Thoughts before Sandman is released on TV
Aug. 4th, 2022 12:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrewduckerI first encountered Sandman with, I think, issues 8-12 in a cardboard box in a second-hand bookshop in Medway somewhere. I don't remember which bookshop it was, as it wasn't one I was in often. It was the summer of 1990, and I then set about buying all of the back issues and the several issues which had been produced since, as collections weren't something that was reliably produced for comics, and even when they were they were frequently released out of order. Comics, at that point, rarely produced a single coherent story for many issues, and it wasn perfectly normal to just fine to dip in and out of things, and be able to read things in whatever order you fancied.
All of which is to say that I've been a massive fan for 32 years now.
There have been fan-casting discussions since I first discussed comics online (first on the Monochrome bulletin board, and then on the Rec.Arts.Comics hierarchy), although I never took part in them myself. I did keep tabs on various terrible attempts to make it in the past (in 1998 there was a script which made Morpheus into Lucifer's brother. There was a producer who tried to insist on a fight with a giant mechanical spider, which then ended up in Wild Wild West.) It seemed unlikely, to me, that there could be a *good* adaptation of Sandman into a movie. And, frankly, given the levels of CGI at the time, I think I was right. Also, the chances of any writer compressing 75 issues of comic book into a movie seemed rather unlikely to me. I'm glad none of those got made.
But now they're making a TV series of it. And the level of CGI available today is frankly amazing. And they're putting 18 episodes of the comic into the first series, which means four seasons if they want to get through all of the main story, which feels about right. And Neil Gaiman is heavily involved. There's clearly no barrier to making the best possible Sandman adaptation.
So why am I nervous?
I'm nervous because I'm not actually sure that a great comic book translates into a great TV show, or a great movie, or a great novel, or a great computer album, or a great roleplaying game, any other medium. Things are what they are, and dialogue that works for one may sound awful in another. What works in imagination may not work well when you see it, and vice versa. This is why I've not enjoyed any adaptations of Terry Pratchett, with the exception of Troll Bridge, which doesn't feel like any of the other adaptations.
And so I'm worried not that they'll do a bad job, but that the best possible job will still not produce something great, and that I will be disappointed and left flat by it. I really hope I'm not.
All of which is to say that I've been a massive fan for 32 years now.
There have been fan-casting discussions since I first discussed comics online (first on the Monochrome bulletin board, and then on the Rec.Arts.Comics hierarchy), although I never took part in them myself. I did keep tabs on various terrible attempts to make it in the past (in 1998 there was a script which made Morpheus into Lucifer's brother. There was a producer who tried to insist on a fight with a giant mechanical spider, which then ended up in Wild Wild West.) It seemed unlikely, to me, that there could be a *good* adaptation of Sandman into a movie. And, frankly, given the levels of CGI at the time, I think I was right. Also, the chances of any writer compressing 75 issues of comic book into a movie seemed rather unlikely to me. I'm glad none of those got made.
But now they're making a TV series of it. And the level of CGI available today is frankly amazing. And they're putting 18 episodes of the comic into the first series, which means four seasons if they want to get through all of the main story, which feels about right. And Neil Gaiman is heavily involved. There's clearly no barrier to making the best possible Sandman adaptation.
So why am I nervous?
I'm nervous because I'm not actually sure that a great comic book translates into a great TV show, or a great movie, or a great novel, or a great computer album, or a great roleplaying game, any other medium. Things are what they are, and dialogue that works for one may sound awful in another. What works in imagination may not work well when you see it, and vice versa. This is why I've not enjoyed any adaptations of Terry Pratchett, with the exception of Troll Bridge, which doesn't feel like any of the other adaptations.
And so I'm worried not that they'll do a bad job, but that the best possible job will still not produce something great, and that I will be disappointed and left flat by it. I really hope I'm not.
no subject
Date: 2022-08-18 12:41 pm (UTC)Okay, good -- simply the fact that it is, at its heart, a love story tells you how different the interpretation of the character is, and that's why it works so well. The Lucifer of the comic is basically a force of nature, largely unyielding, unchanging, and a tad unsympathetic, so the story mostly had to be told with others as the viewpoint characters. The show's Lucifer is very much the co-lead, and he has a lot of arc over the course of it. Indeed, in general it is the story about a lot of cosmic beings learning to be better people.
The movie, absolutely. The sequel TV series, OTOH, I thought was a loving and brilliant homage to the comic -- very different story, but sharing more of the comic's DNA than the movie did, and IMO arguably better than the original.