Netflix's The Sandman

[olivermoss]

I am one episode in and my main take away is *how* was this in development hell for twenty five years?

Yeah, ten or twenty years ago they couldn't have done this production quality or these effects, but the effects heavy shots aren't the most compelling or even trying to be. All it needs is 'trust the writing, trust the pacing' A Neverwhere level of production quality would have been fine. Was every other producer/director just trying to over-complicate it or make it more generic?

I know more complicated stuff is coming up. I know. I haven't opened an issue of Sandman in at least a decade and I know what's coming next in every scene. I am... familiar with Gaiman's work. Still, literally the approach is 'trust the writing, trust the pacing' and it works. I just works. WTF were all those other pitches and failed films even trying to do to it?

For those unaware, they have been so many announcements over adaption deals, casting news or certain directors being attached/replaced that it was a running joke for decades. It says something that when Netflix said they were tackling it that anyone believed them.

Anyway, off to watch more. But seeing it finally here I am just so baffled that this adaption was considered impossible for so long. Somehow no one could make it work? mind-blown.gif

Comments

[writedragon]

Gaiman is a "writer's writer", and why he's one of my favorites alongside Ursula le Guin. "Trust the writing, trust the pacing" is so true in this series. The story's (dare I say it) dreamlike qualities are beautifully presented and preserved. When people ask me about the series, whether it's "good," I have to tell them -- you have to be willing to enjoy the ride, to go on the journey, and to understand that this series is about deep myths and timeless experiences. An MCU movie, it's not (thankfully).

[olivermoss]

Yeah, it's slow paced and it's not about visual spectacle. They've visually de-emphasized a lot of the effects work. Sometimes the visual-effects heavy backgrounds are slightly out of focus, which is smart.

It's mind boggling that this project was considered impossible to make work for decades. Was everyone trying to turn it into a fast paced vehicle for special effects?

[mistressofmuses]

I think it was a serious unwillingness for anyone to trust the writing or trust the pacing. That's what it sounds like, anyway. I seem to recall hearing how lots of versions tried so hard to make the whole story "palatable" to a mainstream audience that it lost everything distinctive, OR they wanted the WHOLE SERIES to fit into one movie somehow. Though clearly, I don't know for sure what any of those projects would have looked like!

I am looking forward to watching - I've heard almost all good things, and am very excited. Just have to get the chance to do so!

[olivermoss]

The show really relies on the acting. I feel like most of it could work as a stage production with light effects after that. I think it's taken Hollywood a long time to learn they don't need to mainstream-ize every single nerd property. Just let it be what it is. They them have their own flavor, don't make everything the same. People go nuts for shows with their own specific flavors.

It's been ages, but I still remember someone directing a Batman movie was offended when he was asked if he read comics. Like, offended because he would never read comics and hated the idea that people might think he did. I realized when I wrote that that a director might be offended today for the totally opposite reason.

[mistressofmuses]

I'm looking forward to watching it! As much as I can love pretty effects and things, I really prefer stuff that doesn't lean overly hard on them. (Good acting generally stays good, even when good effects may not.)

That's very much it, I think. It's taken a very long time for studios to decide that not every single property needs to have the edges filed down for maximum bland appeal. Shows and movies that have a unique and specific flavor are absolutely the ones that people often love the strongest. (Stranger Things! For an older example - Buffy.)

Oh god, I remember hearing about that! This idea that someone making a comic book movie about one of the most famous and recognizable comic book characters out there being OFFENDED at the implication he would stoop to READING COMICS.

I think it's that cultural shift - that yeah, now it would be taking offense at the implication they DON'T read comics - that let things like Sandman happen now when they couldn't before. Nerds are a profitable demographic, so it's worth treating the things they love well, but also directors and screenwriters and things want to adapt those stories without a layer of "ugh, comics aren't ART, I'm not making a COMIC BOOK movie."

[olivermoss]

Yeah, I think a lot of Stranger Things being the cultural phenomena it is, is due to it being unique. That's part of why people went that nuts for it. It was Chunky Pasta Sauce at the time. (I'll explain that term if you don't know it, but it means roughly 'something new instead of endless rehashing' Basically some marketing research accidentally created when is to this day the most popular kind of pasta sauce)

Also, not everything has to be a smash hit. Netflix gets this. People want variety and re-watchable canons are very good in the long run. And no one re-watches canons like nerds.

[mistressofmuses]

I don't think I've heard the "chunky pasta sauce" term before, but I think I get the meaning, and that seems pretty accurate!

Stranger Things happened at the right time to capitalize on 80s nostalgia, but also did it with its own aesthetics and own flavor of storytelling that gives it more than *just* the veneer of period nostalgia or being nothing more than a remix of 80s tropes. It stands apart from other 80s-nostalgia grabs (Ready Player One comes to mind, though I admit I never read or watched it, but my impression was largely that it was pretty much solely stock tropes and 80s references with no substance underneath.)

That's also a thing that I think more production companies/distribution companies etc. could stand to learn - that it's okay for things to be mid-tier "successful". One of the things Netflix has going for it is a catalog of properties that may not all be runaway hit/"cultural phenomenon" type things like Stranger Things, but ARE well-liked and rewatchable. Mid-tier popularity isn't failure, and things that do have very specific or unique vibes or flavors are the ones that people want to watch multiple times.

[olivermoss]

Chunky Pasta Sauce is a term used more in gaming, I think. Phasmophobia was that when it came out, and now Phas-like games are a profitable genre!

Also, Stranger Things has a very, very flowing structure. It's written and presented as an 8 hour movie so it doesn't have the internal 45-minute-episode structure in every episode making it predictable. And, *cough* part of their style guideline is to not break anything into acts. I had reason to look into their style guides recently... you'll see the post as to why. There are a lot of structural and genre things Stranger Things does in a very unique was.

Ready Player One is horrible. Don't get me started on the author, he's from Buckaroo Banzai fandom and I have opinions.

Yeah, medium size productions are amazing for variety and crunch. Look at Marvel, trying to be the biggest brand means they have to make it bland. That is also a big thing in gaming, some of the best experiences came from small to medium companies trying to really nail a specific note: Weird West, Phasmophobia, Stray, Inscryption, etc.

[mistressofmuses]

Yeah, it makes sense as a term! The idea of giving a New Thing a try as a product, and it turning out that hey, that's exactly what people wanted! A Thing that is New!

Especially with Season 1, that was a HUGE strength of Stranger Things imo. (The later seasons too, though they were *slightly* more episodic. Still, the overall season arcs were significantly more important than the interior episode arcs, and those episode arcs still aren't TYPICAL episodic wrap-ups by any stretch.) It doesn't surprise me that that's a deliberate structural decision that they have codified.

I have had zero interest in Ready Player One. The handful of people I knew of who loved it are people whose taste I know I hate, lmao.
But I had no idea that the author had done a stint in Buckaroo Banzai fandom. I kind of WOULD like to get you started on it, but only if you want to, haha. He seemed utterly insufferable from the handful of interview type things I remember seeing bits of.

Yes! Marvel is excruciatingly bland, and keeps getting more so! (I remember seeing a thing about costume design in the films recently, as sort of one aspect of this. It was just a tumblr post, but the basic point of it was how things are deliberately blander now than they were in the early films, partially so that they can easily change the general tone and look of things in post-production, based on decisions made long after filming is complete.)
Trying to hit the widest possible audience means often being not terribly memorable.

The types of games and films and series I remember and revisit are the ones that DO commit to something specific, whether that's aesthetic or themes or weird story. The huge AAA type games are very rarely the ones that I have any interest in.
(Granted, my modern gaming experience is filtered through "stuff my younger sibling liked enough to replay AND thought I would enjoy", but the point is still pretty much the same. The stuff we play is REALLY GOOD but would never find super mainstream success. ETA: Some ARE very successful in their niches, but for the most part, no random person I talk to is likely to be familiar with them.)

[olivermoss]

Ernst Cline, the author of Ready Player One, never wrote Buckaroo Banzai fanfic. Fanfic? Gross girls stuff. TABB fandom had the fanfic taken offline by harassing the hosting companies. Ernst Cline wrote fiction and spec scripts, all of it in the TABB universe but it they weren't fanworks. They were fundamentally different and to compare them shows ignorance.

Aaaaaand that's just the tip of the iceberg. This is why I will finish my TABB fanfics no one will ever read in the year of our lord 2022. I just have several multi-chapter fics to finish before I get back to Ride A Cowboy.

'Chunky' was actually a dummy entry on a marketing survey, and then everyone was like 'yes that one' and ... I forget if it was Prego or Ragu that commissioned the marketing research but then they had to go figure out what that would even be.

Marvel will lose several large markets if they commit to any real queer content and dodging the problem is going to get trickier and trickier as the timeline moves on.

[mistressofmuses]

Ah yes, he very much gives off the "it's different and special when I do it, and not ICKY and GIRLY like ~fanfiction~ which is bad and embarrassing" vibes. God I hate that attitude.

Someday I will see TABB. I never did, though I was and have been peripherally aware of it for an extremely long time.

That's an interesting detail! That it was an *unintentional* inclusion that took off that way. (Though makes it still applicable to the meaning it has in media. Shows/games may not be created quite so unintentionally, but it still often seems to be something seemingly *random* that gets the sudden "we didn't know this was what we wanted" reaction.)

Exactly. Trying for widest appeal will always end up feeling bland. You can't commit to any sort of position that's even PERCEIVED as controversial. Nothing queer, nothing that takes a political position to either side of the spectrum, etc. For a while, that might work, but the longer a series goes on, the weirder those gaps are going to be.

[olivermoss]

TABB is weird in that a lot of long-time fans only enjoyed it on the second watching, or were sold by the during-credits footage. It's definitely a very weird moment in film history. I love it, but it's a tricky recc.

[mistressofmuses]

I've heard it described as the kind of thing that sometimes has to grow on you, but once and if it does, you love it, haha.

[olivermoss]

I think the end credits, even though there is no plot or dialogue sort of explains something about the film and makes it click. Also, the first time you see the opening, you don't know the characters or the worldbuilding. Seeing it again gives a very different context.

[mistressofmuses]

Yeah, some things definitely feel a lot more impactful once you have an idea of who the characters are, so I can understand a repeated viewing having a better sense of the story all around.

[olivermoss]

It's weird how it's a movie that makes more sense on repeat viewings when a lot of genre stuff, especially of that era, is the opposite...

I will spare you more Thoughts on TABB unless you actually see it someday :)