Another Thing on Death Note: The Live Action Netflix Adaptation || Second Quarter
- Daniel Meierer
- Aug 26, 2017
- 8 min read
After a night of sleep I jumped back to transcribing this. I didn’t want to continue watching, i felt it might ruin how I write it. Onward!
For the first part, see HERE!
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~*~* Back to Live Action Death Note, as imagined by me at 14 years old. As an egotistical 14 year old, I of course would want to put myself into the shoes of the protagonist! As a bullied youth, I of course would want Light to use the death note on my bullies.
Thing is, A!Death Note cast a FAR wider net than my high school. If my 14 year old self read Death Note and it instead had this protagonist that feels like it was made out of bitterness. Which is fine, in a movie that doesn’t have a personality ALREADY FUCKING MADE FOR ITS PROTAGONIST! One that doesn’t really meet this stereotypical ‘lets appeal to the kicks’ thing they are doing. With a thing that appealed to kids in the first fucking place! Just because a decade or two has past does not mean that anything was lost in translation requiring you to make the character relatable!
The anime had a sequence with everyone using social media apps to gossip about Kira, for Yog’s sake. Why make an adaptation if you aren’t going to take anything about the character. There ARE ways everything in this movie could have worked. Sadly, they ran out of cohesive ideas and source material when the Ryuk wiki page went out thanks to the budget and electricity bill all being used on the one good idea this damn movie had: Willem Dafoe as Ryuk.
~*~* Oh good. L has arrived. Seems he got lost in Watch dogs on the way here. Ever the cunning detective, he has stolen a look to blend in.
~*~* Too bad he seems to be lost in Sleeping Dogs now.
~*~* This movie maybe be an elaborate Xanatos Gambit by Yagami. It makes me want to stab myself my pen. It must be the work of Kira.
~*~* Watch Dogs L returns. To brood. To wander. To grit. To wear glowing blue sunglasses as seen in a 21XX infomercial. These are presumably for the dark circles that were once under his eyes.
~*~* Surrounded by a sea of papers, candy jars, case files, presumably easter eggs no ones gets because they are for the wrong franchise, and other teases this might be the L we know and love laid out by the same person who made Suicide Squad’s Joker room; Watch Dogs L does his best to be A!L by mimicking that one scene he saw by speaking between handfuls of candy.
~*~* Watch Dogs L would look 20% more like A!L if they just made his jeans baggier, maybe dark blue, and made his shirt equally baggy. Instead of Watari allowing this Ninja phase of L’s to fly. I get you are trying to be supportibve and all WAtari, but you need to tell “the world’s greatest detective here” the all black look with a face kmask does not exactly do the job of making him look casual nor relaxed, nor blend in. A!L’s idea of outside wear and disguise was a pair of shoes that didn’t match.
~*~* For that matter, why are his shoes looking so orderly? A!L wore shoes like someone who rarely wears shoes. Since he rarely wears shoes. The weirdo is a barefoot fancy cake face stuffing genius. The weirdo is given Ham on top of Melon and picks the ham off to enjoy that ham flavored melon, then discard the meat like he assumes it is a plastic container for the melon.
~*~* Bring back L’s cakes and kicks!
~*~* (taking up a good portion of the top of my page in the notebook) THE FUCK?!
~*~* (written under but looks like Gamzee wrote it post slime.) L’s first interaction with Kira/Light in A!Death Note is nuanced and brilliant! Least and especially compared to what we instead fucking get!
Instead of in one fell swoop A!L proving not ONLY that Light is in one particular city in one particular country after having NO idea (because, in the damned anime, Light is showing taking EXTENSIVE precautions making it difficult to pinpoint where he is. A!L just had a hunch and started there with plans to repeat the plan quickly elsewhere.) even what CONTINENT Light is in, NOT ONLY did he prove on live television that Kira can kill using a face and name and there by hush most nonbelievers and get the message out (even as a nonbeliever initially) like a magic god, NOT ONLY did the damn A!L do all this and probably other bits I am missing using this, but he was able to nail down minor behavioral observations based on the speed in which he fell for the trap and how much of the speech he let the Decoy give. He was able to take on this teenager with the murder powers of literal gods and CHASTISE him for it like Kira was a child on live television. Able to piss Light off into a crazed rant, KINDA LIKE THIS FUCKING MOVIE IS MAKING ME EXPERIENCE RIGHT ABOUT FUCKING NOW!
When L lets himself be known to Light it is with a god damn BANG. It gives you the same feeling as the first episode that every Doctor in Doctor Who has where they make you confident they ARE that character.
(I seem to have been unable to stop typing in caps while writing in the journal for this bit.. Also while adding bits while transcribing.) WATCH DOGS L JUST GIVES A MOTIVATING SPEECH! M!L JUST STANDS THERE NOT USING A FUCKING STAND IN BUT HIMSELF! INSTEAD OF HAVING KIRA KILL SOMEONE WQHO LOOKS A BIT LIKE HIS REAL SELF, PROBABLY TO THROW LIGHT OFF CAUSE HE’D SIT THERE THINKING ‘WELL THAT FUCKING ASSHOLE WOULDN’T BE DUMB ENOUGH TO USE A STAND IN THAT LOOKSL IKE HIMSELF! WHERE WOULD HE EVEN FUCKING FIND ONE?! SURE IT COULD BE A FLAW BUT IT IS ONE YOU COULD DEBATE AS OPPOSED TO L, HERE PLAYED BY WANNABE BATMAN MAKING A GORDON SPEECH, NYEH NYEH LIGHT!
~*~* Quote Light’s Movie Dad, “WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?!” Me and everyone else watching this just seond before “WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK WAS THAT?!”
~*~* (From me, bright eyed and innocent as it happens before stopping at the halfway point to transcribe all this.) What… Maybe? He proved Kira wants to kill him but can’t. Is he using a different approach? Are we seeing a little before this?
~*~* (From me, now, having transcribed the first part, slept on it, and am now here still having only seen half of the movie.) NO L. ANSWER YOUR RIVAL’S FATHER! WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?!
~*~* (Reserved for me, having seen the whole movie. In case we never learn what the fuck was that.)
~*~* #noreallyLwhatthefuckwasthat. Alright I am done now.
~*~* Oh, I guess we are at the part where L is investigating the police member’s family already.
~*~* Don’t you do it, Light. Don’t you explain the camera thing to the sidekick-formerly-known-as-Misa instead of Ryuk.
~*~* Wait, this is gthe first time Light talking to Ryuk is noticed? A!Light, yeah I beleive he could hide that. I don’t think the protagonist that wandered into the wrong movie is quite as capable at hiding his creepy Death God.
~*~* I wouldn’t even be able to hide being followed by a invisible Willem Dafoe for more than an hour. Much less a LITERAL GOD OF DEATH. That is also Willem Dafoe.
~*~* One build up for a Light kills people montage that doesn’t happen. Music starts up, builkds up, for one scene of three people jumping to their death. Horrifying, don’t get me wrong, but given the earlier level of murdergasm that both A!Light and M!Light had that music and slow-mo does not seem suited for the otherwise..
~*~* Death Note: Netflix Wananbe we need to talk. I just nearly wrote down the underwhelming forced by magic notebook suicide scene. HOW did you make these words come out of my fingers. Three guys frollicking off of a roof because an angsty teenager and his girlfriend wrote about it should NOT be something that just gets disjointedly shoved past with that kind of music. YOU PUT THE TRAILER MUSIC IN OUTSIDE OF THE MOVIE! You don’t need to film it in chunks and layer it together like an audio jigsaw puzzle!
~*~* NO KIRA, THIS PEN IS FOR MY JOURNAL NOT MY NECK!
~*~* Those 12 FBI agents are dead. I thought there was this whole thing about that but I guess you are all dead now baaaaaaaaai.
~*~* Light decides running around the stairway of the house his Police Chief of a father owns screaming the name of his magical murder making notebook granting Death God at FULL vomume in a distressed angry tone is a GOOD IDEA.
~*~* Wait, didn’t Light have a sister? She was kind of important. Least later on. Thank Azathoth, this might mean they won’t have a sequel destroying Mello.
~*~* Mother is sitll dead to fill the Avenging Executioner backstory part of the teenage protagonist checklist. M!Light must have a quota.
~*~* Ryuk still looks good. Still sounds amazing. Willem Dafoe still sounds like his voice was MADE to be Ryuk. Like the Anime voice actor was just doing a Willem Dafoe impression. Dafoe is still the shining gem of entertainment in this thing. Please don’t leave use Dafoe. Please stay and glitter our shit smear cinema with your sparkling vocals.
~*~* I think I got off track here… However, it would be 20% cooler is it was written by someone that cared. Despite his efforts, Dafoe’s marvelous acting can’t save shitty writing… Well not all the time. Ryuk however also fails from uninspired CGI. While he LOOKs great Ryuk, a character in the Anime who always seemed to be moving in a jerky fashion, contorting himself oddly, and just being.. Well, Ryuk! M!Ryuk just kinda stands there and stares. Like a halloween animatronic with Willem’s recordings trapped inside. Sitting and eating apples. Staring. He is like an old beaten puppy. Sad to be in this movie. Poor Shinigami.
~*~* NYARLETHOTEP WHY. Movie Dad has decided to copy L! Another gordon speech? LOOKING LIKE IT!
~*~* ONLY 49 MINUTES HAVE PASSED?! ONLY HALF WAY DONE?! No. No.
~*~* NO
~*~* Nonononononon...Ffffffff-After a pallet cleanser. And sleep. And better entertainment. Rick and Morty Binging will soothe the soul.
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It is here that I turned off the movie for now. As I mentioned, I did not want to have my thoughts influenced by how the movie ended, as the first half was atrocious and kicked my childhood in the soul.
Keeps on opening up the door for Hollywood. Rational side tells it No, no it will just hurt you again. It will come to you with a mask of lies and delicately cut and edited scenes before BREAKING everything it brought in front of you and leaving it in a bundle in front of you.
I mean.. I lost nothing from the movie, minus some sanity I think, as the Anime is still there to be watched. Still somehow I feel.. Offended. Do they not learn? If you can’t treat something nice correctly, leave it where it is. Don’t cut it up and leave it scattered on millions of screens when the money, and Dafoes, could be FAR better put towards a adaptation with the one thing this thing lacked.
Some damn passion and RESPECT for the source material. Something similar to this on the second half coming at some point.
Probably going to put a little Horror intermission before this though. Help with the badf taste this monstrosity gave me.
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Thank you for reading and have a marvelous day,
Doc Boots.
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