Death and Dream take center stage in a deleted scene from the Netflix series

[dnealy]

Originally published at: Death and Dream take center stage in a deleted scene from the Netflix series | Boing Boing

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[cepheus42]

There was much that could have (but thankfully didn’t) gone wrong with a Sandman adaptation. But the rest of it could have utterly failed and it would have still been a massive success if this one, perfect episode remained the same. The Sound of Her Wings is the best of fantasy television for all of 2022, and I dare say maybe the entire 2000’s to date.

[anon61221983]

OMG, they were both so perfect in that episode… I was so worried that they were going to fuck the whole thing up, but they did not fuck it up.

[MikeR]

Absolutely. as soon as I saw Kirby Howell-Baptiste as Death I thought - yep, she was born to play this role. Terrific dialogue delivered beautifully - let’s hope that the death in this world is half as compassionate as the one on the screen.

[cannibalpeas]

So weird, I’ve had this exact conversation for the past three days. I think the key here is that Gaiman is the show runner. It seems that adaptations do well if they either: adhere to the original storyline almost entirely or when they take the heart of the story, but rearrange the events to suit tv/film. Unfortunately, what usually happens is that the events are reshuffled and the writers think they have a better take on the story or that it will “work better” modified and end up burying the thing that made it great in the first place.

The Watchmen film vs tv is a great example. The former took all of the beats from the book verbatim (eta: except for the most important one!), but completely missed the point of the story. The tv show had no content to adhere to, but absolutely nailed the original story’s themes.

It was so wonderful to see how beautifully they chopped up and reshuffled the story to fit tv, but every bit of heart remains. I don’t think they could have done it without Gaiman at the helm. I can’t wait to see some of the later stories unfold. Season 1 was basically just the intro of the comics!

ETA: Getting chills just thinking about Delirium/Delight and the Midsummer Night’s Dream sequences.