Every once in a while, you sit there and wonder…why? Just…why are they doing this?
It’s like a cook going out to dinner. The urge to storm into the kitchen and make Gordon Ramsay look calm, collected, and chill has to grate on you when you see something going wrong.
Badly wrong.
Terribly wrong.
And, you want to go in and just…scream at people. People that should know better. People that have the material, created the material…and they tear it apart because they have to avoid having the Mob come and take them apart.
I just watched the full Netflix trailer for The Sandman and…well, my opinion of Neil Gaiman was mixed coming up to this. He’s one of those authors that when he’s on, he’s on fire. And, when he’s off…he’s gone. It doesn’t work, it fails.
(I didn’t include a link to the trailer. I don’t want to give it any more of a boost in SEO scoring.)
So, I watched the trailer. And this show is off. It’s fundamentally off. Like someone making beef gravy out of ground chalk rather than flower, it’s got the right consistency but the wrong flavor.
Dream…every time I read Dream in The Sandman, he kept feeling like David Bowie in the days when he was playing The Thin White Duke and Major Tom. He’s got all the right knowledge about being human, but he keeps missing these odd little beats that make you realize that this is not a human being. Just someone playing being a human being, except when there were parts of his duty to perform. Then, he was horribly, terribly inhuman. The Netflix Dream? Feels far too much like Generic White Hot Topic Teenage Boy, just a little too perfect and a little too easy to watch.
Death? Death is Goth, she’s cheerful. She’s calm, collected, caring, and she’s someone you want to meet…even though you realize that she is the exact last person you will ever meet. Ever. And, I have to say that Kirby Howell-Baptiste is trying to do that, but either the direction or the casting or just how she’s trying to portray the character is not working right.
(And, yes, the skin color. Look, for nearly thirty years, Death has been a white goth girl. Inspired by Cinnamon Hadley, for thirty years it has been this version of Death that has been on T-shirts, coffee mugs, other comic books, and just about everywhere when people think about this character. This recasting just feels like it was done for political reasons, not done because they couldn’t find someone that fit perfectly.)
Lucifer…come on. You’re telling me that Netflix couldn’t get Tom Ellis back to devour the scenery? Or Peter Stomare? Or even Lance Reddick, because you know that the Resident Evil series is going to be taken out back and shot after a season.
Jenna Coleman as a gender-bent John Constantine? Who dresses well? And doesn’t look like she’s living on a combination of cheap coffee, chain-smoked cheap cigarettes, and pure guilt? I’ve not been a fan of the actress, but that’s been for years…never been impressed with how she handles her roles. But, to be fair-I don’t know if it’s typecasting or just how she does things. Could be both, could be neither.
Again and again, we have terrible choices made, terrible characters chosen and warped to fit an agenda, and this time the creator of the stories…is going along with it. It’s tiring to watch people desperate to stay in good favor with the Party just destroy their own creations to do so. Especially when these are the stories that I grew up with.
Personal writing progress-chapter done. Next chapter being written, where I have to figure out the next plot beat.
Fingers crossed.
Big Bootay Books 