Netflix’s The Sandman is a dream adaptation of a classic

The opening moments of the movie are very moving. There is a beautiful raven that flies into the realm of the Sandman. Light from unknown sources dazzles the grounds and an eternal library folds on itself. When we close our eyes, this is our world as well. The Sandman mocks the presumption that dreams are innocuous and that we don't affect them by what we yearn for and fear.

Neil Gaiman was an executive producer and writer on theNetflix adaptation of The Sandman, a dark fantasy horror comic series. The story is about a powerful being who controls all dreams and nightmares and interacts with humans. We watch his journeys through history, influencing great events, as well as his travels to Hell because of human fears. The Doll's House was adapted in the first season.

Adaptation is an insult to what the creators accomplished. Since The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the best-screen adaptation of big concept fantasy literature has been the series. All of it was the same except for a few changes.

I don't want to ruin the episodes, so I will be vague about certain plot points.

Image: Netflix

Charles Dance, a playboy, cult leader, and egotistical buffoon, was in England in 1916. He conjured a spell to kill Death. Dream, also known as the Sandman, along with some of Dream's powerful tools, were captured by the Magus and his cult. Millions of people are affected by a sleeping sickness after Death's capture.

Dream is naked and trapped in a stunningly designed glass shell. For more than a century, Dream never utters a word, refusing to give any details to his captives, whose lives are extended as a result of their proximity to his powerful tools. My heart is too sore to describe what happened when Dream's closest ally tried to escape.

Dream returned to his realm after his escape to find it broken and abandoned. He needs to recover the tools that were taken from him. His adventures begin with everyone from a blue-collar exorcist to a man child wielding the powers of the gods. Battles between demonic and divine forces leave a lot of blood in their wake. Dream tries to restore order that he caused when he's not around.

A human named Rose Walker, who draws all dreams to herself, collapses the waking and dream world and ends the universe in the second major arcs. There is a group of housemates that include lesbian spider collectors, a Ken and Barbie couple, and a drag queen.

Rose is looking for her missing brother, who is being held as a prisoner by his foster father. She is discovering her powers while also discovering her weaknesses.

Dream has to realize that mending what is broken does not mean restoring the world as it was before. It's possible to change and adapt so that it doesn't happen again. His subjects decided to abandon their central purpose rather than wait for their master to come back. His anger at their abandonment eventually leads to sympathy since it was his short-sighted leadership that caused them to leave.

It is possible to reflect on human quirks and sensitivities, such as why we fear death, why we cling to shallow dreams, and why we want immortality. Dream is curious about what makes humans tick and it makes for engaging writing and conversations.

Managing Rose Walker turning into a vortex, a battle of wits with Lucifer, and confronting nightmares are all interwoven with this.

One of the reasons I loved the book franchise was that it is a psychological horror story with a fragile brush made of hope. The stories about beings are more powerful than the stories about gods. Rose Walker is trying to find her brother, confronting serial killers and talking ravens, but she is also on the verge of destroying the universe.

In episode six, "The Sound of Her Wings", we see our first encounter with Death. She says that Death will stack the chairs and turn off the lights when it's time to die. The Sandman is thinking about his purpose in this episode. Death wants his company to watch people in their final moments, the full weight of their life crashing into the realization of their sudden death. The kind of face you would want to carry you to the next life is what Death is like. Death reflects on her purpose and how it took her a long time to figure out how not to be the ultimate terror. It ends just as life begins. That doesn't mean it doesn't have meaning. That doesn't mean life is over. She just wants to make that stop into anellipsis.

The blank canvas of ultimate non existence is the focus of the episode, but it also features bright stars of individual lives, lighting up a path through the darkness with human stories. The TV series captures what the franchise is all about.

Image: Netflix

Several welcome changes to the comics are made by the series.

• John Dee (David Thewlis) is more child-like and less menacing and violent than his comic book counterpart. Longtime readers can, however, rejoice that the famous bottle issue in the diner (“24 Hours”) is almost perfectly reconstructed in episode five (“24/7”), with its gore and awfulness and weirdness.
• Unlike the books, Hell is only ruled by Lucifer (Gwendoline Christie) at this stage.
• Instead of John Constantine — my favorite DC character — Dream engages the services of Johanna Constantine (which is Gaiman’s own creation). While not a smoker, she is a snarky, misanthropic bisexual like John, who views exorcisms as annoyances rather than world-shattering events.

The book character's genders were irrelevant to their stories, so I won't dwell on them. I was pleasantly surprised at how many Black women were cast, not just as background characters, but recurring on-screen roles as well.

Mason Alexander Park was cast as Dream's non-binary sibling. sexuality was always portrayed as a spectrum, with heterosexuality never assumed or commented on.

The Sandman was better than I thought it would be. I didn't feel drowned in the sadness, horror, and melancholy. It is a series that depicts the horrors of humanity and our place in an unknowable and terrifying existence, but it also shows us how our humanity united us to confront the failures of the world. The jar is painted black and has a flame of hope written on it.

It's a good idea to sleep well.

There is a movie on streaming.