Lazy Film Critic Movie Reviews
Death Note (Netflix)
As far as adaptations go, Hollywood trying to adapt anime and manga has about the same track record as video games, with only one or two times resulting in success and the rest being garbage hated by fans and non-fans alike. However, with anime a lot of the failure can be attributed to the sometimes jarring cultural divide, so on paper a Death Note adaptation may not sound like a bad idea. So the real question isn't whether or not a Death Note movie could work, but why the hell didn't it?
If you ask me, one of the worst things an adaptation can do is misunderstand what made the source material work to begin with, if you fail that then everything else falls apart from there. At it's core, the original series revolved around the elaborate game of cat and mouse between Light, a teenager who gets ahold of a supernatural journal and uses it towards his maniacal god complex , and L, a cold and calculating detective determined to stop him. That's the basic premise, and what made it compelling and unique was that, while the idea of an anti-hero had been done to death, the main character of a story being essentially an evil supervillain with little to no redeeming qualities was new for its time. In fact, it's still pretty unique, even stuff like Breaking Bad has to make sure we feel some sympathy for the main character, while Death Note strived to ensure we knew Light was an apathetic, bond villain with a wicked laugh and melodramatic demeanour to match. In the 2017 adaptation, this element is entirely done away with, and the character has been replaced with a whiney emo teenager who is more of a reluctant kid caught in a bad situation than the maniacal and strangely compelling comic book villain fans know and love. It wouldn't be as much of a gut-punch or just a spit in the face to people who like the series if this new character wasn't so generic, boring, and uninspired.
The rest of the cast of characters are given much the same treatment. L is no longer an endearing, calculated, quirky, and intelligent character, but an overly emotional, impulsive character who is stripped of all personal agency in place of forced motives. Ryuk is no longer a chaotic neutral, a placeholder for the audience and comic relief, but an edgy devil-like character (even though Willem Dafoe is giving it all here acting-wise) who contributes nothing whatsoever. I could go on but you can get the picture. The worst part is, neither of these characters have any purpose to be here, with their roles stripped of any purpose it comes across more as obligatory than meaningful that they be in the movie. And it shows in how they're written as well, for example, in the original series Ryuk has a seeming addiction to apples, which is explained in that the world he comes from is dead and empty, the best tasting fruits taste like dry sand and dirt, so to him a juicy apple is like a cigarette or alcohol. However, here, it's nothing more than a thing he does. It's never explained why he eats apples, or where he's even getting them, he just eats them like its none of his business. The issue is anyone who's watched and likes the show will know what's going on, but to anyone without the context they'd be totally in the dark. Same goes for L, L has a lot of quirks about him, he sits weird, in most of his scenes he's snacking on sugary food, and he never wears shoes. Again, in the show it's explained that these aren't just weird traits about him because "he's weird", but that he's choosing to do these things because he knows that the way he sits, the food he eats, and the clothes he wears help his deductive abilities. But in the movie, these quirks show up for like one scene and are never explained, and the only people who would have any frame of reference for it would be the people who saw the original. To a point, it really just begs the question why have them in here at all if you're going to take away both any reason for them to be there, and then force all these fanservice that would go over anyones head if they hadn't seen the original.
Final Rating
Here's the thing. Really, Adam Wingards Death Note isn't godawful. As it's own film, it's alright. It gets enough right to get a pass from me, and I'm sure anyone who hadn't seen the original could find something to like here. My problems with Death Note are conceptual, it's more or less the same problem I had with World War Z, but more than World War Z because at least World War Z committed to an entirely new story from the source material and thus is still a pretty good movie. Death Note on the other hand is constantly at odds with itself, never sure if it wants to be something new or something familiar. Both could have been good, but it's because it kept reaching at arms length that it never accomplishes anything. So really, the only people I can recommend Netflix's Death Note to are people who haven't seen the original series, and it's really only because of the off chance watching it might peak your curiosity into watching the original.
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