Of course the first full trailer for Netflix’s The Sandman adaptation ends with a creepy indie girl singer breathily covering The Chordettes. It’s a predictable bit of marketing, after so many striking, ooky, and spooky visuals that initially made us suspect we were in for something boldly new.
Creator Allan Heinberg has a few decades worth of fandom to please with his streaming version of the 80s graphic novel series, though, so we’ll let a few pandering decisions slide. Starring Tom Sturridge as Morpheus/Dream, a cosmic entity coming out of 150 years of captivity, The Sandman awakens on Netflix from August 5, dropping all 11 episodes of season one at once.
With rich, high-contrast CGI and some cute dragon action, the new trailer plunges us into Gaiman’s inventive world of deities both benevolent and hateful. Joseph Gordon Levitt was originally set to star as Dream, who gets trapped in an occult prison way back in 1916 before busting out in the present day, but instead Sturridge sports the character’s spiky hair and raven familiar named Matthew.
At his side is Jenna Coleman as Johanna Constantine, based on DC’s John Constantine: she interrupts the trailer’s constant talk of dreams and nightmares by admitting that she “could do without dreams for a while—haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in ages.”
Game of Thrones alumni Charles Dance and Gwendoline Christie also put in appearances. The latter’s playing devilish ruler Lucifer Morningstar, pointing one fab finger into some infernal pits: “tell us, what power have dreams in hell?”, she purrs. She seems pretty nasty, but not as outright chaotic as Boyd Holbrook’s Southern-accented nightmare The Corinthian, who has mouths for eyes in one striking, Snapchat-filter-esque moment.
Fans of the comic book character who have been hoping for a screen adaptation since the late eighties will hope that Dream’s siblings Death (Kirby Howell-Baptiste), Desire (Mason Alexander Park), and Despair (Donna Preston) are brought faithfully to life.
The trailer looks lush and terrific, but Netflix hasn’t had such a good run lately of fan-hyped adaptations: Cowboy Bebop was laughed out of town, and Resident Evil seems to be earning similar fanboy hatred. Bringing a graphic novel to the streaming platform, though, rather than a game or anime, should result in visually stunning and episodically intriguing TV. That’s the dream, at least.
