1/6/2024 0 Comments Gods of sand mythologyLater, he destroys people’s beloved dreams of lost spouses or parents because of the strict rules that govern the Dreaming, yet we never learn why these rules exist, leaving Dream feeling bureaucratic and self-serious.ĭreams, we are told over and over, are immensely powerful and essential to life itself, but we never see how or why. Halfway through the season, Dream has escaped and recovered his tools, and the show has entirely forgotten the havoc supposedly wreaked on humanity by his time in captivity. The series opens with Dream captured by a rogue magician, who has stolen the tools of his trade - sand, a ruby and a weird gas mask, all of which are apparently essential to his power yet none of which have clear uses. All the pieces are there - rich references, creepy villains and charming heroes, visuals full of Easter eggs - yet there are no stakes, nothing the characters are fighting for or against. But the attempt to cram so many of those stories and characters into a 10-episode season makes for a fractured viewing experience, with little sense of throughline. I’m a fan of Gaiman’s work, but I never read “The Sandman,” so I came to the series blind, with none of the inherent delight some other reviewers had seeing beloved characters and storylines reenacted, apparently quite faithfully. ![]() Boyd Holbrook as a very effectively creepy nightmare who eats the eyes of his victims. We see him, at various points, try to rein in the dreams and nightmares he has created when they go rogue, struggle against his siblings Desire, Destiny and Despair for control over humanity, and try to understand the very humans whose sleeping minds he rules over. The episodic series follows Dream as he tries to keep control over his kingdom, The Dreaming, with the aid of his librarian, Lucienne, and a talking raven named Matthew. The show mines every major tradition, but somehow doesn’t have anything to say. Unfortunately, that sense of truth doesn’t quite materialize in Netflix’s adaptation. Lewis and the Catholic, myth-inclined Tolkien, allows Gaiman to create the kind of message-driven stories that “need not have happened to be true,” as he said in a 2012 lecture. It’s a scattered background that, along with a reading diet of Christian apologist C.S. The rich source texts likely have something to do with Gaiman’s own spiritually eclectic upbringing, which involved a bar mitzvah facilitated by observant family members he visited in London on weekends, all while being raised by devoted Scientologists and attending schools run by the Church of England. It’s a story about stories and the power they hold over us to inspire hope and fear and meaning - no small subject. It ran from 1989-1996, distributed by DC Comics, and accrued a devoted fanbase, thanks to its complex web of characters and references that characterize Gaiman’s work. ![]() “The Sandman” is a comic series following the Sandman, or Dream, or Morpheus, or whatever other names the world has for the shadowy figure that rules our collective unconscious. Yet “The Sandman,” arguably Gaiman’s best-known work, and certainly the one that jump-started his career, has never been adapted - until now, with a Netflix series that premiered Friday. “Stardust,” a Victorian-style fairy story, became a movie starring Claire Danes, and “Coraline,” a delightfully creepy children’s novella, made for a delightfully creepy stop-motion film. “American Gods” followed ancient deities as they’re eradicated by technology it ran for three seasons. There’s “Good Omens,” which he co-wrote with fellow fantasy author Terry Pratchett, a surprisingly cozy book about the Antichrist that made for a pitch perfect miniseries. Neil Gaiman is no stranger to television and movie adaptations of his fantasy novels.
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