I have been slowly watching the The Sandman TV series on Netflix, and while I do enjoy the show, as it is nothing like any other show on TV, in that it doesn’t follow normal structure at all, as it is a comic book adaption, but the biggest annoyance is the strange aspect ratio.
This show looks like it is in scope, but it is strangely stretched tall. So many people are talking about this, that Netflix has had to respond and say it is how it is intended.
Actually Reddit seems to have the best info on what it actually is.
It is made even worse by the extreme close ups of so much of the show, and really gets obvious in pans and camera moves that become super distracting.
If they wanted to make the image look ethereal I would have rather had a true FX done to the show, like having made The Sandman seem taller and stretched out, instead of making everything stretched out.
Once again this is a distracting decision that ruins much of the hard work of the show, much like Game of Thrones color correcting for a darkened Theater with a 4K laser projector instead of for home TV with lights on. And they didn’t learn their lesson with Game of Thrones and have done the same damn thing on Game of Thrones: House of Dragon, making it too dark for many people to see.
When making a creative choice that is either distracting or hard to see for enough people to complain you are likely making a mistake.