptible to being described as formulaic, but an iconic movie, The Big Lebowski, could reasonably be summarized this way (albeit the series is serialized into one piece). Coffee and Cigarettes doesn’t satisfy the “nobodies” in the literal sense, but it’s almost entirely this formula. I’m just citing examples I can think of, I haven’t watched most of what people have watched. And I don’t mean in any way to dismiss the actual work, or the concept, or your finding novelty in it. It’s a really cool device for storytelling, but it’s definitely not a unique device.
- taeric 4y ago
  I'm not sure I follow. Most of the examples you used still centered on main characters for the series. They were often disjoint story lines. None of which is to say that this is unique. It just isn't what I would call formulaic.

yehShapey 4y ago

simonh 4y ago

> At least Alan Moore had the courage to tell Hollywood where to go. Except he didn’t, he sold the rights to a lot of his stuff, saying it was “money for old rope”.

metroholografix 4y ago
He sold the rights early in his career, in the 80s, before the shitshow adaptations started coming out. Once he realized the travesty they had made of his life's work, he vowed never to work with Hollywood ever again and even stopped accepting royalties, telling the studios to pass them on to the artists that had worked on the original comics instead.
- disgruntledphd2 4y ago
  Yeah, with the result that the only decent adaptation (V for Vendetta) doesn't have his name anywhere on it.

yewenjie 4y ago

Totally agreed. They made it an emotional drama while the story is far more than mere emotions. With forced cliffhangers and petty emotional dialogue, it just feels so fast - whereas the original often gives you space and time to ponder upon the deep ideas it plays with.

bryanrasmussen 4y ago
space and time are, I believe, more easy to achieve in a comic book where you will often reread a page multiple times in looking at the pictures.
tptacek 4y ago
The entire story, of the whole comic series, is an emotional coming of age story about a petulant man-child. So this is a weird critique.

bryanrasmussen 4y ago

part of playing at that level of media is talking up the product, if he didn't say these things people's jobs and livelihoods would be effected, and essentially he would probably end up the next Alan Moore and there would less money coming in. So I expect he says the things that would alleviate people's fears, assuming he thinks it is not a total shit show, and then hopefully more than half of the people who see it will think that was good and that's good enough. all that said I like to imagine Neil Gaiman asked why he finally adapted The Sandman would snort like Frito in Idiocracy and reply I like money.

ubermonkey 4y ago

Are you serious? It seems astoundingly faithful and definitely very much in keeping with the tone of the source material. Of course, this is HN, where there's always SOMEONE who needs to be contrarian, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

norwalkbear 4y ago

You are right