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Sandman

Started by Rob Necronomicon, August 11, 2022, 06:35:24 AM

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Rob Necronomicon

Well, I just watched another two episodes.

Wow... I keep thinking I'm watching the Cosby show, but without humor and sprinkled with mythical beings.

Sandman is basically the 'token' white guy. lol





zircher

Not having read the original, is it possible to enjoy the series on Netflix?  Hoping that with no expectation to dash, it might be worth watching.
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Rob Necronomicon

Quote from: zircher on August 11, 2022, 10:25:12 PM
Not having read the original, is it possible to enjoy the series on Netflix?  Hoping that with no expectation to dash, it might be worth watching.

Definitely. I'm on the 8th episode now and overall I think it's pretty decent and certainly worth a watch! Especially, if you 'steel yourself' and just filter out the woke side of it. Or try to! lol

Reckall

I watched the first two episodes and they were fine. I wasn't convinced, back then, by the pictures of the actor who plays The Sandman, but I now like him in the role. It should be a bit taller and more unsettling but I was thinking that this would have been a good show.

Then on the scene arrived "Johanna Constantine" and the show took a dive at once.

First, the episode with John Constantine is one of the best in the whole comic book series. He immediately turns into a faithful servant of Morpheus after finding him standing right outside his apartment door. Their quest for the "bag of sand" is full of both humor and drama. The return of John Constantine was one of the most asked stories by the fans.

Here Johanna Constantine is the tired "Grrrl!" trope ("I just had a decaying tooth pulled out without anesthesia. They even pulled out the wrong tooth. Grrr.") OF COURSE she is lesbian. OF COURSE her (ex?) lover is a black woman. OF COURSE she lectures The Sandman. No one lectures The Sandman: you end up sleeping, unaging, for 1000 years having only nightmares - if you are lucky. She is played by Jenna Coleman. I like Jenna Coleman. I hated this travesty of a wonderful character.

Meanwhile the "B" plot is two people talking, and talking, and talking, and talking... We had 34 scenes of two people talking for a plotline that required 3. It was unending.

The only good thing is the Raven.

Amazing. The Sandman is woke. It was woke in 1988! I love it anyway, just adapt it! No. As usual, as soon as they wanted to be wokier than woke everything floundered.

I'll continue to watch it - knowing that they reached an early pinnacle of the series and they immediately dropped the ball.
For every idiot who denounces Ayn Rand as "intellectualism" there is an excellent DM who creates a "Bioshock" adventure.

David Johansen

#19
I thought it was cleaner and tighter than the comics, which I read as they came out until about issue 40 when I gave up.  It had plenty of "woke agenda" from the very beginning but it crept in more and more over time.  I think, if they were going to cast a black Death (heh) they probably should have made the rest of the family black as well but it doesn't matter anyhow, the actress did fine.  Personally I'd have made all the endless starkly white, not peach coloured but that's just me.  I think there is too much "you need to change" dialog, maybe that's what you have to do when you don't have years to build up the character and show their rigidity. 

Sometimes I think the dialog was a bit stronger in the comics.  But it's been forty years since I looked at them.

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Rob Necronomicon

Quote from: Reckall on August 12, 2022, 04:41:41 PM
I watched the first two episodes and they were fine. I wasn't convinced, back then, by the pictures of the actor who plays The Sandman, but I now like him in the role. It should be a bit taller and more unsettling but I was thinking that this would have been a good show.

Then on the scene arrived "Johanna Constantine" and the show took a dive at once.

First, the episode with John Constantine is one of the best in the whole comic book series. He immediately turns into a faithful servant of Morpheus after finding him standing right outside his apartment door. Their quest for the "bag of sand" is full of both humor and drama. The return of John Constantine was one of the most asked stories by the fans.

Here Johanna Constantine is the tired "Grrrl!" trope ("I just had a decaying tooth pulled out without anesthesia. They even pulled out the wrong tooth. Grrr.") OF COURSE she is lesbian. OF COURSE her (ex?) lover is a black woman. OF COURSE she lectures The Sandman. No one lectures The Sandman: you end up sleeping, unaging, for 1000 years having only nightmares - if you are lucky. She is played by Jenna Coleman. I like Jenna Coleman. I hated this travesty of a wonderful character.

Meanwhile the "B" plot is two people talking, and talking, and talking, and talking... We had 34 scenes of two people talking for a plotline that required 3. It was unending.

The only good thing is the Raven.

Amazing. The Sandman is woke. It was woke in 1988! I love it anyway, just adapt it! No. As usual, as soon as they wanted to be wokier than woke everything floundered.

I'll continue to watch it - knowing that they reached an early pinnacle of the series and they immediately dropped the ball.

I finished it tonight and overall I enjoyed it to be fair... But I did 'filter out' all the childish woke stuff. Again, I've no problem with a bit of chopping and changing but when it feels like a highly deliberate exercise just to tick every conceivable woke box that's a tad obnoxious.

As you say, Jonna Contintine was egregious and as you say, had to be 'bi' and date a POC. She's actually a great actress that girl who plays Joanna.
And again nothing wrong with a person's sexual preferences. But virtually EVERY character had to be either gay or at the very least dating a POC. And all the main bystanders were very noticeably non-white.

Yeah and lots of emotional finger-wagging at the lord of dreams.

And Gimpy Gaiman was always a bit woke - that was okay back then. Until he decided to drop a nuclear warhead on top of us.

So I'll now need a ritual cleanse after watching it... I usually go back to Black Adder 2 and 3 which calms my nerves. lol








DocJones

I had no idea what this was. 
I only watched it because I saw Charles Dance was in it.
Also I detected there would be woke stuff .
So I have no reason to watch any further than episode one.

Reckall

Quote from: DocJones on August 13, 2022, 11:17:13 PM
I had no idea what this was. 
I only watched it because I saw Charles Dance was in it.
Also I detected there would be woke stuff .
So I have no reason to watch any further than episode one.

The paradox is that The Sandman was already woke and it is considered one of the best comic books ever created (I like "Hellblazer" and John Constantine more, but it is woke too). This is an example of the current "We the Woke are never satisfied" - followed by the usual downfall of something that was very good before being altered.
For every idiot who denounces Ayn Rand as "intellectualism" there is an excellent DM who creates a "Bioshock" adventure.

Manic Modron

Of all the things to gripe about Joanna Constantine, the same sex relationship shouldn't even be on the list.  John's been bi for thirty years, that part at least is true to character.

Rob Necronomicon

Quote from: Manic Modron on August 15, 2022, 06:56:00 PM
Of all the things to gripe about Joanna Constantine, the same sex relationship shouldn't even be on the list.  John's been bi for thirty years, that part at least is true to character.

Well, we are griping about a great number of things not just John's sexuality. Plus, it's at least a few decades since I read the Sandman.

tenbones

I watched the first episode. It's hamfisted and treats the viewers as stupid for the purposes of cheap sentimentality - the introduction of the raven they surreptitiously kill at the beginning introduced an obvious plothole as the bird could have freed Morpheus at *any* time by breaking the circle... but instead is used to create an unnecessary cheap sentiment towards the Magus's son (and equally cheaply killed off to underscore that purpose.)

Its funny because only a couple of years ago Gaiman was on Twitter chastising woke-assholes about race-swapping as being bad as it risks alienating the fans.

https://twitter.com/JonThomasNC/status/1402914097713319938/photo/1

Now he's basically doing it himself for whatever reasons and attacking the fans he's now saying supports these idiotic changes.

IF you really want to check out Sandman- in DIRECT opposition to this, go check out the audible teleplay of it. It's fantastic. It delights me to hear Gaiman narrating the descriptions of his own characters perfectly and energetically which is in direct opposition to his TV show (and it's way better).

Visitor Q

#26
I enjoyed the comics. That said it's probably worth noting that the comics and Neil Gaiman have always had a liberal and progressive stance. It means that although yes the TV adaptation has gone full woke it isn't as jarring as when this occurs in other IPs.

The ironic thing is that it has been done in such a hapahazard manner that there is an argument to be made that (inadvertently I am sure) behind the surface level wokeness there are some pretty socially conservative messages being pushed.

Some examples off the top of my head...

Almost every homosexual character is depicted as being a degenerate or a criminal or both.

The main characters of the first two thirds of the series are all white; three men and one woman. All of the principle white male characters in the series struggle with power and how to use it and do so in understandable if not always virtuous ways. They have fleshed out story arcs which complement each other. In other stories these casting choices wouldn't be that interesting but it's almost come full circle here that ultimately despite all of the race and gender swapping the most significant storylines concerning the responsibility of power are given to white men.

Abortion is represented as an evil and exploitative thing.

Black Magic, Hell and Demons exist and are represented as wholly malevolent forces.

A core message of the show is the inherent damage that is done when rights are not balanced with responsibilities and the stability and health of a system/world/culture is jeopardised because of personal feelings of unfairness.

Objective morality is presented and a character chastised on this basis by someone in authority in direct opposition to the idea that morality is subjective to culture or "the times you are living in "

Supposed social progress as a driver of change is secondary to human nature (a slightly subtle one but one of the background themes of the immortal character subplot).

(Not going into too much detail because of spoilers..).

As I say, I don't think any of the above was intentional but it has made me laugh how past the surface level casting choices the show really isn't portraying woke culture in a very good light.

Wntrlnd

Not to mention the character in episode 11 who calls themself a feminist and is virtuesignaling like hell but really is a horrible person.

Rob Necronomicon

Quote from: tenbones on August 22, 2022, 09:10:08 AM

https://twitter.com/JonThomasNC/status/1402914097713319938/photo/1

Now he's basically doing it himself for whatever reasons and attacking the fans he's now saying supports these idiotic changes.


The irony... What a fuckwit.

BoxCrayonTales

Quote from: Wntrlnd on August 22, 2022, 07:30:16 PM
Not to mention the character in episode 11 who calls themself a feminist and is virtuesignaling like hell but really is a horrible person.
Yeah, I was actually surprised when that scene happened. That's a common talking point on anti-woke commentaries, especially from TERFs who absolutely despise wokebros, so I was surprised that a woke show used the wokebro willie meme completely seriously. The script almost reads like it was written by a TERF. The only part that feels distinctly non-TERFy is the ending, because it is nowhere near as vindictive, ironic, or violent as a TERF ending would be (tbh, I'm disappointed the ending wasn't as horrific as the actual Greek myths, because I adore that "fate worse than death" shit!). For reference, TERFs despise Gaiman because he's a wokebro misogynist.