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carraisaunicorn · 7 years

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My thoughts on the death note live action by the Netflix

*Breathes in* BOI DO I HAVE I LOT TO SAY

I came into this with the lowest expectations possible, as a fan of the original source material I was happy at first when I heard Netflix was going to bring life to an already great story, and I was hyped for it. But then I found out about what they changed Light’s name to. Seriously LIGHT TURNER. Did you just finish watching fairly odd parents before deciding on his name? I get it you had to westernise the name to appeal to a wider audience but like at least choose a name that doesn’t make it sound like a job. like “ELLO I AM THE LIGHT TURNER,I TURN OFF THE LIGHT, I TURN ON THE LIGHT”. But then I was like okay maybe it’s just the name it’s alright I can look pass that. But then I found out about the casting.... And everything just kept on going down hill. Especially when the trailer released and my fear was realised. They weren’t going to stick to the original source material at all, but I still hoped in my heart they would at the very least keep the core parts of the story. But sadly they didn’t.

I’m gonna start with the most basic thing I want to address.

The Characters.

None of the characters were done right. Maybe ryuk was but I dunno he wasn’t as assertive in the original source material plus he wasn’t in the film as much as I hoped.

Let’s start with the people who I think should have been in it that weren’t included.

Light’s Mother and younger sister. Light didn’t need to have the whole back story where his mum was killed by a criminal who wasn’t prosecuted. In all honesty I feel like them giving such a cliché and predictable backstory took away so much from his original Character. Light was a Sociopath even before he got the death note, and him having the picture perfect family might have been one of the reasons that side of him developed. everything about light was supposed to be perfect, his grades and his looks were all incredibly above average, his dad was a chief officer, his mum was the perfect house wife and his little sister was your normal adorkable little sister who looked up a lot to his brother, Light himself was the perfect son, he was an honour student probably even the smartest person in japan at that time. (or atleast until L came into the picture) he was bored of his perfect life, and already felt like he was above everyone, anyway i have more to say about Light later. I’m just saying, having them there would have added more complexity to light’s character overall. We really didn’t need the whole angsty relationship between light and his dad. It just made the film feel like it was trying too hard to be edgy.

The rest of the Kira investigation team, Matsuda and the others added a lot of things for character development not only to Light but most definitely to L as well. This was the first time he started working with other people besides watari, where they actually met and talked in person, before then he would work alone only communicating through watari and or a computer screen. towards the end of his arc you could tell he was starting to enjoy working with them and seeing them as friends. Not to mention the whole scene where they finally meet L and L was just like “bang, if I was Kira you’d be dead.” being one of my favourite L moments ever,along with the whole “I couldn’t live in a world without Light” “yes that would be very dark”conversation

The female FBI detective whose name I completely forgot. (I haven’t rewatched death note in a while cut me some slack) (her names Naomi Misora I looked it up. Lol) the scene where Light met her before she got in contact with L was an amazing part of the original. Plus the way Light manipulated her into giving him her real name was a perfect way to portray how much of fucking genius Light was, I swear they completely missed out with not adding that to the movie.

Rem. Rem added a lot more expedition into the death note itself, and how it came to be, and how it works. Not to mention Rem was one of my Favourite characters in the Series. She was a death god like ryuk. Who wasn’t completely crazy like Ryuk but more calm and observant, She was a genuine Friend to Misa (Mia in the Netflix version WHICH BTW I HAVE A LOT TO SAY ABOUT TOO BUT I’LL SAVE THAT FOR LATER). I won’t go into much detail on her but anyone who has scene the original source material knows why Rem was really important.

Shall we go on to the actual characters in the film now? Let’s take a deep breath.

Let’s start with Lights dad. Why the frickity frack is he like your average angsty cop dad in every fricken film. Light’s dad in the original was a clean,prim and proper dad, who had a strong sense of Justice and clear love for his family. He was never laid back, He despised what Kira was doing, he was so passionate about it that he even gave up his job as chief of the NPA. Plus he even went as far as taking the shinigami eyes, even though it cut his entire life span in half causing him to die a few days after. The dad in the movie however was just like your cliché cop, who was struggling to make connections with his son.

L and Watari,Watari isn’t Watari’s real name. Do you honestly think a super genius like L would let his extremely close Colleague Use his real name when he goes by a fucking letter. NO. HE. WOULDN’T. Plus L would never do a press conference himself he would have Watari show up in a trench coat and a mask hold out a Laptop and talk through that, with a voice changer on himself as well. That’s how he communicated to the public, He would never show up himself. However I would have to give credit where credit is due, The person who played L did a massive good job in portraying the weird quirky side of his. And that’s pretty much it. Halfway towards the end they took away a core part of L’s original character, The way L would never let his emotions take over, Logic would always come first. He would never go crazy and chase after Light he would calmly think of a way to corner him. That’s why he made Light Join the Kira investigation team in the first place. Plus they never mentioned why L sat that way or why he likes sugar so much, or how he doesn’t like phones. Also the way Light was his first friend even though he knew for a fact Light was Kira he just didn’t know how to prove it. If anything L’s character felt closer to Near and Mello to me.

Misa/ Mia, look the whole point of Misa’s character was that she was completely and utterly devoted to Light and his cause, as he, Kira, killed the man who murdered her family. Her whole thing was she loved Light with all her heart and was completely and utterly loyal to him, to the point that she would risk her life if it meant it would make Light happy, which the movie completely took away by making her betray him. NOT TO MENTION MISA IS SUPPOSED TO BE AN IDIOT. She’s not your cliché edgy popular chick who likes bad boys. I’m repeating myself here but Light is a sociopath, The only reason why he tolerated Misa and pretended to date her was because she was of use to him since she had shinigami eyes and she possessed another death note. In all honesty the romance in the netflix version ruined the whole thing for me.Not to mention the one thing Light made sure about is to not let anyone know about his identity the only times he did reveal it was towards the end during the time he made Mikami(i think his name is) write in the death note in his stead while he was working on the case against Near, but in the movie he just reveals it to this girl because he wants to bang her. Not to mention you lost a lot of Misa’s character and back story by not including Rem. Or the story about the shinigami who fell in love with her.

And now to the one I have the most to say about,

The #tooedgyforyou boi himself, Light Yaga- I mean Turner. Light turner, FUCK I HATE THAT NAME,

My biggest problem with Light Turner here is just the fact that he’s supposed to be Light Yagami. He is completely different. Light Yagami is a self righteous sociopath with incredible passion and determination (*megalovania blasts in the background*) he’s calculative and manipulative and he will do anything if it meant he would get what he wants. Only a complete and utter Sociopath would still try and make his Dying father use his lasts bits of strength to kill someone just to get one person of his back. He doesn’t give a shit about love, and he wouldn’t be dumb enough to leave opportunities for Mia/Misa to take the death note from him. He planned every move before hand, looked at every possible outcome before moving on to the next. He wasn’t someone who would give up his ideals of a perfect world for a fucking cheerleader who had a nice body. Heck I’m even smarter than the Light that is being portrayed in the movie. Probably even the L. In the anime Light picked up the death note read it and was like “eh that’s bullshit but I’m curious so I’ll take it home for now.” then while watching the news he saw that there was a hostage thing going on and he decided to just try it out. It’s not like there’s anything to lose, and it worked the person died of heart attack 40 seconds after. Even though it threw him off he was still sceptical, and tried it out again while he was at the convenience store where he saw a guy on a bike harassing a woman, He was talking really loudly and telling the woman his name tellin the woman to remember it, so he decided to test out the notebook again and wrote out the name but this time with a method of death, and when it worked again he realized that the book was the real deal, so what’s the first thing Light does? Write down every criminal’s name he could find, people who he thinks deserved to die. And by the time Ryuk showed up he has written over 400 names in the note. HE DIDN’T NEED TO BE COERCED. This shows that Light was a strong willed person. He had his own ideas of how things should work and how he wanted to use the note. He also expected Ryuk to show up. He didn’t freak out like Light turner did. he knew that if something this powerful existed then there must be a just as powerful being that it belonged to and that they would soon come in looking for it. He started with good intentions at first but as time went by he slowly spiralled into crazy. He started believing he was the new God of the world he was creating where there is no crime because everyone was terrified to meet Kira’s wrath. He went in too deep and that pride and arrogance was his downfall. (oh btw Kira wasn’t a name Light gave himself, Kira was the name given to him by his followers and he took a liking to it. he wasn’t like “kira, I’ll name myself kira. That names pretty dope it’s my name in Celtic” fuck off) Light turner was nothing compared to him. Light turner just seemed like your average emo boy who’s pretty good at academics that’s pretty much it. Like the only time he showed intelligence was when he was doing homework for other students which by the way is something the original light would never do. Light Yagami is a super genius, He even got a perfect score on his uni entrance exam, Light turner is just kinda good at math. Light yagami would not cry if Misa died. He would not spare his father if it meant leading to his downfall. He would never waver if it meant his goal was achieved. He would not be that stupid. Not to mention Ryuk isn’t that assertive and pushy he just kinda liked watching how things unfolded, he didn’t force people to write in the death note, or be so cryptic. He explained everything clearly to Light when Light would ask. They just made Light into the cliché underdog who hates school and everyone in it. The Ryuk the Netflix version created was nearer to joker than Ryuk anyway.

That’s enough of the characters let’s go into the scenes I think should have been in the movie that weren’t and plot points they missed.

The whole “I’ll take a potato chip and eat it” scene. you guys know what I’m talking about. In this scene Light was under surveillance by L and he new it so he planned everything he did, he bought this tiny portable tv, which he placed inside a potato chip bag which he ate as he did his homework. He did his homework with his right hand and wrote down names as they popped up on tv with his left. THIS SCENE MAN. It showed how cunning and intuitive both L and Light were. Though Light won that round as he was able to clear him of suspicion by not only giving him an alibi where he couldn’t possibly know the criminals whose names had only been released in the news that night but making people believe he was your above average nice guy.

The bus scene, Light new he was being followed by L’s men and he knew he had to get rid of him. So what does he do? Go on a date.this scene is one of my favourite scenes in all of anime, so I won’t go into much detail about it but let me tell you it’s fucking epic and the way Light was able to figure out how to extract the name of the FBI agent was amazing, this scene also portrayed how bloody brilliant Light is which is why I feel like by just having that one scene in the movie it would have added a lot more to Light character over all. If they had just kept at least one scene from the anime that portrayed the core parts of the characters personality I feel like the fans of the original source material wouldn’t be this disappointed.

L and Light’s time at the university. Just following the whole Light being a university student instead of a high school one would have been nice tbh. I don’t really understand why it had to be set in a high school was the writers that desperate into turning this into a movie that would appeal to a younger demographic that they turned it into a twisted cliché high school romance that was obviously trying so hard to be edgy with it’s soundtrack, gore and slow motion dancing, it basically felt like the writers just read Perks of being a wallflower and was like “you know what would make this better? murder.”

Don’t get me wrong I get it, you obviously couldn’t fit a whole entire series with over 30 episodes into a single movie so your gonna have to make some adjustments.I can also tell that the people behind it worked really hard into making it a decent movie. but to change something that was already good so much that you make it fail in comparison to the original is just disappointing at the very least.

The biggest problem I think with hollywood “adaptations” is that they think us fans don’t want to see the same shit over and over again. Which in all honesty is completely false, I can assure you every death note fan has seen the anime series at least twice. there’s a lot of hidden meanings and Easter eggs you wouldn’t have noticed the first time around. The whole appeal of an adaptation is that it’s for the fans who are massive supporters and just want to see new life brought into the characters we already know and love and for the people who has never heard of it and just want to try something new and maybe it’ll introduce them to new forms of entertainment.

To the creators of the netflix version of death note, if this really was the story you wanted to tell, here’s how I think you should’ve gone. Neither of the characters you created should have been the characters in the original. if Light turner wasn’t supposed to be Light Yagami you would have received a lot less backlash from the community, if L wasn’t L and if Mia wasn’t Misa, the comparison would never have been made and it would make people a lot less mad about the casting. The problem I think here is that you guys didn’t look at it from the Fan’s perspective and just wanted to see what you can do with an already famous franchise that has a pretty good premise, if I were you, the way I would have wrote it would be this way:

Instead of this being the original Kira case I would have set it a few years after the original series ended, Light turner could have been from a family of Kira supporters or His mother was one and that’s why his name is light, he was named after him, since I’m sure after the original investigation was solved Light’s name would have been released to the public, obviously they would keep the death note and the shinigami thing a secret, but I’m sure they would have released Kira’s true identity, Light turner receives the note and Ryuk, Now knowing what the human race is capable of becomes more assertive and manipulates Light turner into trying to replicate what Light Yagami did, Mia could be another Kira supporter and that could have been the thing that brought them together, L would be Near, I can assure you that if the person you cast as L was Near instead you would have received a lot less backlash, Why? you may ask. Character design. L’s appearance is a huge part of the reason why some of the community love him, he’s incredibly unconventional from his pale skin to the huge dark circles under his eyes to his messy emo hair. People in the death note community love L and hold him very close to their heart so to see him portrayed by someone who doesn’t resemble him at all would obviously upset them. as much as I think the actor who portrayed him did an amazing job with capturing his small little quirks I doubt he would look good with a huge black fringe. Near on the other hand was someone who was only introduced towards the end so we wouldn’t have that much of an affinity with him like what we have with L, You can play with his character a lot more and he would be already aware of the death note from the start adding more interesting twists to the story, also I can also see Near adopting L’s persona, and using his name as it’s totally something he would do.

The biggest problem I see with this whole think in my opinion is that it was supposed to be an adaptation. It wasn’t, if you had just told people from the start that you were never intending to make it resemble the anime then I feel like the backlash it would have gotten was a lot less. The fact the only parallels is how the book fell from the sky and the main protaginists’ names being L and Light and the existence of Watari and Ryuk kinda just makes me think you just heard about the show second hand and you dif not actually try watching it yourself.

The problem is this isn’t an adaptation. this was just another version of the story.

#death note #noteflix #netflix #netflix death note #just why

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