News 'Sandman' TV Series a Go at Netflix

I've seen chatter about that on Twitter and Neil himself pointed out that the Endless aren't constricted to any particular race or form.

 

Like I said, I have no problem from a purely conceptual standpoint, it's more of an aesthetic execution thing. I mean it'd be weird for Death to not actually look like Sandman's Death, but it may be equally problematic making up a black actor to look like that Death. Or not. I guess it's more of a rhetorical "wait and see how they do it but just thinking out loud for now" type of question.

 

I'm more surprised that she's in her 30s. Death in Sandman always seemed to look in her teens/very early 20s.

 

Death in the comics was also based on a very eighties style goth aesthetic which just looks dated now. She, and probably the other characters, will hopefully have updated looks.

 

Are you kidding? Two generations later and I still see goth kids dressing like that.

 

Probably inspired by Death...lol.

Point being though, at the time the comics were written that goth look was a popular part of subculture. Tim Burton used it in a number of films and it was a much more common sight than it is today.

 

Hell Dream's a humanoid cat at one point

Yeah I always saw Death as a very young woman with a very old soul.

I don't know many of the actors but for the most part loving the casting so far, especially looking forward to Bhaskar and Chaudhry as Cain and Able and Christie as Lucifer. Fry as Gilbert is perfect and though I've no idea how well they can act, the actors chosen for Desire and Despair look spot on. Gender and race swaps are no issue except, and I hate to say it, with Death, just because that classic image of her is burned so deeply into my brain, but that's my issue not theirs and when it comes to casting I've learned to trust others judgement. It's less important that she looks like the classic image of Death than she can act/embody Death from the comics. Anything else is pure aesthetics. I mean Quinto looks great as Spock, but he's about as far away from Nimoy as you can get performance wise.

 

Yeah, I understand that worry. Neil doesn't seem to think there is an issue there and he regularly sees the dailies and even complete episodes (as noted in the io9 article).

 

That's a fair, but it's also possible for fans of an existing property to not agree with changes just because the person who created that property is ok with it.

To be realistic Neil has been trying to get Sandman made into a movie or tv series for 3 decades. So in terms of being ok to see some of the character designs and conceptions changed in order to finally get an adaption happen is a bit different than fans of the original work viewing it from a different standpoint than the creator.

I'm not going to just completely dismiss the change without seeing the performance, but I really do want to see some type of visible 'death-ish' vibe from the character however it is portrayed and not just someone who looks pretty normal.

 

Don't care for the cast at all, although its not as bad as the horrendous audio cast (nothing can be as bad as fucking Darcy being the worst version of Death possible). I have no interest in a version of Sandman that doesn't look like Sandman, though (the Endless are iconic, and changing their looks is stupid) so this is a hard pass. It really sucks how no one is willing to put in the effort to look like characters anymore. If Guardians of the Galaxy had been made a few years later, people would have been complaining about Zoe Saldana being painted green God forbid actors have to wear make up in genre films/shows to look like non-human characters. Unusual looking characters in a genre show? Fuck that, just stick actors in normal street clothes and call them by the character's name. It "worked" for Titans, so its good enough for Sandman, apparently.

Even if the show was actually trying to adapt the characters this cast would be unimpressive at best, but the fact that its going to the Titans school of adaptation just makes it worse. Sandman seems to be unadaptable, but purely because of terrible decisions made by the people in charge and not because of the source material.

Well, at least we got Good Omens, so one Neil Gaiman related adaptation ended up being pretty good.

 

I missed this blog post where Neil talks about each of the casting when I posted the news yesterday. It's a nice breakdown of expectations and gives me a pretty good feeling about what we're going to get.

In general, I agree with your assessment that just because the creator likes it doesn't necessarily mean it'll be great. But with Neil Gaiman, I think the sense is different. He has a long history with his works on television and film, and some of it was pretty sour (Neverwhere). That experience has made him much more cautious and protective of his work. After the brilliant production of Good Omens, I have faith that Neil is honest when he says what he's seeing in the dailies and full episodes are Sandman. Plus, he has said the production would update certain aspects for a modern telling (so the length of Dream's imprisonment is longer). He has also said that if he was writing the comic today, he would've used they/them pronouns for Desire, which is why it's so important that a non-binary actor such as Mason Alexander Park will be playing them in this production.

The point is the production was never going to be a straight adaptation as fans have always imagined but rather something that evolved with the times.

Edited to add the quote of the post I thought I was directly responding to instead of the hate-filled post that I had on ignore.

 

Yeah I was gonna reply and then I thought, what's the point? I've got better ways to spend my time (staring out of the window, popping to the loo, working...)

 

God forbid real world concerns take priority over whether someone looks precisely like their comic book version.

And have I missed something or has it nowhere been said that the characters are going to look just like ordinary people?

 

No one should ever engage Kirk55555. Don’t give them attention, don’t give them the time of day.

They don’t like anything that deviates even 0.5% from the source material. Constantly bitching and moaning about every little detail.

Yes I know it’s ironic that I say that, but they just have terrible self control, and they just infuriate the hell out of me.

 

Neil Gaiman has a very blunt response to someone criticizing the show over the casting for Dream and Desire.

 

Yup, I've been keeping a close eye on his tweets since the newewst casting announcement and I grinned from ear to ear when I saw that one this morning.

 

Hopefully Gaiman's involvement is more fruitful than his involvement in the last season of American Gods.

The only thing I’d say regarding Death is that her appearance is quite distinctive and known even to someone like me who has very little familiarity with Sandman. I think I read a volume or two at one point but don’t remember too much. It’s obvious that casting it such would be noteworthy and surprise, surprise it’s been noticed.

 

My only disappointment about casting Death is that the actress seems too old to me (34). I always saw Death in the comic as appearing like a teenager, juxtaposing her apparent youth against her nature, and somehow evoking that "suicidal teenage girl" trope.

 

Yeah, I could see that. She definitely seemed like she was supposed to look very young.