Netflix's Death Note - A Good Film Cut Tragically Short - General

[media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Awfo0oGn_qM[/media] I don't know why, but I found myself super endeared by the Netflix Death Note movie. I came across this guys video the other day and he put it into words better than I could. After two watches (one of them after discovering the director was [I]adam wingard[/I] i love vhs) I found myself genuinely rooting for the movie against it's inevitable backlash from anime fans. I agree with this dude's point - the movie should be given a chance solely on the reason that it's clear the director had a specific vision/interpretation for the film, and it's not some cash grab adaption.

Holy shit. I have no words to describe how much I disagree.

I don't know man, Light being a bumbling fucking idiot and then winning in the end kind of defeats the entire point of the original manga/anime. Light seems like a new character, L seems like a new character, Misa seems like a new character, hell even Ryuk seems to be too different to be compared to his original self where he's more of a neutral spectator whereas in the movie he seems happy to cause chaos. I really do not think this is a good movie.

It certainly has it's flaws, but I think the unique/actually thought out departure from the source material and the discussion that has generated alone justifies it's existence next to much more bland, sometimes disastrous films like ghost in the shell. I'm no diehard fan of the original source material, but I find that it draws just enough interesting concepts from the source material to make the new interpretation worthwhile. It doesn't go too far like dragon ball evolution. [QUOTE=Bordellimies;52666949]Light seems like a new character, L seems like a new character, Misa seems like a new character, hell even Ryuk seems to be too different to be compared to his original self where he's more of a neutral spectator whereas in the movie he seems happy to cause chaos. I really do not think this is a good movie.[/QUOTE] That's one of the points I feel the video highlights the best. They're fundamentally different characters, but with differences that have clear intent and aren't just a result of poor translation. Light is made into a more relatable, almost sympathetic character that allows the story to explore the premise from a more believable, grounded perspective. Misa's character was almost wasted in the original anime and as far as I'm aware, is widely lamented anyway. Changes to her character to make this version of the story work are welcome. L is actually surprisingly accurate for most of the film until he's pushed to an emotional extreme, which imo is a natural conclusion to his character that the anime never really explored. What happens when you push a cold, calculated mastermind determined on pure justice over the edge? Can this paragon of justice maintain his moral code when he's pushed to the limits like everyone else? I thought it was an interesting perspective that would have been wasted if they just had the new actor play L straight (and he did play a pretty good L down to his mannerisms, you have to admit). As a side note, I feel like the fact I'm writing up walls of text in discussion of this movie should say something - I'm really not a fan of death note in general, which is probably something to keep in mind as I make these points. I more or less feel that the movie has enough redeeming qualities to be judged on it's own merits, or merits separated enough from it's anime roots that it's vast differences don't matter in comparison to the new perspective it brings to the franchise.

[QUOTE=Bordellimies;52666949]I don't know man, Light being a bumbling fucking idiot and then winning in the end kind of defeats the entire point of the original manga/anime. [B]Light seems like a new character, L seems like a new character, Misa seems like a new character, hell even Ryuk seems to be too different to be compared to his original self where he's more of a neutral spectator whereas in the movie he seems happy to cause chaos. I really do not think this is a good movie.[/B][/QUOTE] I don't think that's fundamentally a problem. If anything, I think they didn't go far enough. They made the main character less smart, which is totally fine, but they still decided to give him the same name as in the anime, and still tried to shoehorn in the ability to make up a precise plan to get out of anything right at the end. There's similar problems with the other characters, like why'd this L have to have the same quirks when he's clearly a different character? And of course, it is less interesting when L and Light are just not all that smart - and it becomes a problem when the movie wants us to think they're smart. It's like that Sherlock criticism, they're "smart characters written by stupid people". The biggest problems are the internal inconsistencies, in my opinion. Being able to just use [sp]"Watari" as Watari's proper name[/sp] should not be possible, and dictating what happens to a piece of paper in the death conditions shouldn't be possible. But not because it wasn't like that in the anime, it's because it's inconsistent with the movie itself. If you can use pseudonyms, Light could just put [I]"L"[/I] in the note. Or he could write [I]"Watari kills L and then dies"[/I], but that would be stupid.

I think his point about how you won't enjoy the film if you expect to go into it with the same characters and plot is kind of stupid. The movie seems to deviate so hard that I really struggle to understand why the characters need to be the same at all? You can say 'this light is intentionally different from the original light for reason X, Y, Z' but that doesn't mean it was a smart idea. What the fuck is the point of making an adaptation when you're going to throw 90% of it out the window? Does the film actually benefit from having the same characters twisted into completely different people? Seem to me like if they simply renamed the characters the film would be a much better experience all around, since these characters are so far removed from the source material they might as well be different people. [editline]10th September 2017[/editline] You can't complain about people having an expectation and being disappointed when you [I]intentionally[/I] set up that expectation.

This was my favourite part: [video]https://youtu.be/1TYy8tKB8xM[/video]

[QUOTE=Empty_Shadow;52667022]You can't complain about people having an expectation and being disappointed when you [I]intentionally[/I] set up that expectation.[/QUOTE] I agree, I always thought it was an extremely bad idea to go with the same characters, or in this case the same name and half every character. I'm sure there's a ton of good story material from just the idea of dropping the same death note from the anime somewhere else in the world and having someone else get it. It's frustrating to see this adaption [I]almost[/I] try to do that, but end up making an inconsistent and confusing mess by doing half of each.

[QUOTE=Empty_Shadow;52667022] What the fuck is the point of making an adaptation when you're going to throw 90% of it out the window? [/QUOTE] This is something the movie actually made me think about, I'm pretty purist when it comes to watching adaptions of stories I love, I would find anything other than a direct, faithful adaptation nothing but a cash grab that misses the point. Death Note is an [I]old[/I] franchise though, one that has had a healthy run in a myriad of different mediums and a number of pretty faithful japanese movies, I hear. I actually think it's exactly the time to make an adaptation that isn't 100% original. I think as long as it doesn't detract from the source material, and doesn't undermine the source material's ability to exist (like as if this movie was made [I]instead[/I] of an awesomly original fan service movie) then there need not be a point to make the adaptation. The point simply is to explore the original premise from a new perspective, and I think this movie does that pretty well. I think there's a lot more meaningful criticisms to draw from this movie as well, that no one is really talking about in lieu of complaints about source material faithfulness. I think Sherow said it pretty well in his post. The best parts of this movie is when it strayed away from the source material, with faithful recreations being almost detrimental. This movie would have had more room to breathe as an unrelated side story to Death Note with unrelated characters, or, depending on how far Wingard wanted to go with his liberties, perhaps an entirely different IP that is Death Note in all but name.

[QUOTE=Sherow_Xx;52667015]I don't think that's fundamentally a problem. If anything, I think they didn't go far enough. They made the main character less smart, which is totally fine, but they still decided to give him the same name as in the anime, and still tried to shoehorn in the ability to make up a precise plan to get out of anything right at the end. There's similar problems with the other characters, like why'd this L have to have the same quirks when he's clearly a different character? And of course, it is less interesting when L and Light are just not all that smart - and it becomes a problem when the movie wants us to think they're smart. It's like that Sherlock criticism, they're "smart characters written by stupid people". The biggest problems are the internal inconsistencies, in my opinion. Being able to just use [sp]"Watari" as Watari's proper name[/sp] should not be possible, and dictating what happens to a piece of paper in the death conditions shouldn't be possible. But not because it wasn't like that in the anime, it's because it's inconsistent with the movie itself. If you can use pseudonyms, Light could just put [I]"L"[/I] in the note. Or he could write [I]"Watari kills L and then dies"[/I], but that would be stupid.[/QUOTE] I think that's largely why this seems bad, they tried to use both the old set of characters and also make them different at the same time. I'm fairly sure this'd have been a lot more fresh and interesting if it was a completely unique cast of members, including the death god.

the problem isn't that Light was an idiot the problem was that the people making the movie were idiots, which necessarily resulted in all of the characters being idiots as well

[QUOTE=Dan The Man;52667030]This was my favourite part: [video]https://youtu.be/1TYy8tKB8xM[/video][/QUOTE] Anybody else noticed how the entire classroom got destroyed after the teacher put him in detention. Yet Light went home without being questioned about it or anything? If I was the teacher I would probably wonder why my classroom turned into houstan. Also why does this classroom has so MANY selves of glass jars with random shit in it in the back? What the hell are they using those for? Also why did the first thing they did when finding an studant unconcious on the ground for the past hours was to search him instead of calling for medical help? Why didn't they ask anything about the bully or why was light knocked the fuck out with facial injuries? That seems like some serious criminal charges shouldve been brought to that douchebag, maybe the school too for neglect. The bully even continues to beat and harass people right in front of the school where it shows atleast 30 classroom windows had a pretty good view of it. No wonder Light is so dumb in this movie vs the anime, he is victim to the american public education system.

[QUOTE=Sky King;52667186]No wonder Light is so dumb in this movie vs the anime, he is victim to the american public education system.[/QUOTE] Sir, I believe you win the thread.

[QUOTE=Dan The Man;52667383]Sir, I believe you win the thread.[/QUOTE] it explains everything. "What if Light was from American Public schools with a generally American upbringing?" instead of Japanese. We just get a stupider, thirstier Light, lol.

I don't know the movie's characters for the most part felt lesss believable to me. I was completely taken out of it from his first kill, when a teenage boy decides to try this death note and instantly decapitate somebody.

the problem isn't that they adapted the story. That isn't what people are complaining about. What people are complaining about is that they took the exact same story framework, then took out the characters that made that framework interesting. It'd be like if you adapted Sherlock Holmes, but you replaced Holmes and Moriarty with a disgruntled middle aged walmart greeter and a mall cop. When the entire point of the story is the characters deducing, predicting, and planning to outsmart the other, replacing them with dumb people who can't deduce, predict, or plan worth a shit turns it into a farce. It's like watching Mr. Magoo walk through a construction yard and come out unscathed solely by chance. It isn't like I'm on the edge of my seat waiting to see how Mr. Magoo will successfully traverse the steel support beams. And not only are the characters a bore to watch, they're completely insufferable. Light is a selfish, stupid, vapid, douchebag who gets towed around by his idiot psycho fuckbuddy. L is a tantrum prone retard manchild. There are many interesting things you could do with the concept of death note. This isn't someone taking the concept in a new direction, this is someone taking the original concept and making it fucking terrible.

There is a lot of pointless crap in the movie, it's really not worth the time I put in watching. And while I am a bit biased having seen the anime before watching I can tell you this movie is really bad even when I try to leave my experience of seeing the original Death Note anime behind me to keep as neutral as possible. As the movie went on while pretending I had no knowledge of the original Death Note I was being presented with more questions than I had answered. There were parts of this movie I had trouble taking in that were not explained at all in the movie that might as well just not be present at all as they serve no purpose. I'm trying to write a review on this movie, but the only way I can describe what's bad about this movie is to highlight how many references to the source material they can stuff in as possible. It would seem to me with the conclusions I came up with that this movie direction was to cash in on a good series, rather than give another interesting take on what many would see as Death Note. The review I want to write can only have me spoil a lot from the source material and the Netflix movie itself, it's really hard to find something that I don't have to shove behind spoiler tags to tell you exactly why I do not like this movie. I'm not sure if I should post it as many people as I'm sure people probably won't look at it by the amount of spoiler tags I have to leave on it to get my point across.

[QUOTE=Sam Za Nemesis;52667706]I've never watched the original Anime and I think the movie is a solid 7/10, I don't think adapting the characters is a bad thing[/QUOTE] Even people that hadn't watched the anime didn't like it because of the obvious stupidity. "We've never talked before now? But you're a girl? Look, I'm a murderer! Now let me in your pants."

Never known much about the source besides names but the characters just seem abhorrent. They're all unrealistic in a jarring way and total assholes I couldn't root for. The tone was inconsistent so much that it felt like a first draft script. Can only see this as a cheap cash grab.

Netflix's Light was a creepy little idiot that pretty much used the Death Note to obtain pussy, and was three steps away from being a school shooter anyway (who's crush he stalked just happened to by chance- share the same sentiment.)