Pretty Little Death Note: A Razing of the Netflix Adaptation

Welcome Back to another edition of Comic Relief! where I talk about all the goings on in the world of nerd!

In a world where comic adaptations are as prevalent as they are on the silver screen, it's no wonder that comic's cousin from the east: Manga, would come next. Making their way across the world from Japan, anime and Manga have caused a culture storm in the West that has been some real headway over the past couple of decades. Unfortunately, however, most of these adaptations have never truly captured the point the series was trying to make. Lack of faith to source material ultimately has led to the downfall of most of these adaptations, however, there was one adaptation that had brought people some hope. Netflix, a few years back, had announced that they were to adapt a live action feature of the critically acclaimed series Death Note.



In the anime/manga world Death Note is widely considered one of the best and serves as a lot of people's starting points for their introduction into the fandom. With Netflix's track record of great adaptations, between the Marvel Projects, Voltron reboot, and Castlevania, there was no reason to expect a "bad product," and what we got wasn't bad, it's a travesty. I have a hard time remembering the last time I have felt physically ill while watching a movie (that's a lie it was when my friends put on the most recent 3 musketeers with Orlando Bloom and Mads Mikelson while at a lake house a few weeks back), and so now it's time to give an overview of what exactly the film did wrong, and even what little it did right. But First, for those that have never read the manga or watched the anime (which I highly suggest at least the latter as it's up on Netflix as well), here's an overview of the show.

Light Yagami is a high-schooler that is at the top of his class, he's considered a prodigy with a bright shiny future. On his way home from school one day he finds a strange notebook on the ground. When Light picks it up and opens it and inside are a list of rules first which being: The human's name that is written in this note shall die. After testing the death note out on a common thug, Light draws the attention of a Shinigami (a Japanese death god) named Ryuk, who had dropped the note on Earth to escape his own world because he was bored. Light then begins a crusade against the criminal class of the world and in doing so draws out a world class detective known only as "L." L and Light enter a battle of wits as each of them lay traps for one another trying to figure out the other's identity. L wants justice to find the murderer known as Kira (the name that the public has adopted for being responsible for these deaths) and Light wants L's name so that he may write it in his note and continue his crusade and ascension to "godhood." It's an intense detective story that is very akin to a Sherlock Holmes book.

What Killed The Movie 

It's honestly very hard to choose a good starting point on tearing this movie apart, there was so much wrong with it and so very hard to just narrow down. I realize that most people are going to want to talk about the white washing of characters like Light, however, ultimately (while this is certainly an issue the movie has) it is not the stem of the reason why this movie is utter shit. So speaking of our leading man, let's start there.

Light Reminds Me of Tobey Maguire in Spider-Man 3 

Light Yagami (or as he is called in the movie: Light Turner) in the manga and anime is this brilliant, pseudo preppy high-schooler that is the son of a high ranking detective in the Japanese police Detective. He's smart, secretive, and plans everything down to the minor details, and ultimately his characters lends itself very similarly to Sherlock or more fittingly Moriarty in a Conan Doyle book, and then there's how he's portrayed in this adaptation. Light looks like he stepped of the pages of a hot topic catalog (which can literally be said of most things in this god awful movie) and within the first 5 minutes of him using the Death Note he tells his high school crush (another Hot Topic teen named Mia) about it and then we enter a montage of the two going back and forth between boning and writing people's name in the note. Now don't get me wrong, this is an adaptation, so I expected some differences in the character's portrayal to better suit it for marketing, however, this isn't making slight changes, this is taking a wrecking ball to the original concept and turning it into a shitty CW show like Pretty Little Liars (hence the title of my article).  Light lacks ANY of the cunning we see in the anime and acts neurotic and unbalanced the entire movie. Any hopes of seeing something akin to the famous Potato chip scene are burned to the ground in the portrayal provided by Nat Wolf. I mean he all but admits he is the Kira to L in a confrontation between them in an ice cream parlor. Honestly it's gut wrenching to watch, and while there is plenty to blame Nat Wolf with for his portrayal, most of this weight is the cross the writers should bare for destroying a great character like Light, however if there was a character even worse than Light, it's his shitty sidekick and love interest Mia.

Burn down, Burn Down Hot Topic- South Park

When they got to the drawing board for this film, I have no idea what compelled them to think: let's give Light a partner in crime. I mean yes Light has allies in the Death Note story, however, none of them have ANY emotional significance to him whatsoever, in fact, they are all just pieces on the chessboard to him. Even the women that he is involved with are people that he uses so that he can best play the game and over come L and the Kira task force. While I realize that having a strong female co lead sounds good in theory as a thing to add, that theory gets blown up when the majority of what they do in the film is provide a montage of pretty people bumping nasties and a contrived subplot that leads to her betraying Light and trying to take the Deathnote for herself. Mia is a cash grab at best and a step back in writing female characters at worst.



The tone of the film is also confused. As I said before the tone of the original Death Note was suspense and mystery. In it's anime form almost every scene carries some weight to it. However, the set up for the Death Note movie is the set up for a horror movie, which could have been interesting had it stuck to it's guns. Rather than make Ryuk Light's "invisible pal" the way he is in the show, Ryuk is the bogeyman of the show. Ryuk constantly threatens Light with the book and this lends to the shitty Mia subplot that was mentioned previously. This would be fine if they didn't ALSO try to make it a detective piece with bringing L in. If they wanted to do a horror movie they should have STUCK to making a horror movie and make Ryuk the direct antagonist and the movie's monster, but instead they also have the L detective bit which is silly because this version of Light can hardly tie his shoes properly let alone go head to head with the "world's greatest detective," and the fact that he does make L look superbly incompetent.

The Few Good Apples 

As terrible as this movie was there were some good things about it. Stylistically the film is VERY well made. The music, the use of cinematography, even the effects, are all brilliant, which is all a shame because it shows that despite how talented a director this guy was, there was only so much he could do to gift wrap a pile of shit. However, the director of the film is not the only saving grace of this film.

Without much surprise the BEST part of the movie is Willem Dafoe's Ryuk. It's a far different take than in the original story, but Dafoe takes this performance to a new heights. He is bone chilling and the voice lends itself very well to the Mo-cap Shinigami. Also It wouldn't surprise me if most of the film's budget went into making Ryuk look perfect, especially since Ryuk is only seen in the film for maybe 30 minutes. While this performance was great, what really is a shame is that even this fruit is soured by the fact that they misuse the character grossly and due to the film's lack of tonal consistency Ryuk loses a lot of the weight of his presence. (Below I have posted the meeting between Light and Ryuk which is one of the only 2 REALLY good scenes in the movie, the other is another Ryuk scene where he dares Light to try writing the name Ryuk in the Note)

Character performances that should also be mentioned are L and Light's Father. Despite facing a LOT of flack for being black, the actor who portrays L does an almost perfect job of portraying this detective. The reason I say almost is because the latter half of the film L loses all composure and becomes as neurotic as Light was the entire damn movie. This is ultimately a result of screen writing and direction, so ultimately that is not the actors fault. However, Detective Turner (Light's father) was the most surprising. Of all the character that were shifted a little to make for a more marketable adaptation, Detective Turner was the greatest success. The Detective still holds his by the rules mentality that he has in the original manga, however, he also seems far more human in certain aspects. While I realize this is for sure due to cultural differences, I feel that it was far more realistic to have Detective Turner feel slighted and angry that L was investigating his son. Detective Turner gets outwardly angry and almost leaves the task force because of it. 

Overall this movie is a ginormous, heaping pile of crap. It is even more annoying because Netflix hopes to make a sequel and the director claims that the character inconsistencies are due to the fact they were setting up to the real thing, but what exactly are they going to set up at this point? By the end of the film (SPOILERS) L KNOWS that Light is Kira, so does his father, and not only that but L has a page of the note that Mia took, so he can write down Light's name. If you want to watch Death Note, just watch the anime instead. It's already on Netflix as well, and you won't be disappointed or wrongfully misled by this abysmal live action adaptation. 

This has been another edition of Comic Relief! I hope you have enjoyed and we will see you again next time!