DeathNote Netflix movie

[HardcoreD&Dgirl]

So they made A HUGE amount of changes, one reviewer I love (https://youtu.be/AU4tLpYbLDY) said it was 'Americanization', but I think it's simplification.

Spoiler: spoilers

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so light seems much weaker, and I HATE WOMEN USEING SEX AS A TEMPTATION, but they lost all the real lore of the note and the death gods...

I think I have to try to find the manga, because I've watched the anime 100 times, and this left me feeling flat.

[afroakuma]

I put up a much longer review on my blog, which is available here or via my signature, but here's the spoiler-free version: this was not good.

[JeenLeen]

I enjoyed it, but I agree it wasn't a great movie. If anyone here has seen who it who has NOT seen the anime (or read the manga), I'd be curious of your opinion of it. I felt like, if you didn't know the original story, a lot of this movie would feel... just awkward or unexplained. Some nods to the anime were cool to see, but felt like they'd just be out of place if you hadn't seen the anime.

Some spoilers to discuss/rant

Spoiler: What I liked

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Ryuk looks scary. I think he looks as monstrous as in the anime, but doing it in 'live action' (aka, CGI?) made him look more demony than in cartoon. I don't think the movie lost anything by not going into more detail about death gods and death notes. Wouldn't have hurt, but it was needless info.

Mei's character is lot more than a whiny brat obsessed with Kira. However, she seems like she's willing to kill whoever to get her thrills, so still not likable. Basically, she has the ruthlessness of the anime's Light.

I think the movie explained L more than the anime did. Maybe I just missed it, but I felt like L's candy-eating was just an unexplained quirk, while the movie at least gave some (if a flimsy) justification. Also went into more detail, or better expositioned detail, perhaps, about L's origins. I liked that.

Spoiler: Didn't like

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Part of this is probably just that I liked the sociopathic, genius 'protagonist' Light becomes near the end of the anime. I didn't really care for the movie's portrayal of Light, but it was a legitimate main character who wasn't evil. So... not to my taste, but not bad, either.

I feel like there wasn't enough of the cat-and-mouse game between L and Light, though. Those were some of the coolest episodes (in my opinion), but in the movie Light as much as admits he is Kira the first time he meets L face-to-face.

Also, a couple plot holes with the rules.
Light wrote "when Mei takes the death note" or something like that, when he wrote her name. That doesn't sound like an IF statement, like he states. That wording makes me think Light basically forced her to take the note. I know the movie said his intention was otherwise, and maybe there were some unread rules about how IF-ELSE logic works with note entries which got cut on the editing floor.

And if Kira can get people to write in perfect Japanese, when they don't even know Japanese... that seems like he's imparting knowledge to them via the death note. Shouldn't he be able to make Watari (or anyone) tell him L's name by saying "this dude tells me the true name of L"?
If not because that's an 'impossible death', it seems dying after writing in a language one doesn't know would also be impossible.
But I admit that's... well, a kinda small plot hole.

I also wish the ending had shown what happens. I didn't really care for L losing his cool at the end, though it made sense (just felt too strong a contrast to the anime's L)--but that's not a legitimate complaint against the movie, just like me preferring anime Light to movie Light isn't a legitimate complaint. I would've liked if it showed something like "Light Turner confesses everything to his father, then dies of a heart attack" or something like that. Though I admit him admitting it to his dad is better if it's of his free will.

All in all, it seemed a kinda mediocre movie, which I only liked because I really liked the anime. Hence my curiosity to any who saw the movie and not the anime. I didn't care for any of the characters (Light seemed too whiny teen, and L just seemed odd not awesome.)
Also, the violence was over-the-top. Not corny, but just unnecessarily bloody. I was surprised it was rated M, but I guess Netflix might just not care about ratings and didn't want to care about the level of gore or number of f-words in it.

[Mato]

Spoiler

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I expected the run time to remove a lot and for them to dumb down the moral questions, but the whole thing comes off like terrible fiction wrote by someone that read the top paragraph of a wikipedia entry and stopped there.

[Rynjin]

Is this out now? I need to watch it just for Death Note, starring Willem Defoe as Himself. Should be worth a laugh.

[Majin]

Didn't like the movie. I think even if I hadn't read the manga, I would rate it 'meh' at best.

One big issue I think was they just didn't have enough time, everything had to be introduced and resolved quickly. Short tv series would have been far more appropriate. When I first heard of this adaptation, I thought it might be something like that. Or they could have had a completely original story, which they sort of did, except that they had to name protagonist and antagonist Light and L.

Spoiler: Spoilers

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First issue I had with this movie was Light. In the original, he was confident and smart. I didn't get that from this Light,except for a little bit at the end. He was also much less ruthless. Perhaps the filmmakers thought original Light would have been too villainous to be a main character. Mia was meh, seemed to have some of the original Light's ruthlessnes. Light's dad was okay I guess. Didn't get that much characterization.

L was better, at least in the beginning. He had the odd mannerisms, though not really many opportunities do display his supposed genius, and maybe he was too emotional. Well, L never really had much time to react to Watari's death in the original, so we don't really know what he would have done.

L and Light really did need to interact more, but I guess they only had time for one talk and a chase sequence.

Ryuk looked good, and I liked DaFoes performance. He was more active in this than the original, though I didn't mind it that much. Still, I feel like they could have utilized him better.

The action sequences weren't really necessary. But I liked the part where Light described how he'd manipulated people to save him and act as Kira. That was little bit something like what original Light would have done. Shame it came so late.

Minor changes, like Death Note's different rules, didn't bother me that much. But they strayed too far from the spirit of the original, and that made it jarring to watch.

Well, at least I think it was still better than Dragonball evolution (though that bar's set pretty low).

[TheFallenOne]

It was pretty bad.

Spoiler

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There wasn't even one character I cared about in any way. Everything that made them compelling in the original was gone. Changing their personalities is fair, Light as a morally torn guy who is pushed into his role out of a desire for personal revenge instead of a sociopathic megalomaniac - alright, fair. But badly executed.

I really don't understand why they didn't include the Fake L Kira killed, that was one of the most defining scenes in the anime. It showed Light falling off the deep end, going from exerting some perverted justice to murdering someone just for daring to challenge him. Could have easily moved the kill to Mia instead who was the crazy one in the adaption. Also, it would have been a huge power move on L's part and establish him as a credible threat. As it was, he was just some random guy with a mask giving a press conference and going "Hey Kira, kill me. Still here? Guess you can't." L's genius was mostly Informed Ability here.

Also, the ending really bugged me when Light's solution was to force someone into using the Death Note while he's in a coma. They don't have to use the original rules of the Death Note, fair enough, but going into this with the original rules in my mind the end felt like a real cop out when the grand reveal of Light's master plan is something that I expected to be impossible. More than that, it's a plot hole; if the Death Note can compel the written into commiting murder he could have just written for Watari "Fatally shoots his associate known as L then commits suicide" instead of sending him on a grand Quest to find out L's real name.

[afroakuma]

FallenOne: Spot on the money with the missing scene you pointed out.

[JoshL]

Ryuk was great, though i wish he wasn't always confined to the shadows. I assume the cgi wasnt the greatest, so dark to cover it, and it worked.

That is probably the only good thing i will say about this.

Also, the "outcast pining for the cheerleader" trope always annoys me. I was a weird kid, i had no interest in the cheerleaders, they were not likely to want to play d&d, discuss comics or listen to weird music with me. Minor point, but since they turned this into a teen romance drama for the most part, it became more significant than it should be.

[Mechalich]

Ryuk was great, though i wish he wasn't always confined to the shadows. I assume the cgi wasnt the greatest, so dark to cover it, and it worked.

I'll second the Ryuk portrayal. The visuals worked well within the clearly limited role they were able to afford (this movie was clearly produced on a low budget, it's visible in many sequences, which isn't surprising given it's a fairly blatant cash grab production anyway), and Willem Dafoe hits all the right notes with ease. That performance could have anchored a much better movie than this.

[JeenLeen]

R
Also, the "outcast pining for the cheerleader" trope always annoys me. I was a weird kid, i had no interest in the cheerleaders, they were not likely to want to play d&d, discuss comics or listen to weird music with me. Minor point, but since they turned this into a teen romance drama for the most part, it became more significant than it should be.

Eh, that trope doesn't seem too atypical to me based on my high school experience, but it bothered me how much that didn't fit in with Light from the anime. That our intro to Light had him pining over a girl just seemed off.

Spoiler: More for the anime than the movie

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I liked how, in the anime, Light seemed to just view his sexuality as another tool. He acted out love for Mia since that enabled him to manipulate and utilize her. To him, though, any pleasure from it was just some irrelevant factor he could take or leave.
In the movie, Light is manipulated by Mia.

That's why his pining over Mia bugged me in this movie. I think it ties altogether in the "movie Light is not a genius, but just some kid who got the Death Note." It does make him a more human protagonist, instead of the ruthless megalomaniac Light turns out to be in the anime, but it is jarring in contrast to the anime.

[Kato]

I don't feel like being quite as harsh as most of you seem to be... I mean, I won't claim it was a great movie but it was okay. It just was a pretty poor adaptation.

Spoiler

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If you don't think those people are Light and Misa and L, I feel it works well enough. I mean, there is still a bunch of stuff that does NOT work, more or less, and obviously you can't convey what the anime did over 20+ episodes but as a movie on its own... it wasn't terrible.

The ending was... rather bad, though. It just way exceeds what the note should be able to do. (Sidenote: after the first few kills I expected way more Final Destination kills in the movie)

I'd really like the opinion of someone unaware of the manga / anime and I feel it's decent enough to suggest it to a few of my friends. Maybe I'll get them to watch it and get back at you..

[Talar]

It wasn't the worse movie I have ever seen. Going in knowing it wasn't going to be the greatest I guess I was pleasantly surprised. Dafoe was excellent and I would actually like to see him as Ryuk in a better movie or show. The ending was just bad. There is no defending it.

After the first few kills the movie got the feel of a black comedy to me. And it bounced away from it and back to it at times I felt. A Death Note live action series with maybe 45 minute episode lengths would work a lot better and allow for things to actually develop story wise.

I felt the portrayal of L was good up until he completely lost it. It felt like L till his character completely changed.

[Kato]

I felt the portrayal of L was good up until he completely lost it. It felt like L till his character completely changed.

Yes, but so were light and Misa. I like the original L but giving this one emotion and while it's not entirely new that decision at the end, I felt was a nice move. (again, as a stand alone story, not as an improvement on the original)

[A.A.King]

This movie might have been good if it wasn't pretending to be a Death Note movie. Hell, this movie might have been decent if it wasn't an adaption. They could have made this story with out using a Death Note but instead something similar or at the very least they could have told this story with original characters (I mean, this 'Light' had so much in common with Light Yagami that you might as well call it an original character I suppose).

If you want to tell a similar story but don't like the original characters have the guts to admit it, don't slap theirs name on your own weak-ass versions and hope nobody will notice. It's a coward's move.

In fact, I would argue that this movie is worse than Dragonball Evolution.

[Dr.Samurai]

I think it's too difficult to adapt the anime to a movie. There's just too much going on. This would have been better as a Netflix series. That'd probably require more money, so it likely wasn't an option. But this lacked a lot of what made the original premise so interesting. There was really no cat and mouse going on. And the rules were inconsistent.

They tried to make Light a "good guy", which didn't really work, and is far less interesting than the genius with good intentions becoming a villain. L seemed mostly unnecessary here. He put pressure on Kira, but any investigation could have done that. It was mostly Light's father daring Kira that drove Kira and Mia apart.

I don't know. The premise of the Death Note is always interesting. This movie had potential just off the strength of that alone. Obviously they have to change stuff from the anime. But I feel this movie still wasn't that good.

[Anonymouswizard]

I think I have to try to find the manga, because I've watched the anime 100 times, and this left me feeling flat.

Yes, so much less. To me the manga is THE version of the story, it's much more subdued but it can also be creepier at points. Plus it's got a really realistic art style for a manga, it's worth checking out just to see what the characters originally looked like.

I came to this thread to see if the film would be worth checking out, and instead have decided to try the Japanese live action series again. I remember it making Light less of a sociopathic genius while still remaining light, and making L more normal while still remaining L. Making the characters more realistic while still keeping them somewhat like the ones fans have grown to like.

[JeenLeen]

A question I remember I had during the movie.

Spoiler

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There's one scene, I think the one that ends with Mia's "I love you", where Light is furious at Mia, yelling about it being his father and how could she.

I was confused, since it seemed pretty clear they did not kill his father, and I thought maybe she had done it off-scene and this was Light's response. But then we see his dad again. Light didn't know yet that Mia had the agents killed, so it wasn't him upset at that.

Anyone understand what was happening there?

[Dr.Samurai]

Spoiler: @JeenLeen

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She was asking him to kill his father. That's... a pretty crazy request/expectation/demand of someone. He's saying "How could you ask me to kill my own father? Why would you even think you could ask me that and it is something I would consider?"

[Tono]

So. I watched this, and honestly, I didn't think it was too bad. Granted, I've never been that much of a Death Note fan. Thought it went from interesting to incredibly stupid. So I really don't have any old attachment to the story.

Anyway, the weakest part and what probably hurt it the most was probably the length. A two parter or more and they could have made it a lot better. Loved the actor for L(felt the writing was the worst part of him), and Light would have been salvageable had they had more time to flesh him out. His genius and personality is only mentioned or hinted at until his final Gambit at the end. Mia felt the same. Salvageable but not in the time frame the show had. I felt like most of my character knowledge came from memory and not the movie.
Ryuk is just cool. Wish they would have played up the bored Death God aspect a bit more, but meh. Once again, length.

I would love to compare it to the Korean Death Note that came out like a decade ago, but honestly I don't remember it that well its been so long. Maybe ill watch it again this weekend or something to be able to compare the two.

In fact, I would argue that this movie is worse than Dragonball Evolution.

I would not. Thats completely unfair and some how rose tinting Evolution, which I didn't think was possible. Any complaint that you could have against this is, especially in differences to source material is multiplied in Evolution.

[A.A.King]

I would not. Thats completely unfair and some how rose tinting Evolution, which I didn't think was possible. Any complaint that you could have against this is, especially in differences to source material is multiplied in Evolution.

No, it's neither unfair nor rosetinting of Evolution. Evolution is horrible in every conceavable way, so horrible in fact that I'm convinced that even the few unfamiliar with the source material who manage to watch Evolution will realise that the movie is no representation of the original.

This.. thing, is also terrible, it has nothing that made the original good and is yet another proof that Hollywood cannot be trusted with foreign works. The only thing it has are a Death God and a Death Note, which in reality are as important to Death Note as the Dragon and the Dragonballs are to Dragonball. However, the reason that I am able to state without being hyperbolic that this movie us an objectively worse thing than Evolution is because at first glance it looks decent. Someone can watch this movie and genuimely believe that this is it; this is what the hype was all about. Someone can watch this movie and think that Death Note really is about some angsty horny teenager who isn't really all that smart. This movie can easily give people the wrong impression which makes it so much more evil than an seemingly worse adaption.

[JeenLeen]

So, anyone seen it who hadn't seen the anime or read the manga?
Or anyone know someone who fits that description, and can tell us their take on the movie?

[Mikemical]

I watched movie, having been well over 10 years since I watched the anime. It wasn't as bad as DB:Evolution or The Last Airbender, but it wasn't good. It was mediocre as a film in itself, and what it had going for it was just the deaths being gorier. That's it.

Spoiler: More in-depth criticism

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Turning Light into an underdog was a nice move from the usual "Ugh, I'm so perfect, too bad the world isn't as perfect as me" attitude he always had. Making him less morally rotten than his original self was also a nice way to make the viewers root for him(Turner didn't want to kill any law enforcement that wasn't named L, Yagami went so far as to make his father sacrifice himself just to make sure he wouldn't get caught). He is Yagami's ideals, with a dash of "Note-less" Light(when he told Ryuk to get rid of the note while under L's custody) sprinkled on top. He is brilliant, but lazy, as shown when he does other people's homework in exchange of money.

Mia felt too out of the blue to be a convincing character. Yes, we see Light has his eyes on her at the start of the film, she's shown smoking to stablish she isn't the same cheerfully airheaded Misa Amane, but a moody teen just like Light. She only showed interest in him after he showed her the notebook, then tried seducing Light into making Kira more ruthless and fearsome. She's essentially Yagami's ego, bloodlust and pride. But she underestimates her opponents, which leads to her own death, just like Yagami underestimated L's decoy, the killing of the FBI agents, or Near at the end of the series. She's a hypocrite, like Yagami, as shown when after she betrays Light, he in turn kills her rather than handing her over the note and she is baffled he would do that after she threatened to kill him and sent L and the FBI on Light's trail.

L was bad. The only smart thing he did was wear a mask to prevent Kira from killing him, but his "deductions" felt like bat-deductions. "I thought of this, therefore I'm right" kind of arguments rather than demonstrating any actual detective work. Also, his calm and collected demeanor that made him feel alien to the other characters was nowhere to be seen. He starts out calm, and then over the course of the second act, he grabs a gun, tries to kill Light several times while on a hunch that he might be Kira, drives like a GTA Player, and the scene at the end with the evil laugh shows that he's become unhinged after Watari's death. Speaking of which, having his real name be just "Watari" was dumb as hell, since L knew that Kira could control and kill people if he knew their names, he should've given him an alias. You know, like he did in the original material.

Ryuk was also a weird change from the original. In the original, he started out a goofy sidekick, then went on to reveal his true Neutral Evil nature. In the movie, he's the Chaotic Evil corrupter, who threatens Light should he even think about turning on him. Though I did like how he corrected Light about his name, many adaptations don't give much of a damn about pronunciating things right.

The changes on the Death Note's rules was also kind of an asspull to justify certain chains of events. In the original, Yagami could control people for two days before they inevitable died, or they reached an obstacle preventing their specified death routine. In the film, Turner can make people his puppets and make them do whatever he wants them to, then release them by burning the page their name is written on. Watari going on a wild goose chase after L's true name was such an example.

[Dragonexx]

Just saw it. I went in expecting to dislike it, but was actually pretty entertained. It's pretty close to an in-name-only adaptation, but as a stand-alone film, it's pretty decent. There are a ton of changes from the anime, but I really didn't mind. Only real complaint is that I wish that had just used completely original characters, since they have almost nothing in common with their anime/manga counterparts save Ryuk.

[Psyren]

It's pretty awful, and despite my being an avid fan of the anime, I don't think that's just my bias talking. I would have been fine with them making an original story with new characters, but it's so obvious that Light Turner was meant to actually be Light Yagami - despite being essentially nothing like him - that the whole thing just falls flat.

I did like Lakeith as L though, and of course Willem Dafoe being Willem Dafoe.

[DomaDoma]

I recall, in 2009 or so, there was a leaked American script which was essentially a bare-bones Misa-less version of the first arc, except that when Light regains his memories, he looks at his plan from then on, regrets everything, and backpedals HARD. Which, thanks to the way the plot was laid out in Misa's absence (I forget the details), he could reasonably do.

I cannot fathom how that script got rejected and this one did not.

[ReverseHermit]

The real question is anyone really surprised?
A lot of things go through my mind when these "adaptations" happen

Though I think the first thing I'd want answered is this

In what way can this story be expressed differently/better in this new media format?

Take from book to movie
The language of literature is different from the language of cinema,
But regardless they have their own individual strengths, and a good movie adaptation of a book will utilize film language to express this story in a way the book could not

[Fri]

The real question is anyone really surprised?

Actually, yes I'm surprised and disappointed, because I was hoping for another surprise hit like Netflix' Castlevania. And it's not like adapting manga or comic book to movie is some inherently impossible task. The Rurouni Kenshin trilogy seems to be well received and considered a good addition to the canon. For japanese->western adaptation, Edge of Tomorrow is actually a good adaptation of All You Need To Kill, where any failure it has actually more on its casting of Tom Cruise so people expected it to be mindless pretty boy vehicle (also on the horrendous design of the cgi monsters), where they changed stuffs to cover other things and make it more fitting for movie.

[Kato]

And it's not like adapting manga or comic book to movie is some inherently impossible task.

No, the problem is condensind a season or seasons of plot into 90 minutes. The failure isn't about changing the medium from print to movie per se, it's changing the amount of stuff that needs to be told into something you can tell in the short time of a movie.

[Anonymouswizard]

No, the problem is condensind a season or seasons of plot into 90 minutes. The failure isn't about changing the medium from print to movie per se, it's changing the amount of stuff that needs to be told into something you can tell in the short time of a movie.

Yeah, didn't the Japanese decide they needed two movies to tell an altered version of the first arc? (and maybe the second, not actually seen the films) It's not like shortening Death Note can't be done, the cat and mouse game does drag on with a lot of 'I know you know I know you know that I don't know' that can be condensed down into a smaller number of plays for a good two to three hour film.

I think what killed my interest in this film is the changes to how the Death Note worked. The original rules were straightforward and complex (once the Death Eraser was removed from canon), including 'if you aren't bothered about the cause of death it will be a heart attack' and 'no backsies, sorry'. The rules were simple, straightforward, and had a number of established loopholes, but most of all they set up some of the twists and turns of the story. But the fact of the heart attack being a default was interesting, as was the choice to use it as a trademark (because it meant Light/Raito could hide kills by making them something different but possible), it also kept most of the deaths as being goreless, which believe it or not makes the story more approachable (I practically hate gore, despite being fine with smaller amounts of blood).