The supernatural side of DC comics is probably the best comic book content there is. But sadly we are still years away from seeing Constantine in live action again or any similar character. Fortunately we now have the live action adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s iconic The Sandman comics currently streaming on Netflix. And there are in fact two Constatines in this, not John though.
The series in 10 episodes long and follows Morpheus, Dream of the Endless as he tries to get his tools back after he manages to finally escape from his imprisonment by the mortals of the waking world. His imprisonment obviously had a very bad impact on his realm and the waking world too and now Dream has to repair everything. For that he goes to multiple realms including Hell and meets a lot of very popular Characters.
Those who don’t know about the character, Morpheus is the Lord of dreams and he rules over his realm called The Dreaming and he creates and controls dreams and nightmares. Interesting stuff! The show explains everything perfectly and it doesn’t require having any prior knowledge of the character or the world.
Right from the start it has its own identity. It feels very comic-booky. The tone is dark. The story takes the characters to various realms (including hell) and multiple time periods too. As everyone can already tell from the trailers, the show definitely cost a lot and it looks fantastic. Some of the shots are straight from the comics. Even some conversations are word to word from the comics which is great. They definitely spent a lot of time planning and making this and the effort is visible.
The series is created by Neil Gaiman himself and David S Goyer. So it’s very accurate and the stuff that is not accurate to the comics still works. So it’s better if The Sandman fans don’t hate the person they are trying to gate keep.
Tom Sturridge is perfect as Morpheus. He just feels like someone who has lived for thousands of years and the character’s personality is visible from his subtle expressions. The entire cast is amazing. People were complaining about Gwendolyn Christie being Lucifer in this series but seriously she is great as well.
The writing in this series occasionally hits very hard. It’s consistently great but episode 4,5 and 6 are definitely the best ones in this season. Though the second act of the show (episode 7-10) are not as good as the first 6, they are still good enough. It certainty has some amazing deep dialogues about dreams!
The open minded Sandman fans will definitely love this. it’s very understandable that adaptations are different or there’s no point to their existence. Especially in this case when the creator of the character is making the changes then no one should have problem with the ‘differences’ unless of course they are actually bad.
There’s a lot of character development from Morpheus. He starts as a strict God like figure who really didn’t like changes or wasn’t as empathetic towards mortals other than his duties
But over the course of the series he learns the importance of changes, the choices and surprisingly, friends. There’s some truly great moments in this show about dreams and humans.
This is seriously as good as they could’ve made this. Though this might not be the best thing in anyway but this is satisfying enough for a first season. People will definitely demand for another season. Lets just hope Netflix doesn’t cancel this. This is definitely worth a watch, it will draw you in right from the first episode!
Overall rating: 85%
*spoilers*
The series ends with Lucifer agreeing with Generals of Hell and deciding to invade the dreaming which might be the plot for next season.
